you never heard it?-you'd better ask somebody!


RAMP
SOUL SURVIVORS: RAMP (Originally published in World Famous Magazine, January, 2006)

By Austin "The Judge" Wheeler

If you've listened to music at some point in the last 15 years, chances are youve enjoyed the unforgettable sounds of a band called RAMP. From the buttery five-note guitar lick of A Tribe Called Quests "Bonita Applebaum" to their incredible version of "Everybody Loves the Sunshine", RAMP has made a major impact without anyone being the wiser.

As a long-forgotten Roy Ayers side project, RAMP has quietly become one of modern soul musics biggest mysteries. What does RAMP mean? How come their album is so damn hard to find? Where is their second album? How did it become so influential? But the questions dont stop there. "What caused you to have an interest in RAMP?" asks RAMP's bandleader. "Have they released it on CD, yet?" wonders Roy Ayers. "Have you found any of the others?" asks RAMP's guitarist.

Well, we have found the others, and for the first time ever, World Famous Magazine is proud to present the complete story of RAMP: Cincinnati's long-lost soul band.

It all began like most things, in high school. RAMP's future guitarist Landy Shores was a freshman at Hughes High, while RAMP's future drummer and bandleader, John Manuel was a sophomore at nearby Walnut Hills. The two eventually met through mutual friends and ended up forming a band in the spring of 1964. "We'd rehearse in the basement of my house on Kingsford Drive," laughs John Manuel, "and we called ourselves The Regals."

The Regals quickly became the talk of the Clifton/College Hill section of Cincinnati, winning a Battle of the Bands in 1969. "That was a big year for us," remembers John, "we won the Battle of the Bands. We won equipment, Fender amps, and a recording contract." The Regals used the recording contract to record an original song called "Hey There" and although it never received any airplay, the group soon got on the airwaves by recording jingles and commercials for local radio stations. Soon after, the band received its first big break. "A couple of the guys that played horns with us," explains Landy, "ended up playing with The Spinners. Then The Spinners lost their rhythm section, and so they called up our rhythm section to come play with them." The Regals had arrived!

"That was a really big deal," chuckles Landy, remembering the night that Billy Henderson of The Spinners came to his house. "Billy Spinner, he was a little short guy, he came to my house and taught us the show. Two days later were playing at the Milwaukee Fest!" John adds, "We rocked that set, man." But, besides backing up the wildly popular Spinners and fending off their adoring female fans, John remembers something else from that night: "Aretha was on that set. I remember that. Man, did she have a band! She had King Curtis and all those hot guys behind her, and Bernard "Pretty" Purdie was her drummer."

"Pretty" Purdie would have a lasting effect on drummer John Manuel's career. "I remember having to make a choice, because the Spinners wanted me to go to New York and study with Purdie. And they were going to pay for it! But my dad was pressuring me to go back to college. I had three years in, and he was pressuring me to finish my education. So I kind of leaned to my dad, and the rest is history."

John went back to the University of Cincinnati and graduated with degree in Criminal Justice, while Landy finished up his degree in Fine Arts & Graphic Design. The two graduates continued to play with The Spinners until Landy was drafted in 1972. John Manuel stayed on with The Spinners for three more years. As the Spinners popularity continued to grow, guitarist Landy Shores continued to serve his country. Drummer John Manuel watched Aretha Franklin bring The Spinners to Atlantic Records and producer Thom Bell, who, in turn, guided The Spinners to new heights with hit records like "I'll Be Around" and "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love." "Then it was set," he explains, "it was on a roll then." But John Manuel wasn't content. "I left at some point and went back to Cincinnati, and ultimately formed Ramp based on what I learned from them and that experience."

Back in Cincinnati, John put together a band he called Saturday Night Special. He was of course, the bandleader and drummer, Nate White was on the bass, and the two didnt have to wait long for their guitarist to show up. "I came back to Cincinnati from the service in 1975," remembers Landy Shores. "John had a band called Saturday Night Special, so I started playing with them." Saturday Night Special had its rhythm section, and now all that the group needed was some vocalists.

Enter Sibel Thrasher and Sharon Matthews. "Sibel and Sharon had been together doing things a long as Nate and Landy and I had been," explains John. "They had their package together. They had a nice sound and we liked it, and they were very familiar with each other so we decided to unite." Landy adds, "With those two females, we had more like a gospel-type or a unique sound. It was a different type of sound. More like a choir-type or spiritual-type of sound."

The group's spiritual-type of sound was definitely evident when Saturday Night Special launched into their signature version of "Sweet Thing" by Rufus & Chaka Khan. "Oh man, we tore that up!" boasts John Manuel, "Sibel and Sharon, they were awesome, man. Sharon has that little explosiveness in her voice, and Sibel had nice sound too, really light with a higher range. We did a lot of Stevie Wonder songs too," remembers John,
"I was kind of influencing the group to have a sound like Norman Conners. Like, "You Are My Starship." That type of vibe: Sophisticated music, kind of mellow, with a little jazz bottom but real smooth and slick, with a good beat to it, but very melodic."

Under the guidance of their old friend Billy Henderson of the Spinners, John and his new group perfected their sound. "Billy was always encouraging me when I was with Saturday Night Special," John remembers." But actions spoke louder than words. "When we were playing a gig in Detroit he spoke with Roy Ayers Billy told him to look out for me." Roy apparently remembered this conversation and, one night in 1976, remembers John, "Saturday Night Special opened up for Roy Ayers and he, of course, heard us." After their set, Roy excitedly approached the band. "They had a togetherness about them that just worked," Roy Ayers explains, "and when I talked to John Manuel and Nate and the rest of them, everybody was cool."

But a meet and greet was not all that Roy Ayers had in mind for the group. He had just been offered a deal with ABC Records. "The vice president of ABC contacted me about doing a record," Roy continues. "He really wanted me to come over to ABC, but I couldnt at that time because I was still with Polygram." So, Otis Smith, the vice president of ABC signed Roy Ayers the "unsigned" producer instead of Roy Ayers the "signed" artist. Now that ABC had Roy Ayers, all they needed was band for him to produce. "This guy told me to produce a band," Roy continues, "and I told him I already had a band." "Then Roy called me," remembers John Manuel, "and whisked me up to New York. Hell, I didnt even know what was going on it happened so fast," laughs John, "Roy picked my up in a limo, we drove to the studio, and it was Jimi Hendrix studio. He put some music on and told me to start playing."

By the winter of 1976, John and the group were putting the finishing touches on the album. "Being in the studio with RAMP was really a sheer delight," remembers Roy Ayers. "They were tight, they were good, they were young, and they were just very easy to work with in the studio." John Manuel remembers the joy of recording specific songs: "That song "Try, Try, Try". Man, that song was hot in the studio! I think Roy sped it up a tad and a put a certain horn arrangement on it. It had a nice feel to it, and "Come into Knowledge" always strikes me as such a spiritual song. I didn't realize the impact of it and what the real message was until much later."

But something was missing. The name of group didn't match its newfound positive message. "The group was originally called Saturday Night Special," explains Roy Ayers, "We changed the name because we wanted to call it RAMP, like going up a ramp, going forward, elevation. Saturday Night Special was like a gun or something to kill somebody!"

With its new name, and a debut LP on the way, RAMP hit the road. "We did a lot of touring with Roy," Landy remembers, "We played Detroit. Chicago. I think we even played New York." They still remember the Detroit gig. "We opened up for Roy in Detroit at a club called Mozambique," explains John, "and we rocked the place, man! We had Phillip Woo from Maze join us on keyboards. This was like summer of 1977." Upstate New York also got a taste of Ramp that summer. "I remember doing a gig in Rochester," laughs John, "where we opened up for Roy and we came out trying to get in the limousines and girls were mobbing us, and I said, "Oh my gosh. Look what we got into." Roy tried to tell us to come on and get in the car. We're standing there signing autographs, and Roys looking at us like, "Oh my gosh. I can't believe this. Get this car and lets go!""

The anticipation for RAMP's debut LP had reached a fever-pitch. "I think the trades were saying that we were mindful of a group called Undisputed Truth," John remembers. But ABC Records was about to shake things up internally. "About a month before it was time for the record to come out, the president and the vice president were both fired," explains Roy Ayers. "You get fired when you don't produce, when you don't make money. When you don't keep money coming in, the big boys look at the books and they'll say, "Hey man, he's not making money. Fuck him." And they'll fire you. So they fired both of them."

"The new president was somebody named Deana or something. Somebody named Steve Deana," explains Roy Ayers. "Anyway, I called him up to talk to him and he said "Well, Roy, were not putting to much into this record. It's a project that the label did previously, and I didnt really like it. No disrespect to you Mr. Ayers. And that was that. ABC released the record because they had a contract," Roy explains. "But they didn't do any promotion at all, and there was no further word from them to do anything else. The record never ever got any support from the record company. They didn't even get minimal airplay or anything. ABC used it as a tax write-off, but other than that, they did nothing!"

"I'll never forget that," John laments, "That was pretty sad. It was very disappointing. I continued to play around, but I didn't form another group after that." Roy remembers, "It was disappointing to me, and I'm sure John was bummed out about whats happened. I've been with several record companies myself and there's really nothing the artist can do, because we're at their disposal. They can do something, but if they don't, they don't." Roy Ayers never even saw the RAMP LP in stores, and it was all over but the goodbyes for the young soul group from Cincinnati. "I think we were gigging for maybe like a year and then everybody just got kind of burnt-out," remembers Landy Shores. "We all went our separate ways and did our own thing." And this is how the story of RAMP was supposed to end.

But it doesn't.

"In recent times, more people have started to listen to it," explains Roy Ayers. "I got an initial response from the DJs, but I got even more of a response from hip-hop artists." In 1989, A Tribe Called Quests brilliant love song "Bonita Applebaum" officially put Cincinnati's RAMP back on the map. Tribe's sampling of the song "Daylight" turned RAMP onto a whole new, younger generation of listeners. "It was weird when I first heard it," remembers guitarist Landy Shores, "I was like, Hmm, I think I should be getting paid for this! I didn't even know that A Tribe Called Quest [sampled] us until a friend of mine here at my church was telling me about it. He said, "Man, youre like an icon to guys my age, because when we first started listening to rap music, we were listening to that song!" (Landy proudly hums his five-note guitar loop from Bonita Applebaum)."

"It's always good to hear that someone appreciated what we were doing back then," smiles RAMP's bandleader, John Manuel, before adding: "Man, Landy could play a guitar!"

Roy Ayers' latest release, Mahogany Vibe, is in stores now. John Manuel is currently in Washington, D.C., where hes working as a Warden and an Auditor for the D.C. Department of Corrections. Landy Shores is in Los Angeles, where hes active in his church and still plays guitar in a talented group called Chickaboom. Singer Sharon Matthews and bassist Nate White are still in Cincinnati, where Nate still plays while working for Cincinnati Gas & Electric, and singer Sibel Thrasher is in Richmond, British Columbia where shes leading a gospel group, an R&B group, and a jazz quartet while also appearing in musicals like Aint Misbehavin & Little Shop of Horrors, in nearby Vancouver.



TRACK 1 - DAYLIGHT (listen)

TRACK 2 - EVERYBODY LOVES THE SUNSHINE (listen)









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Good read

Love love looooove the album.

Thanx alot for the article.

The ultimate chill-out Soul album! Just got it last week.