Gene Townsel: All Dreams Are Possible
The Phantom of ’70s Soul and Gospel Music
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
— King David from Psalm 23
“No hell below us, above us, only sky.”
— John Lennon from “Imagine”
The Daniel Websters of the music world; those unsung musical phantoms most music lovers — as in the case of the progressive-gospel artist Gene Townsel, and his South Florida hometown musical brethren, Ron Kenoly — have forgotten or never heard of, need the faith instilled through those above words of King David because the Devil resides in their “Georgias,” where the Great Deceiver stands in wait at the crossroads with a Faustian contract in hand, ready to take the novice balladeer on a journey through the valley of the shadow of death.
Say goodbye to that yellow brick road when those dogs of society howl because, in the music business: there is a hell below you — and above you. For the Fates need fresh, silken threads for their depleted spindles and your youthful-naïve thread spool is exactly what their evil wheel, needs.
“Welcome to the music business,” cackle Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, the three weaving witches of the looms of fate.
Regardless of what Tipper Gore’s now defunct, free-speech violating PMRC: Parents Music Resource Center “committee,” and the bevy of back masking-warning preachers told us: music is not evil. Sadly, music — even the Internet, anything and everything else in this world — in the sin-stained hands of man: rots into one bad apple.
However, when those harmonious fruits are picked by an individual of a pure heart with their spiritual hand, music: the universal communicator, expands our horizons: through musica universalis, aka music of the spheres, we achieve our destiny as a spiritually unbound creature, tethered not to this fleshpot cauldron we call Earth, but the heavens, above.
For above, in those mellifluous skies: music knows no race, no creed, nor color. There are no borders, no countries, or nationalities. With music: there is no war, nor hate. With music: man is united to experience the purest form of expression; the clearest, sharpest form of communication.
Our human trinity reigns luminous through music — all forms of music.
That’s why this writer has worked as a disc jockey on radio stations that formatted everything — from alternative rock to country, from nostalgia to oldies, from blues to gospel. For with music: I am free and I am in peace — regardless of the, sometimes oblivious, sometimes purposeful, psychic vampires who attempt to drain our auras and replace it with injections of their dirty, spiritual poisons.
Don’t believe the naysayers: You can beat those adorned in false armor and sin-tainted Teflon. Oh, yes: you can beat the Devil.
The Spirit of the Radio
It was during my blessed and joyous years of working with the black gospel format — in spite of the evil within its audio-modulated valley — in the mid-2000s that I had the distinct pleasure of not only meeting, but to spin and talk up the music of an old analog friend: ’70s soul singer Gene Townsel. For me: he’s the greatest “progressive” — yes, as in “progressive rock” — progressive gospel music artist of all time.
Yes, me, R.D Francis: I got to play two of my favorite artists, Gene Townsel and Ron Kenoly on the radio . . . and got paid (meagerly) for it — with the worst side salads of professional jealously and hate ever experienced in the radio business: “Who ever heard of a white boy on a black radio station,” thou doth protested. The irony: on a Christian radio station.
Sorry, Devil. Even in adversity: that’s still called “heaven.” So, get off of my cloud, ‘ol Scratch, and let me spin my Ron Kenoly tunes.
Now, let’s back to Gene Townsel.
It was in the mid-’80s, amid the dusty-musty racks of my local, used record emporium (a “vintage vinyl outlet” to us record geeks who worked there, where we sold “imports” not “bootlegs”) when I first met Gene Townsel: his soul-stirring resonance emanating from the store’s sound system.
Songs come and go. Some you spin incessantly; others fade away in the static to never be heard again. But every now and then you hear a tune that cuts you to the bone. That first time I heard Gene Townsel sing what I came to know as “Color Me Black” didn’t just cut me deep down to the bone — it cut my soul in half.
At the time, this wee vinyl pup couldn’t get enough of Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Lou Rawls, and Bill Withers; I had just recently discovered Johnny Taylor and the Soul Stirrers — and this Gene Townsel tune was right in my “vinyl pocket.” And my dad loved Johnny Mathis and Billy Paul, (and Leon Redbone), so I was familiar with Mr. Mathis from years of his voice oozing from the crushed red velvet, faux-wrought iron-accented speakers of the family’s Spanish furniture-styled stereo unit. (Yes, I would sneak my dad’s Redd Foxx 8-Track tapes from time to time; Fred Sanford from TV did “dirty comedy” for adults? Then Ian exposed me to Billy Connolly: “Redd Foxx? Piffle. Listen to this.”)
“Wow, who is that? Is that Johnny Mathis? I asked the recently American-transplanted, British-accented black store clerk minding the vinyl repository.
“Mathis? Please. Not on Mathis’s best day,” scoffed Ian.
Ian proceeded to tell me that, back in London at the store he worked at, he’d stockpile vinyl-recorded cassette copies of the album and couldn’t keep them on the shelf. Taping it was the only way anyone could get a copy because the album was out-of-print and extremely hard to find.
Now, as I reminisce about that day with Ian: I write this article on Gene Townsel — amazed.
In the pages of Tales from a Wizard: The Oral History of Walpurgis, I discussed an analogous, Italian-based story regarding the tape transferring of the then rare and out-of-print Phantom’s Divine Comedy album (originally issued in the summer of 1974 by Capitol Records) to Detroit musician Arthur Pendragon’s European fans in the late 1980s.
History repeats: thus weaves the Fates’ spinning wheel.
So, I plopped down $7.95 and joyously stirred browsing-dust from the store’s racks as Ian popped in two tapes into the dual-cassette deck and cued Time Wounds All Heels by Gene Townsel — and “Time Wounds All Heels,” the 9-minute title-cut “progressive gospel” epic from Side 1, Track 1 sent an anointed broadsword through me that sliced my soul into fourths, then sixteenths.
Oh, and if Gene Townsel wasn’t enough: As a soul chaser: Ian slips me a copy of an album by a group on A&M Records known as L.A.X led by Ron Kenoly: another secular artist gone gospel. Years later: there’s Ron Kenoly’s and Gene Townsel’s compact discs in my then station’s music library. And I learn the gospel duo are longtime, good friends. It really is a small world, Uncle Walt.
As I write this chronicle on Gene Townsel, the album’s .mp3 version oozes from my laptop’s speakers; I’ve clicked and dragged the files into my i-Pod for tomorrow’s morning walk and automotive-based errands.
Gene, it is good to see you again, my analog friend. As well as you, Ron.
(Grand) Son of a Preacher Man
Gene Townsel, the grandson of a Baptist preacher, earned a degree in choral music at Florida A & M University and spent most of his life performing in churches and teaching music. That life began in Jacksonville, a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. (Yes, the infamous Limp Bizkit hails from there, as do alt-rockers Shinedown and punk-popers Yellowcard; for your classic rockers: the Allman Bros., Blackfoot, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, and .38 Special.) Townsel was raised in Deerfield Beach, a city in Northern Broward County in South Florida, and graduated from Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach, Florida.
Moving into secular music, by 1963, Townsel quickly found work as a studio musician singing back up for numerous R&B, soul, pop, and country artists such as Ray Charles, Dusty Springfield, and Lou Rawls; he also opened tours for Rawls, as well as such like-minded artists as Sammy Davis., Jr. and Barry White. He — as did Ron Kenoly, who he hadn’t met yet — released a couple 45-rpm 7" soul singles along the way.
Those secular recording industry connections led to Townsel cutting his debut solo album, Time Wounds All Heels, in 1975 — an album revered as a rare collector’s item among soul (even gospel) aficionados throughout Europe, Asia, the United Kingdom, and the Pacific Rim; the album is considered an essential, classic album to be placed alongside side the works of Bobby “Blue” Bland, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Johnny Mathis, Curtis Mayfield, Lou Rawls, and Bill Withers — all who, in addition to cutting secular tunes, also recorded soul-inflected inspirational and gospel tunes to uplift the soul and spirit.
Yes. Gene Townsel is one of the greats of gospel and soul. Period. No question marks, required.
After leaving the dreams of a secular solo career behind, Townsel ran a successful rehearsal studio in Los Angeles for twenty years, which he used as a scholastic base to hold vocal and composition workshops across the United States. Returning to his Florida hometown in the late ’90s, Townsel opened a successful company that provides church supplies for worship centers across the United States. He also founded his own internationally-respected preaching ministry, along with an associated music ministry in which he performs in music outreach programs and teaches voice and music composition.
In spite of the music industry’s Fates: Gene Townsel acquired international recognition as a vocal performer of note through performances on Caribbean stages in Acapulco and Aruba, in Central and South America in Buenos Aires and Curacao, along with the Pacific Rim cities of Bangkok, Singapore, and Tokyo. His long-awaited sophomore effort, the 1984 gospel-influenced album, The 23rd Psalm, featured the highly-acclaimed title cut that received a 6,000-strong standing ovation at the 1984 National Baptist Convention in Los Angeles. Townsel then moved into theatre production, where he wrote, produced, directed, and orchestrated the inspiration musical, The Tie That Binds.
The Phantom of Soul Music: In ‘Togetherness’ We Stand, United We Rise
The only extensive music industry publication-interview regarding Gene Townsel’s early ’70s journey through the secular soul and R&B scene was overseen by publisher and editor Kev Roberts in the pages of the now defunct, United Kingdom-based soul music collector’s magazine, Togetherness, which began publication in 1998 and succumbed to the Internet affecting the circulation of hard copy music publications, ceasing publication in the early 2000s.
As result of the magazine’s out-of-print status and vintage copies not readily found — and no online digital scans available — it was believed the early-2000s article, written by Colin Dilnot, was lost.
Once again the soul-stripping Internet proves this writer wrong: it has a soul.
Well, it took some time . . . but in the farthest corners of the digital dimension, the article — the entire magazine — survived in the online marketplace. Being a huge Gene Townsel fan, and it being his only (that I know of) interview: it was worth every penny to order and ship.
In the interest of the article being enjoyed once again, hopefully making you, the reader, a new Gene Townsel fan: I’ve transcribed the interview, in full. This Togetherness interview is too important an article to not make the effort. A spiritual movement makes you do wild and wonderful things.
The Togetherness Interview
— by Colin Dilnot
During the early ’70s, Townsel had been accumulating songs, which became the basis for the Time Wounds All Heels album. He recorded the album in 1975 at Ray Charles’s Tangerine Studios and mixed the album at Sun West Studios. He used David Braithwaite, the regular RPM engineer, because Gene respected his expertise from working with him in the past. Gene produced the album himself and hired the musicians through his extensive contacts over the years. One of the rhythm-section players was Raymond Pounds (interview), Stevie Wonder’s drummer, and Gene used his own regular guitar player, Mark Silverman.
I asked Gene why the album was not released in 1975:
“We kept finding that we were running into walls,” said Gene. “It was a dog-eat-dog kinda business. We had all kinds of propositions, ‘. . . we’ll hook you up but we have to have all the publishing,’ but we, the band, were not interested in that.”
The years drifted by and the album remained in the can — but in 1978, things were about to get worse. Gene heard from a jazz drummer friend, Roy Porter, about a company called Dobre that took [the rights to] the recording project. Unknown to Gene, Dobre was a tax shelter for a “mysterious company” called Expression Sound, Inc.
[Note: Record producer Ray Lawrence incorporated the jazz label, Dobre Records, sometime in the late 1970, long after the recording of Gene Townsel’s debut album; as result, some vinyl databases incorrectly list Ray Lawrence as the “producer” of the album. He has a Wikipedia entry to learn more about his career. — R.D Francis]
“They didn’t want the project to be successful, but [the album] started making a lot of noise in L.A and I think it scared them to death because they wanted to lose money, not make it,” said Gene.
At the time of the album’s release (in 1978), Gene was already working out of Mexico [as a live performer in resorts].
“The most frustrating thing that I can remember was being in Acapulco for six to eight weeks and I was doing quite well and, you know, I needed product [to sell] and I was calling back to L.A, ‘. . . look, can you ship stuff because people want to buy the album . . . and, you know, I never got a record, either.’ They kept giving me all kinds of stories about ‘back orders’ and this and that and that was my first real revelation about what was going on. So I went back [to L.A] and found out. So, if you wondered why the album is rare — it’s because very few copies were pressed because, again, it was not supposed ‘to sell’ in the first place.”
To this day, according to Gene, he still doesn’t have an original vinyl copy, though he still has the master tapes. Strangely enough, Dobre did release “I’m Walking Away” b/w “There’s No Use Hiding” as a 7” 45-rpm. The releases were actually chosen by Gene [as the promotional single] and he stated he’s proud that his two “picks” are the two tracks that have been played on the [European] rare soul scene over the years.
Gene was also able to clear up the confusion over where the album jacket indicates: “Gold Star,” when this is definitely incorrect and should read “Tangerine.” Gene had supplied the tapes to Dobre; he thinks they may have pressed the album at Gold Star — and that led to the mislabeling on the album.
Gene talked me through the songs from the album:
“Time Wounds All Heels” was written in the early 1970s using lyrics written by Ruth Heyman. Townsel was going through a divorce in 1971 and the lyrics fitted with what was happening in his life at that time and he said the song, “If You Were Really My Woman,” spoke for itself. Gene told me that he got the idea for the song “Chrissy” from a woman who used come to his shows in Southgate [England] who he became pretty good friends with; she lost her daughter who was only 4 or 5 years old when she died and she was always torn by [that loss].
“She was a really great fan and I told her that, one day, ‘I would sit down and try to write the things you have laid on me about the way you feel and I’m gonna try and put those feelings in a song one day,’” said Gene.
Gene went on to say that the song “I’m Walking Away” was kind of interesting in that he was dating a girl and it was one of those “kinda of things where you know the girl is kinda ‘dogging you out.’”
“She wasn’t exactly doin’ me right, okay? So I was telling her one day, you know you are really cold blooded, and she said, ‘If you did to me what you say I’m doing to you, I would have walked away from you a long time ago.’ I said, ‘you know what, you’re right.’ And on the way home that ‘hook’ stayed in my head and that night I wrote the song. It is a dance-floor classic with great drumming from Raymond Pounds, nagging guitar from Mark Silverman — and one of the main reasons for the demand of the album.”
Gene also included two Bill Withers — known for the soul classics “Lean on Me” and “Grandma’s Hands” — tunes on the album: “Hope She’ll Be Happier” and “I’m Her Daddy.”
“I always loved Bill Withers’ [sic] songs,” says Gene, “because they went straight to the point and there was nothing pretentious about them and I love his tone. He did some good stuff.”
Gene was persuaded to do “Color Me Black” because Vic Werner — one of Gene’s first managers — wrote the lyrics. According to Gene, [Vic] was a “frustrated songwriter.” Gene felt it was appropriate to include the 1965 song “Impossible Dream” (by Joe Darion-Mitch Leigh from the theatre production Man of La Mancha) because, philosophically, Gene felt he was always “fighting against the odds” — though he didn’t use [the song] in the stage show because the gospel arrangement he gave it didn’t fit the show’s club set list.
“There’s No Use Hiding” came to Townsel because of his experiences with relationships and he felt people are not transparent enough because they just hide from each other and the song was his attempt to reflect that [deception]. “Hiding” is another great highlight of the album with its string arrangements written by Gene, using musicians he personally contracted for the session.
Gene also used several good friends on the background vocals: Brenda Redmon, who was a soloist at Lewis Metropolitan CME Church in Los Angeles, where Gene was the Music Director; Blondell Jones was a close friend from Florida who Gene had known from his college days [at Florida A & M]; and the late Peter Bryant, who Gene said had a “fabulous voice.” The final singer was Clydene Jackson, also an accompanist for the Lewis Choir. Gene and Clydene were very good friends and Gene says, “we had a fabulous sound because our voices just loved each other and we had a great blend . . . but between our two ambitions, we didn’t really do much together.” Clydene’s voice can also be heard on “Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast.”
After the disappointment of the album he worked so hard on, Gene became disenchanted [with recording] and focused his career on live performances — shows which continued to take him all over the world. All through the 1980s Townsel toured and only gave it up when performing live was no longer emotionally fulfilling. He started to look for something more spiritually fulfilling and, influenced by [fellow Floridian] Ron Kenoly’s gospel performances, Gene turned to gospel music full-time. While still on the road, Gene wrote a piece based on Psalm 23, which got played by various choirs around the USA — and the success of the song led him into the gospel arena.
— Colin Dilnot, Togetherness Magazine
“You may say I’m a dreamer. But I am not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
— John Lennon, “Imagine”
Yes, all dreams are possible — through music.
When it comes to dreams: we may not get everything we want, but we get everything we need. And sometimes we end up where we didn’t want to be, but it’s exactly where we need to be. Those silken threads twisted on wooden looms of fate are funny that way.
Yes, sometimes: evil prevails. And you have to just walk away into the valley of light — so you can get where you really need to be.
So spins the Fates of Soul (and Rock ’n’ Roll) and life, in general.
Yeah, don’t worry. You got this.
END
Gene Townsel’s long out-of-print, sophomore concept album based on “Psalm 23” with the Choral Connection, released in 1985. Images: Discogs.
There’s no commercial streams of the album currently available in its entirety.
So, we offer the album’s epic, “progressive-gospel” opening title cut, “The 23rd Psalm,” as part of the below, You Tube playlist.
You Tube-curated playlist by R.D Francis spotlighting the early ’70s soul/R&B singles discographies of Gene Townsel and Ron Kenoly.
In addition to his solo singles, “Moving On” b/w “The Glory of Your Love,” as well as “Take It Easy” b/w “You’re Still Blowing My Mind,” this playlist includes the full singles discographies of Ron Kenoly’s groups Ron and Candy, LAX, Ron and Ladys, and a hint of his extensive gospel works.
Also included are the full, track-by-track albums “Time Wounds All Heels” by Gene Townsel, and the self-titled debut by LAX.
Unlike Gene Townsel: Ron Kenoly has a Wikipedia page to learn more about his extensive career.
CME 9th Episcopal District National Workshop on “Church Music Choir with Orchestra” conducted by Gene Townsel at USC Bovard Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, courtesy of Mr. Gene Townsel/Vimeo.
