The Chants:The first and finest black vocal band to emerge during the sixty's Merseybeat era, opened the doors that paved the way for later bands such as The Real Thing

The Chants were different from the rest of the beat groups in that they were a black vocal group who had a style which owed much to American groups of the Fifties such as The Ravens and The Flamingos. They were formed in Liverpool in 1962 and originally called themselves the Shades.

Late in 1962 they turned up at the Cavern club for an audition but didn't have a backing group, the Beatles offered to provide backing for them, but Brian Epstein objected. John Lennon overruled him and the Chants made their Cavern dubut in November 1962 with the Beatles providing their backing

http://uk.youtube.com/wat..._Af1XAeJyA

THE CHANTS AND THE VALENTINOS

Joe Ankrah and his brother Eddie formed the Chants, previously the Shades, with Nat Smeda, Alan Harding and Eddie Amoo. Their history has always centred on the involvement of Brain Epstein and the fact that the Beatles backed them at the Cavern. But they deserve better than just being tagged as some kind of peripheral musicians. They were good. In fact very good. Yes they were around in the Mersey Beat era but were not part of it. As the early photo of the Earls at the Rialto shows, these boys were genuine Rhythm and Blues artists. Their stance and the pose they strike is one of the Black aesthetic of the time. You can imagine them either breaking into Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl" and/or the Temptations "Ain't Too Proud to Beg".

The Valentinos c1965. Left to right, Lawrence Areety, Tony Fayal, Eddie Williams and Sugar Dean.

The argument that the UK was not ready for them etc does not stand up to scrutiny. The real reasons why Derry Wilkie, the Chants, the Valentinos, Steve Aldo et al did not gain far greater reward that their talents merited was simply because their style and aesthetic ran contrary to the music business and the musical forms of the day. We had local talent who themselves were fusing gospel, acapella, and producing driving R'n'B when the overall musical culture of the UK was narrow and insular. This was one of the results of the musicians' union ban and what was discussed earlier. Add to this the heavily controlled airwaves and the minute allowance made for music that was outside the normal boundaries of that which was deemed to be popular tastes of the day. So even on Merseyside, local clubs were mainly Folk/Trad Jazz based. The Dixieland tradition stretching back to the 1920s was based on a white interpretation of the music. But as Ella used to sing, "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing." Musical tastes of black kids from Liverpool, which stretched back to the Harlem Renaissance and beyond, would therefore have been in direct contradiction to the Folk/Trad Jazz tradition.

The situation concerning the Chants, if it wasn't so serious would be laughable. Their musical arranger on Pye Records, who they signed for after leaving Brian Epstein, was later to be a co-writer of the theme tune to "Neighbours." In the UK, there were no Motown, Stax, Atco equivalents, so Black artists were given material to record that was contrary to their own musical aesthetic, yet blue-eyed White boys were given R'n'B records to cover. These details tend to get lost and do not fit easily into the streamlined story of Mersey Beat. Closer inspection of what happened to the Chants, the Valentinos and others discloses problems around the musical industry and individuals linked with it at every level. The Musical industry would hardly have gone out of its way to market these bands, when the Black community in Liverpool had suffered continual exclusion from spheres of cultural life over a long period of time. Waste of talent? Anyone who saw the documentary "Who Put the Beat in MerseyBeat", would have seen at the end a classic Black acappella version of "Chains". Can we have a release please?

A lot of these black musicians are still around today. A lot have moved on. Some still sing and play, and do it quite beautifully. This narrative has tried to reflect their "voices" and the "voices" before them. Hopefully, we have now produced a framework that people can feel comfortable with, in order for their personal reminiscences to be voiced in a non-exploitative setting. It is appalling when you think that the Chants and the Valentinos, hold a special place in the memories of more people from outside of the city than within.

Meanwhile whenever the city of Liverpool gratifies itself in an orgy of Beatle/Mersey mania, we will remember the Liverpool "voices", rooted in musical idioms of Afro-American, the Caribbean, and the African West Coast. Duke Ellington always used to describe anything he had admiration for as being "BEYOND CATEGORY". A fitting epithet for the Black musical culture of Liverpool.

Are you sayin' the musical backup in this Youtube vid is the Beatles?

I do hear that one Mersey Beat guitar chord that's left open to ring for just a bit.

Very interesting bit of arcana. Thanks.