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Soul man

Bobby Taylor a true old-school Motown performer with ties to some of the biggest names in music history Who: Bobby Taylor Where: Bearfoot Bistro When: Wednesday-Sunday through the end of March Say you want to hear some soul in this town.
bobbytaylor
Bobby Taylor

Bobby Taylor a true old-school Motown performer with ties to some of the biggest names in music history

Who: Bobby Taylor

Where: Bearfoot Bistro

When: Wednesday-Sunday through the end of March

Say you want to hear some soul in this town.

How about a little Al Green for starters?

Well, since Rob Funk is capable of turning Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast into a chill-out coffee-shop tune, he could probably do most of Green’s catalogue.

Guitar Doug? He’s probably strummed an acoustic version of Let’s Stay Together during one of his many springtime patio apres-ski sessions.

Mat the Alien could probably mix Green into a deep drum ’n’ bass groove, and local band Truth Be Told could probably make it into a driving punk cover that would be over in about 45 seconds.

But if it’s the real thing you’re looking for, go see a man named Bobby Taylor.

You’ll find him at the Bearfoot Bistro five nights a week, belting out old school soul and R&B classics alongside piano-man Cameron Chu.

He’s the one in the dark suit and white shirt, longish hair tied neatly back, talking to the ladies over the instrumental bridges. He’ll have a microphone in one hand, handkerchief in the other, good for mopping the sweaty brow when his repertoire calls for a baby, help me please type of an effort.

You got that right, he can sing. He knows Let’s Stay Together . He’ll hit those high notes and he knows just how to emphasize "whether times are good or bad, happy or sad."

It’s likely he knows the good Reverend Green to boot. Familiarity with the biggest names in the music business comes with the territory when you get signed to the hottest record label of your era: Detroit’s Motown.

Taylor and his band The Vancouvers were a mainstay of Vancouver after-hours club The Elegant Parlour in the mid-1960s, when they were discovered by Motown label-head Berry Gordy Jr., in town on account of the Supremes.

The band included a pre-Cheech Tommy Chong on guitar and backing vocals. Taylor had met Chong and his cohorts in San Francisco a few years earlier while studying to become a music teacher at Berkeley. Discovering his distaste for the classroom, he turned back to singing, something he had been doing since the age of three years old.

Even though he considered Chong’s project at the time, Little Daddy and the Bachelors "godawful horrible," Taylor gave them a slot at the San Francisco jazz club where he was in charge of bookings.

Little Daddy and the Bachelors eventually headed north, settling in Vancouver, where they called up Taylor and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, so he migrated north to Vancouver and joined up. The young hotheads needed a way to draw attention to themselves, something shocking even in the seedy world of after-hours clubs. They were four young black males, with the exception of Chong, who was half Ukrainian, half Chinese. Tossing tact to the wind they named the new band Four Niggers and a Chink.

The shock value worked to get the curious into their shows, says Taylor, but eventually the novelty wore off and the band re-christened itself Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers – a nod to the city they had settled in for the time being.

Though Taylor was born in Washington D.C. and grew up all over the U.S. he had dual U.S./Canadian citizenship on account of his father, a Blackfoot Indian born in the area around Red Deer, Alta.

At the time of Gordy’s visit, Taylor and the Vancouvers were residents at the Elegant Parlour, playing night after night, warming the crowd up with some easy jazzy favourites and then breaking out the "really hot Motown" later on.

It was during this time Taylor became acquainted with a young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix who would drive up from Seattle to stay with his aunt in Vancouver.

Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers recorded their first album for Motown in 1967 but prior to the album’s release they were sent on a European tour with the Beatles for six months. Jimi Hendrix, also a Motown-signed musician came along. But it was obvious from the start, says Taylor, that Hendrix was playing to the beat of a different drummer. His loud, drawn out guitar solos were an ill-fit with the Motown groove.

While Taylor is often designated as having fired Jimi Hendrix, he says the situation was staged as a way to allow Hendrix freedom from the label to pursue his own interests.

"I didn’t really fire him, per say," Taylor muses. "That’s what we made it look like to everyone.

"Jimi wanted to do his own thing, and he wanted his own band. He had been with Little Richard, with the Eisley Brothers, and then with me and I’m the only one who gave him any freedom. He started feeling it.

"He and I were best of friends and he didn’t want to go back to Motown. We pretended to be pissed off with each other and staged a firing so he could go off on his own," says Taylor.

He pauses, perhaps considering the untimely demise of the psychedelic guitar icon.

"Friendship is," he states. "No conditions on it."

After Hendrix’s departure, Taylor found another friend in tour headliners The Beatles’ John Lennon.

"All of us, used to smoke marijuana together. Those were good times," Taylor remembers.

"Tommy and I hung out with Lennon because he was the only one who was really cool and down to earth at the time. The drummers hung out together – Ringo and Ted Lewis – and they were just about the same, rather spinny. Hardly anybody hung out with McCartney because he was always a jerk."

It was in the wake of the European tour, while playing Chicago’s Regal Theatre, Taylor was introduced to a feisty band of kids, the opening act, which called themselves the Jackson 5. Recognizing something special in the eight-year-old front man, Taylor shared his discovery with Gordy, who was convinced to sign the group.

Motown separated Taylor from the Vancouvers in order to look after the new band. He went on to produce nine albums with the Jackson 5, writing a good number of the group’s best known hits including Ben , which he claims is not about a rat, but about a childhood friend.

The young Jackson, he says, was always happy. "As long as I had him in there singing he was the happiest little thing in the world. Never thought about anything else but singing."

But these days, Michael Jackson’s life has taken a more complicated turn, as the singer currently awaits trial on charges of child molestation. In light of the charges against his former charge, Taylor is a fierce defender of the King of Pop, extolling his innocence and using Jackson’s character to back himself up. He’d go to the wall for Jackson, and has done so on American network television. His three-week sojourn from the Bearfoot Bistro in January was to film a piece for ABC newsmagazine 20/20, hoping to combat the negative press that has bombarded the singer.

Taylor may be passionate about Michael Jackson but at this point in his life he’s also remained passionate about singing. As of his 70 th birthday this Wednesday, Feb. 18, he’ll have been singing for 67 years.

His present gig is a result of an offer from Bearfoot stalwart Chu, who became acquainted with Taylor through gigs in Vancouver. The two claim to be a good match, with the businesslike Chu an appropriate foil for the feisty Taylor.

It’s appropriate that Taylor will get to ring in his birthday onstage. Singing has been his life, and it’s never more obvious than when he launches into Motown standards like I Heard it Through the Grapevine. In his hands the familiar sly grooves are loaded with years of touring, record company hassles, strong personalities, friends and legends come and gone, hits and misses, big nights and dimming lights.

After all this time, and all those nights onstage, does he have a favourite song to sing?

He pauses a moment.

There are millions of choices, but the answer is definitive: Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.

A true old-school Motown performer, Bobby Taylor sings at the Bearfoot Bistro Wednesdays through Sundays until the end of March. For more information call 604-932-3433.