Bman's Blues Report

  DARONDO 1946 – 2013   Om nivore Recordings is saddened to report the passing of funk and soul icon Darondo from heart failure this past Sunday (June 9).   Born and bred in Berkeley, California, Darondo – given name William Daron Pulliam – first played professionally at the age of 18 in The Witnesses, a blue-eyed soul troupe resident at East Bay teen club the Lucky 13 in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the early 1970s that the singer-guitarist hit his stride. He fashioned a unique blend of street soul, informed by Al Green, the Dells and others, but always identifiable by his own special delivery, sliding from gravelly baritone to wailing falsetto in the space of a measure.   By the late 1970s Darondo had left the music business and his subsequent adventures – cable video personality, globe-trotting entertainer, unorthodox therapist, and rebirth as a cult performer in the late 2000s – make for a colorful story that demonstrated th...

FORTY CLASSIC SIDES FROM SOUTHERN SOUL LABEL MINARET RECORDS REISSUED ON OMNIVORE RECORDS AUGUST 13 The South Side of Soul Street: The Minaret Soul Singles 1967-1976 features Willie Cobbs,  Big John Hamilton, Leroy Lloyd & the Dukes, Doris Allen and other under-the-radar soul greats. VALPARAISO, Fla. — For decades, Memphis and Muscle Shoals have been praised as the premier Southern soul recording capitals, and rightly so. But any comprehensive list of important R&B studio destinations should also include Valparaiso, located on Florida’s Panhandle, not far from the Alabama state line. That’s where Finley Duncan established the Playground Recording Studio in 1969, producing a series of stunning singles for his Minaret Records label (distributed by Shelby Singleton’s SSS International Records) that inexplicably avoided the charts but stand tall with legions of R&B aficionados. Having explored the California East Bay’...