{"id":483881,"date":"2019-03-26T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T14:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=812739"},"modified":"2019-03-26T08:00:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T14:00:16","slug":"how-a-college-music-department-helped-unearth-a-long-lost-philly-funk-soul-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/how-a-college-music-department-helped-unearth-a-long-lost-philly-funk-soul-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"How a College Music Department Helped Unearth a Long-Lost Philly Funk-Soul Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Joseph Jefferson penned a string of hits for the Spinners<\/a> in the early Seventies, he and his band the Nat Turner Rebellion \u2013 named after the 1831 slave revolt \u2013 entered Philadelphia\u2019s famed Sigma Sound Studios and, over the course of a few years, laid down more than a dozen of searing funk-soul songs that were emblematic of the sound piping out of the City of Brotherly Love at the time.<\/p>\n

A handful of the tracks were released as long-forgotten singles in the early Seventies, but the group disbanded before ever releasing a debut album. For the most part, the Nat Turner Rebellion\u2019s recordings remained untouched for nearly 50 years. Until now.<\/p>\n

This week, Drexel University\u2019s Music Industry program and music subscription service Vinyl Me, Please<\/a> will jointly release Laugh to Keep From Crying<\/em>, a collection of Jefferson\u2019s work with the Nat Turner Rebellion.<\/p>\n

The release of Laugh to Keep From Crying<\/em> is the culmination of years of work for Toby Seay, the Project Director of the Drexel University Audio Archives, and Marc Offenbach, a marketing vet at Columbia and Universal Records who is now a faculty professor at the Philadelphia university. After receiving the Sigma Sound Studios\u2019 extensive 7,000-tape collection as a donation, the duo endeavored to release something from Philly\u2019s vibrant musical history through the university\u2019s in-house MAD Dragon Records<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was basically a donation, the tapes that were left over when the studio closed,\u201d Seay tells Rolling Stone<\/em> of the Sigma Sound collection. \u201cIt came unorganized, uncatalogued, kind of a mess. In the early days of putting together this catalog, one of the earlier tapes that just popped out to me was the Nat Turner Rebellion tape. The name just jumped out at me: Knowing about the slave revolt in 1831, and here\u2019s a tape of a band that named itself after that, it was very intriguing. So I played that one immediately [and] fell in love with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After discovering that initial tape, which contained the tracks \u201cTribute to a Slave\u201d and \u201cPlastic People,\u201d Seay plunged into the Sigma Sound collection and emerged with the group\u2019s entire output: 14 recordings the band laid down between 1969 and 1972.<\/p>\n

Laugh to Keep From Crying<\/em>, released with Jefferson\u2019s approval, features 14 tracks, including the band\u2019s three seven-inch singles \u2013 commercially unsuccessful but cherished by record collectors \u2013 as well as unreleased tracks recorded and earmarked for the Nat Turner Rebellion\u2019s never-released debut album.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoseph Jefferson\u2019s telling of the story is basically the band and the record label didn\u2019t see eye-to-eye,\u201d Seay said of the Nat Turner Rebellion\u2019s relationship with Thom Bell\u2019s Philly Groove Records, which wanted Jefferson\u2019s group to sound more like the label\u2019s marquee act the Delfonics<\/a>. While Jefferson would temper the Nat Turner Rebellion\u2019s sound to more resemble the Delfonics, the band still tackled more serious subject matter than its labelmates. \u201cIt was kind of a push-and-pull with the record label,\u201d Seay added. (Jefferson declined to be interviewed for this article.)<\/p>\n

However, when the Nat Turner Rebellion finally had enough tracks in the can to release a debut LP after three years of recording, the group splintered for good: Jefferson became a songwriter for acts like the Spinners, Patti LaBelle and the Third Degrees, while his brother and bandmate Major Harris joined the Delfonics and embarked on a solo career. Harris died in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Neither artist revisited the Nat Turner Rebellion tapes, which remained untouched \u2013 and, thankfully, well-preserved \u2013 for nearly 50 years later until they were unearthed from the Sigma Sound collection. \u201cIn retrospect, you look back at this stuff and it does go together, it all tells a very Philly, very American story,\u201d Seay said.<\/p>\n

With the Nat Turner Rebellion rediscovered, the next step in the process was bringing the songs to the public. \u201cWe have our own independent record label at Drexel University [called] MAD Dragon Records,\u201d Offenbach told Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cI kept asking Toby, \u2018Is there something cool and unreleased we could put out, get all the students involved and make it an academic piece, plus put out some great music?’\u201d It was the perfect project for the Drexel students learning the ins-and-outs of the music industry.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were really feeling like it should be a vinyl<\/a> release, that is where it should live, but we\u2019re an independent label out of a university. We don\u2019t have the funds to start pressing vinyl,\u201d Offenbach says. \u201cOn the business and marketing side, I got the students involved and we contacted Vinyl Me, Please. Once Toby assembled the music, I sent it to them, thinking they would flip out, and they did flip out \u2026 It was kind of kismet for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students then teamed with Vinyl Me, Please to work everything from the marketing plan to the release\u2019s artwork. Offenbach even recruited Drexel students to track down rights holders and publishers to get mechanical licenses for the songs on the album.<\/p>\n

Vinyl Me, Please will begin offering Laugh to Keep From Crying<\/em> through their vinyl subscription service<\/a> beginning March 28th, with the 12-track LP accompanied by a seven-inch single boasting two additional tracks, \u201cRight On We\u2019re Back\u201d and \u201cRuby Lee.\u201d MAD Dragon Records will handle the digital release of the Nat Turner Rebellion tracks on streaming services beginning March 29th.<\/p>\n

Drexel University will also hold a public event on May 1st to celebrate the Nat Turner Rebellion and the Sigma Sound collection.<\/p>\n

While Laugh to Keep From Crying<\/em> marks MAD Dragon\u2019s first archival release, the label is hopeful to excavate more forgotten and unheard classics from the Sigma Sound collection; however, due to rights issues, releases for many of the collection\u2019s higher profile recordings \u2013 like the rumored Young Americans<\/em> outtakes from David Bowie\u2019s sessions at the Philadelphia studio \u2013 will remain in the archives.<\/p>\n

Regardless of future releases, Offenbach says the students\u2019 involvement has been worth the effort. \u201cIt\u2019s been a great exercise,\u201d he says of the album. \u201c[My students and I] talk about it in our publishing class; we have copyright classes. So on the academic side, it\u2019s really incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before Joseph Jefferson penned a string of hits for the Spinners in the early Seventies, he and his band the Nat Turner Rebellion \u2013 named after the 1831 slave revolt \u2013 entered Philadelphia\u2019s famed Sigma Sound Studios and, over the course of a few years, laid down more than a dozen of searing funk-soul songs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-483881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 01:22:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}