“Looking back, I’m really proud of what we achieved in the 1960s” drummer Nelson Lemmond once told me. “As The Tempests, out of North Carolina, we made some great R&B and played with some great talent too. We never got a chance to perform with Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett. But pretty much everybody else in between. At the end of the day though, by the late ’60s, the atmosphere was changing. Otis had been killed in a plane crash in that lake in Wisconsin. Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis. Civil unrest was everywhere and there was a militant air, even in North Carolina, often considered one of the more progressive areas of the south. People ended up taking sides.”

Nelson Lemmond’s comments echoed previous remarks made by other session musicians and singers through the south, including those at Stax and other studios where white and black musicians and singers previously rubbed shoulders. The 1970s marked dramatically changing times not just in the south and across the USA. The cusp of the two decades witnessed political unrest through Vietnam War and internal racial tension, demonstrated through riots in Detroit and other urban areas of the north. The musical landscape was also changing. Soul music was evolving. Hard hitting funk was the new musical voice. In the south, the Allman Brothers band, Chicago and southern rock were now the popular choice with white mainstream radio listeners.

Other events happening around the country were affecting R&B programming. Nashville’s WLAC was changing its format. John Richbourg, the purveyor of soul who had influenced so many local radio stations across America and including the Carolinas, was about to leave in disagreement with the new radio policy. Within a couple of years, the final nail in the Nashville R&B coffin was displacement of the Black community to make way for new urbanisation projects, dispersing black culture and music.

The beginning of the 1970s saw a wane in soul music popularity among the white record buying public. There were still clear pockets where this sector of the music industry would thrive, but these were primarily in the cities of the north and in the west where a symbiotic relationship between funk and politics flourished.

In the south studios had their own issues. Political revolution, and demand for racial identity bled through musical directions and created a true cultural divide. The bridges built via integrated bands and musicians through the mid to late 1960s were often burned. Many small studios in the southern states were now focused on recording country and southern rock.

There were some exceptions. To survive in the industry, independent studios did have to cater for new musical styles and artists. But some, like Charlotte’s Reflections Sound Studios, weren’t in a rush to discard relationships with artists and producers from the African American community. It might still be worth of keeping one eye on the residual R&B market.

REFLECTION SOUND STUDIOS

In the early days, Wayne Jernigan was a drummer by trade, who had previously enjoyed popularity and some financial success with Ernest Tubbs’ country band. Travelling on the road had put a major strain on Jernigan’s relationship with his partner, so they took the plunge and moved east from Nashville to Charlotte to start anew—with plans to build a studio. Reflection Sound Studios would open in 1969, though Jernigan initially struggled to get the project off the ground. Studio session bookings for artists and bands were slow to come. Record commercials, jingles and film soundtrack production work were welcome sources of revenue at least until business picked up.

Paul’s Lounge was a convenient hotspot on the same street as the studio that featured several local and national acts. Owner Paul Scoggins to join forces with Wayne as a silent partner with Jernigan’s production company. Ultimately the studio didn’t save Wayne’s marriage, but the facility would enjoy over 40 years of steady recording success via R&B and pop artists such as James Brown, Whitney Houston and Kenny Loggins.

In the very early 1970s, Wayne Jernigan would perform multiple roles at the studio including management, production and as session musician, but realised a team of similarly talented individuals was needed for the studio to function effectively. With that, Roger and Mike Branch (co-founders of The Tempests) came on board as sessions musicians and to learn some production skills along with Don Strawn, a sound engineer formerly based at Arthur Smiths’ studio, also in Charlotte.

IN SESSION

The late Steve Calfee, guitarist, singer and songwriter with the band Lost Soul remembered his time at Reflection Sound:

“About 1972 I was performing in a band that was supposed to become the back-up guys for what eventually became The Intruders, the R&B group (that bit didn’t work out unfortunately). We went to Reflection Sound to cut some tracks for a demo, and to add others for a guy called Ronnie Arthurs, who performed and recorded as King Arthur. He was repairing an old boat behind the studio for Paul Scoggins during down-time to pay for the sessions. Wayne Jernigan was our engineer. Roger Branch was in and out at various points. I remember the studio was located right out on the highway at the time. As you walked in the front door there was a hallway, a waiting area with some couches and a chair or two. The control room was about 10 by 20 feet and looked out on the studio floor. Across the south end there was a raised stage area along the wall and the main studio floor, with baffles for sound isolation.”

The Cannonball song “You Keep Telling Me Yes” which enjoyed some popularity on both the beach music and the early northern soul scene in the UK was recorded at Reflection Sound Studios. Songwriter and Cannonball member Joe Crayton Clinard Jr. recalls:

“Roger Branch was always around the studio. We recorded three tracks there as Cannonball. I think he may have been working the board with Wayne Jernigan on “No Good To Cry”, “Sunny Day Today” and “You Keep Telling Me Yes”, though that one was recorded at a separate session. Everything thing was quick in and out in those days to save money. Studio time was expensive!”

As a youngster Jeff Ayres was learning on the job with Roger Branch: “I recorded at Reflection Sound in ‘74 with Roger. I was probably 20 years old at the time and knew very little about the professional recording process. The thing that sticks in my mind the most was that vintage 414 microphone (well, at least vintage now)—that mic sounded great. I also remember sleeping under the console while Roger was mixing one of our tunes at four o’clock in the morning. Does it really take that long? As I found out in later years …it really does take that long!”

SEHORN AND TOUSSAINT

Frequent vistors in the early to mid 1970s were Marshall Sehorn and business partner Allen Toussaint. Roger Branch was already acquainted through an introduction some years earlier by a label representative during promotion of The Tempests recordings.

Sehorn and Toussaint wanted to use Reflection Sound as an interim recording facility for a number of artists and to edit pre-recorded material whilst waiting to finance their new Sea-Saint Studios project in New Orleans. Ron Henderson and Choice of Colour, Wilbert Harrison, Eldridge Holmes and Aaron Neville were among those the rostered for recording sessions. The Choice of Colour song “Your Love” co-written and produced by Roger Branch at the studio, would be rediscovered decades later on the soul scene in the UK and Europe. The group’s lead singer, former Orioles / Spaniels member Ron Henderson, would also be employed as backing singer and writer for other artists.

Artists from neighbouring states were also tempted to utilise the facilities. Arthur Freeman was one example, originally recording “Played Out Playgirl” years earlier on the custom label Regal in Florida. Freeman would re-record it with better quality production at Reflection Sound. Jernigan was in the habit of shopping demos around of their in-house productions to other labels, but for this recording struggled to find an interested label. Reportedly a desperate result of a financial deal with a local adult movie cinema owner, the 45 appeared first in 1971 on the ultra-rare Asta Arts imprint, then received a much wider distribution shortly after via the long running Nashville label Excello.

Local black singers were represented at the studio by Louis King, who previously appeared as King Louie with the Court Jesters on ‘Doc’ Johnson’s Wilmington Mockingbird label. King had most likely been brought to Reflection Sound by Scroggins due to his appearances as a popular act at Paul’s Lounge.

THE BACKYARD HEAVIES, POP AND COMMERCIAL SUCCESS

What was effectively the Reflection Sound house rhythm section adopted the name of Backyard Heavies, for ensuing Scepter releases in 1971 and 1972. Consisting of Roger (guitar), Mike (keyboards), Stan Cecil (keyboards), Mike Russell (bass) and Paul “Mickey” Walker (drums), the band recorded the competent funk instrumentals “Soul Junction” / “Expo 83”, and “Chitlin’ Strut” / “Humpin’ ”. One final recording, “Just Keep On Truckin’ ” was released on Hot Line, a subsidiary of the Cutlass label and essentially a Branch-Sehorn collaboration. None of the 45s achieved any particular success. However latter-day hip-hop producer Pete Rock and artist Kanye West would acknowledge the Backyard Heavies through sampling elements of Expo 83 in their respective works.

Inevitably, after the mid 1970s, the nature of work at Reflection Sound would change. It was now southern rock and mainstream pop which would guarantee its future. One of the studio’s biggest commercial associations occured in the next decade, when Georgia college band R.E.M. worked on their Murmur and Reckoning LP projects: shooting them to global fame. By that point the studio had long since been upgraded to new premises on Central Avenue. That’s a whole other story.

This article is an excerpt from the book The Tempests: A Carolina Soul Story by E. Mark Windle.