Vinyl Knights - The Following Is - By Kenneth Howard Smith

 THE FOLLOWING IS…

By Kenneth Howard Smith

By the end of 1977, I had asked Motown for my release. A year passed without a word—no call, no letter, nothing. Then one morning, the envelope arrived. Inside were the release documents, official and final. It was freedom wrapped in paper.

Lee Rogers wasn’t as lucky. Motown extended his contract another two years, but they refused to record him. It was like they wanted to own his silence. Meanwhile, R.G. Ingersoll was still in the Motown family, pushing a young singer named Jill Michaels—an ambitious voice who often helped us with demos. Jill could sing the paint off the walls, and she knew it.

R.G. owed Motown a few more records, so he called Lee into the studio now and then. One session produced a firecracker of a song called “Second Thoughts,” written by Rogers and Ingersoll. Every station that spun it got flooded with calls—it was that good. But when Motown brass discovered Lee Rogers was the artist, interest evaporated overnight. Politics trumped talent again.

By then, I was running Platinum Sound Productions, freshly relocated to downtown Los Angeles. The rent was cheap, and we were free from Motown’s shadow. When Gwen Gordy refused to pick up “Second Thoughts,” R.G. came to me. It was early 1979. Lee’s contract was set to expire in May, and I wanted him to step into the light the moment the clock struck midnight. We pressed 5,000 copies and shipped them to Europe. Radio jumped all over it. We’d proven again that our music had substance—soul with truth behind it.

Motown, still holding the publishing rights, refused to back us. Without their support, the sales fell short. But even then, hope flickered. Visiting Lee in the hospital, as his health worsened, we made a pact—to bring D-Town Records back from the ashes. Those old 45s were still alive in the collectors’ market, fetching $35 a copy. It was time to reclaim our history.

By November 1980, Billboard announced that D-Town Records had officially been reactivated under Platinum Sound. Piracy stopped. We were legitimate again.

Our first new release in fifteen years was “Rocking Skates” backed with “It Must Be Love.” It felt good to hold that vinyl in my hands. Yet radio politics hadn’t changed much—stations refused to play it unless we “paid to get played.” Some European writers even criticized me for drifting from Mike Hanks’ original blues formula. But D-Town was evolving. We were chasing a broader sound—bigger dreams.

For five years, I fought to keep the label alive. We bounced from MCA to Columbia distribution, facing walls at every turn. By 1984, I packed up and moved north to Seattle for a fresh start.

That’s where fate played another song. At a New Year’s Eve concert downtown, I met Bill Miller, the sound engineer for the night’s headliner—Bernadette Bascom. I knew her from her Wonderlove days with Stevie Wonder, where she’d stepped into Deniece Williams’ spot. Bill turned out to be the man behind the Commodores’ hit “I Feel Sanctified.” Funny how life circles back.

Bill told me about Wild Cherry, that white funk band from Cleveland who put “I Feel Sanctified” on the flip side of “Play That Funky Music.” Six million records sold—yet the industry still found ways to overlook the real architects of sound.

Bernadette, meanwhile, had fallen in love with Seattle while touring with People’s Choice—the “Do It Anyway You Wanna” group. She stayed, started recording with Thom Bell, and even did a duet with Elton John on The Thom Bell Sessions. When Stevie Wonder dropped by Seattle and jammed with her live, the city embraced her as their own.

Bill, running his Pac-West label, had already scored with a rock band called Lady. When he met Bernadette, he told her he had a song written just for her—“Seattle Sunshine.” It became the city’s unofficial anthem and even earned adoption by the City Council. The two married soon after, welcoming their daughter, Chokise, the “real rock and roll baby.”

Starting from scratch again, Bill and I built PA systems on his back porch. We printed T-shirts, shot promo photos, and wrote songs. We hired a local group, The Reputations, seasoned bar players who just needed a reason to believe again. Bernadette’s comeback shows packed out Parker Center—lines wrapped around the block in the rain. Her single “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” was already gaining traction from Portland to Canada.

We hustled nonstop—booking Good Morning Seattle, releasing a new single every two months, and watching Bernadette’s career soar. Within days of her TV appearance, she was booked solid for the summer, touring with Loverboy, ZZ Top, Ray Charles, Oingo Boingo, and Johnny Winter.

Then came Oliver Cheatham—Bill’s cousin—whose MCA hit “Get Down, It’s Saturday Night” we helped push into the Pacific Northwest top three. But tragedy struck when Al Perkins, Oliver’s manager, was killed. The deal died with him.

By late 1984, I returned to Hollywood and bought a recording studio. D-Town was calling again. Fate introduced me once more to Merrell Fankhauser, who’d been living in Maui. Two German producers had tracked him down to reissue his old music, but he was short a few songs to complete a new album. I offered studio time if he’d let D-Town release it.

That record became “Doctor Fankhauser,” featuring John Cipollina and Jim Murray of Quicksilver Messenger Service. It exploded—#1 on fifty radio stations, over half a million sales, with deals across PolyGram, Virgin, EMI, and Line Records. D-Town had reinvented itself, no longer just a “Black label,” but an artist’s label.

By the late 1980s, after years of pushing every boundary, I put D-Town in mothballs and moved to Denver. Merrell had written a song for me called “Don’t Give Up the Rock,” and maybe that was the point—to rest, not quit.

In 1993, gray creeping in, I started recording again in my condo basement. My wife wasn’t thrilled—music had a way of consuming everything. When my ex-wife Irene found old Purple Olive photos in her Tucson garage, it sparked something. I called Rick, an old bandmate, and we decided to cut a tribute album. The basement gear was old but had history—Toto’s “Africa” and “Rosanna” had both passed through its circuits.

We named the album “Garage Noise.” It fit. Raw, alive, real.

D-Town closed its decade with five singles on Billboard’s Record Picks, outperforming the majors. We had done it—again.

But the music world was shifting. The internet arrived, and MP3s changed everything. Suddenly, artists didn’t need labels. The middlemen were gone. I started building websites, adapting, staying curious.

The Fankhauser-Cassidy Band’s “On The Blue Road” hit 450 radio stations across three continents. Even as numbers dipped, the music found its home.

In truth, D-Town was never just a record label. It was an idea—that artistry, heart, and resilience still mattered in an industry that often forgot both.

And as the years rolled on, even as trends changed and the airwaves filled with digital noise, one thing held true: D-Town Records would never die. It was born from struggle, revived through faith, and carried forward by love—for the music, for the people who made it, and for the dream that never stopped playing.