Gwen Guthrie, frustrated with the music industry in her native America has opted to find a new recording home here in the UK, with her single just released and album due to follow. B&S talks to the singer songwriter about her music and work with her local children's theatre group.

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".

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.

 WHEN IT comes to making quality music, Angela Winbush is no slouch. As record buyers on both sides of the Atlantic discovered when the former member of the hit duo Rene & Angela released "Sharp", her first solo LP, in 1987, the lady's talent as a producer, songwriter and vocalist clearly put her in a class of her own.
Following the success of "Angel" (a No. 1 U.S. blackmusic hit) and subsequent singles such as "C'est Toi" and the super-soulful duet "Hello Beloved" (recorded with Ronald Isley of the legendary Isley Brothers, who is also Angela's personal manager), the St. Louis-born star has put her hit stamp on records by Sheena Easton, Stephanie Mills and The Isley Brothers.   

  Lucky fellow Scott Preston interviewed Emilio Castillo from Tower of Power.

No matter who you are, where you live, or your taste in music, Tower of Power will find you. And once that happens, it's all over. You will come to believe not only that soul music is the salvation of us all, but that Tower of Power is one of those rare bands who can claim to be the real deal, 100 proof, aged-to-perfection, ground zero Soul. And the thing is, they're everywhere now.

Who's next?

Interview by Scott Preston  read more on  Cincy Groove

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.

Charlie Singleton has finally stepped out of his Cameo role and become the Modern Man he always wanted to be. As cryptic as that may seem, it is, in fact, pretty much the scenario of the career of the singular Mr. Singleton thus far ? one that took off when he became an integral part of the Cameo set-up at the turn of the decade, registered a false start for his solo career with his debut album for Arista and is now truly a force to be reckoned with as his second album, this time for Epic, begins to bite hard.

"We try not to be analytical", say David Frank and Mic Murphy, better known as The System. "We reckon all things must be equal and, when our time comes, we'll drink the wine".

I'd say my new album is all about getting to basics, back to square one, to what people want to hear from me." So says Stephanie Mills and the young lady's got a valid point, given that her current single "I Feel Good All Over" is truly leaping up the black music charts in the States and her album, "If I Were Your Woman" is turning into one of her biggest sellers.

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.

IN THE music industry it seems that new forms of music are competiting against old. Take Hip Hop for example. R&B artists dis hip hoppers, jazz vocalists poke fun at rhymes and drum machines. Nobody seems to like each other .. .or do they?

One producer who has made the successful crossover from Hip Hop into R&B is Teddy Riley, a soft spoken young man in his early twenties who got his start producing rappers from B-Fats to Kool Moe Dee and Heavy D & the Boyz.  Riley suddenly became a household name by working on Keith Sweat's "I Want Her", followed by a hit by Johnny Kemp. It's hard to find a day when he's not in the studio planning future projects with Stephanie Mills, Billy Ocean and the Jacksons. Riley also sings and plays music in his own soul group, Guy, and has been utilising singer and songwriter Aaron Hall to write lyrics for the song Michael might be singing with his brothers.