In 1968, 5 of the biggest names in soul music got together to form the supergroup, THE SOUL CLAN.

Joe Tex - Solomon Burke - Ben E. King - Author Conley - Don Covay

Sounds like a winner right ... wrong. Their single, "Soul Meeting" went #91 pop / #34 Black. Solomon and Tex were regular charting higher than that own their own.

Solomon Burke said the reason it failed was because the artists who had agreed to it wanted to get a million dollars each from the record label and use that money to help motivate the black community to form their own businesses and stuff like that so they wouldn't have to settle for the living conditions they were in. Atlantic Records, according to Burke, stopped short of letting them do this because they rather see them sing about women and shit rather than actually putting in the work to help their fellow man. Needless to say, this left a sour taste in Solomon's mouth and he left the label (after 10 years) partially because of it.

LittleBLUECorvette said:

Cool, I didn't know that. You think Atlantic would have given them the money had the original 5, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett in place of Conley and King had been a part of the group?

Otis & Wilson were originally in the group. Otis died before the Soul Clan started working and Wilson was too arrogant to share any proceeds saying he wanted all the "fucking money" so he left. Arthur Conley was Wilson's replacement while Ben E. King was Wilson's. If Wilson had stayed and Otis stayed alive, they might've stood a chance. It was almost doomed with just Solomon leading the way since the other guys didn't really know how to convince anyone to let them do what they were doing.

with Peter Wolf 1981