"U know, I just don't feel well enough for this interview. I mean ... my eyes are streaming, my head's spinning and my stomach is churning ? you're just not gonna get much of an interview out of me unless we talk about flu!"

{safm} Charlie Wilson{/safm}, Gap Band vocalist, is not a very happy man at the moment. First of all, he's got the flu which he'd been trying to sleep off until he was dragged out of bed for our chat. Then it's only hours before they're on stage for theii one and only promotional performance here ? the Christmas Radio London Soul Night Out in Leicester Square. How is Charlie going to perform when he looks like death warmed up at the hotel?

The phone rings at exactly 2:30pm on a sunny L.A. afternoon, and for any interview to begin precisely on time is, to say the least, unusual. On the other end of the line is Reginald McArthur, lead singer of The Controllers, the Alabama-based group whose recording career began in 1975 with the ever-soulful "Somebody's Gotta Win, Somebody's Gotta Lose".
Minutes later, we're joined by baritone Lenard Brown for a three-way conversation centred around the release of the quartet's first album for Capitol Records, appropriately entitled, "Just In Time".

IF THEY aren't already, pretty soon Akron, Ohio based Heat Records will become known as a company adept at turning out stunning ballads what with first the superb album from Frederick, then the fine just The Two Of Us single from Johnston Brown & Janice Dowlen and now a consistent follow-up to Ivy's debut LP in 1984 with "Ivy II".

Master drummer/producer Norman Connors has been away from the recording scene for almost six years now but out of studio doesn't mean out work. The man who first brought the likes of Phyllis Hyman, Michael Henderson and Glenn Jones to public attention vai his mid-Seventies albums for Arista and Buddah is quick to point out that he's been performing pretty consistently throughout that time.

The group name Slave has been with us a long time but not necessarily so the new personnel and the new direction. However, latest recruit Keith Nash explains why the 'new' Slave are ready to carry on the tradition.

IF predictions were my line, Motown's newest signing Stacy Lattisaw could, in time, become a serious threat to the likes of Teena Marie and Janet Jackson. She was, to all intents and purposes, quite a surprising addition to the Motown family because prior to this, very little had been heard about the nineteen year old singer.

You know, it's been fourteen years since "If Loving You Is Wrong" and something like nine years since we last had an album from Luther Ingram. And yet, after one listen to Luther's new album (rather unimaginatively tagged "Luther Ingram"), it's as if the crooner has never been away. But he has!

Let's go back to October 1986 to see what's happening in the music business those days. These Liners are from a populair magazine from the UK.

The music we listen to is an ever-changing thing with shifts and moves that can be as logical as they are confusing, but there will always remain throughout the evolution certain constants ? things that will remain familiar and reassuring.

Grover Washington Jnr's music is one of those constants and for well over a decade the great saxophonist has been creating a sound that has transcended fads and fancies and remained simply ... Grover.
Grover is currently plying his music around a good proportion of his country's fifty-two States and it was the morning after one such date in Georgia that we caught up with the Buffalo, New York native to discuss a brand new album for a brand new label.

WHILE, as a family group, Mason have that fact in common with the likes of the Jacksons, Pointers and Isleys, they have one further common factor with the Wilson Brothers, a.k.a. the Gap Band. Both families hail from the unlikely city of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It's already almost a year ago that Gerald Levert died. For me he was the greatest male soul singer, producer of the ninetees till 2006. In the soul and funk music archive I found an interview from B&S with Gerald from 1994.  In that year he released his album Groove on.

"AFTER a series of near misses during his Arista years, 35-year-old {safm}Jeff  Lorber{/safm} has attained that elusive crossover hit first time out on Warner Brothers. "Facts Of Love" is the record and it not only provides Jeff with a slab of gold, it also welcomes two exciting new vocal talents to an unsuspecting world ? Karyn White and Michael Jeffries.