Philip Mitchell Starting All Over Again Song

this one

Prince Phillip Mitchell

"Star of the Ghetto "

In 1963 Phillip Mitchell won a talent contest at the Louisville Blackness Expo with a group chosen The Classics.

"We really won a recording contract with Motown which never materialized," Phillip said. "We won a bunch of trophies and our contract with Motown disappeared with the trophies."

Phillip Mitchell circa 1969

After the competition win, Phillip said, "I was gung ho. I thought I was the greatest vocalist on earth."

Prince Phillip Mitchell recently reached into his past to recount for me the events that led to his successful music career. He spoke of the highs and the lows. He talked nigh the records of aureate and the rejection of blacks. For Prince Phillip Mitchell, music is "a mode of 1ife."

Phillip Mitchell'south male parent had wanted him to have a job as a foundry worker at Louisville's International Harvester plant and stay there until retirement. Merely let'due south let Phillip tell the story:

"He took me out to Harvester i day to get me a task there and the guy was saying, 'Come on, follow me and I'1l show you what you lot'll exist doing today.' And I was walkin' backside him and as I was walkin' I kept feelin' this heat and I got to thinking, 'Well, this ain't for me,' and while he was walkin' and talkin' I was goin' the other way. And then that kinda prompted me to pack my numberless and head out."

Phillip'due south interest in music manifested itself when he was a child:

"At a immature age I found out I was fascinated with making upwards little songs and it only adult into something that I just really found that I loved to do. It was almost similar second nature. I only did it naturally and, of grade, the more than more you practice information technology the improve you go."

"My parents never really thought much of me entertaining. They never thought I was any expert, first of all," Phillip said somewhat ruefully.

"There wasn't a lot of encouragement in my house as far every bit my musical career goes, but, of class, later I proved them wrong and they began to respect that, you know so things turned out pretty] good."

Explanation AND THE WINNERS ARE... THE CLASSICS: Phillip Mitchell is at top right

Phillip was born in Louisville, attended Central Loftier School (there were other schools in other cities) and considers himself a Louisvillian. His neat home in the Due west End evidences the many hours he has spent making improvements, work he one enjoys doing. On the beautiful late-March day of my visit, the yellow flowers of a forsythia bush were just start to bloom in Phillip'south front end yard.

After years on the road, traveling to � and in some cases living in � Indianapolis, St. Louis, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, also equally Muscle Shoals, Phillip has settled down in his hometown for now.

Phillip's widowed mother and his two brothers and a sister live in California.

As a youngster, Phillip said, he and "a bunch of little guys" would become together in "little singing groups." He confessed that at that time he thought he knew everything, "and so naturally everybody had to listen to me and my way was the fashion or else no way at all. And I guess that's still truthful today."

"You might accept heard the rumor," Phillip connected, "(that) a lot of musicians don't like to play with me (just) it's the business that I dear and there'southward two ways to do it: the right mode and the wrong way ... I'one thousand somewhat of a perfectionist.

And it's non necessarily my mode, it'south only the right fashion ... And I strive to be perfect."

"I had a lot of local groups, before I actually struck out from Louisville," Phillip said. And those early vocal groups did not utilise a ring; they sang "strictly a cappella," Phillip explained.

Ane of the many local groups was chosen The Viscounts, but it was with The Checkmates, whose routines he choreographed, that Phillip cut his beginning local record in 1963, a unmarried of two of his original songs, "The Count" b/w "Closed Chapter."

Phillip said that his early vocal groups predate such local favorites equally Cosmo and the Counts, The Monarchs and The Trendells.

"I think (they) would only sit in the wings and marvel at what we were doin' just a cappella. Nosotros didn't have a band, we only had a vocal group, manus clappin' and pes tappin'.

Barry Beckett and Prince Phillip Mitchell at Muscle Shoals Audio Studio

"You were doing and then what Take 6 is doing at present," I suggested.

"Exactly, precisely, and so Take 6 and The Persuaders are merely a take-off of The Checkmates, The F lip Tops, The Classics," he laughed.

"Every fourth dimension a grouping member would quit they would ever want to go out and keep the proper name. So I would come upwardly with a new proper noun and nosotros'd only go on rollin' ... and we'd meet 'em … and we'd always show to be the all-time, which was the example at Expo in '63. All my old former group members went up against me in the contest and nosotros vanquish 'em."

Except for playing in school bands (his first instrument was the trumpet), Phillip is "pretty much a cocky-taught musician."

When I suggested that perhaps his musical talent came naturally to him, Phillip laughed and said: "I wouldn't say 'natural,' because it takes a lot of hours of hard work a lot of trial and mistake and a lot of dues to get to be able to sing like I do at present."

I tried to sum up my understanding of Phillip'southward early on music career: Success on the local scene and then contacts that led him beyond Louisville.

"Non necessarily contacts," he laughed.

"My contacts was the Greyhound jitney."

Phillip'southward performances with the local state fair led to fair performances in Indianapolis, Ind. Information technology was at that place, he said, that he picked upwardly the name Prince.

Photo by Paul Moffett

Only let'due south listen to Phillip's own version of how he came to be called Prince.

"I used to have a dog that was called 'Prince,' and he would seize with teeth yous. And a lot of times we'd go places and the dog would get out of the grand and the kids would say, 'Oh, that'due south Prince,' and they would see me and say, 'There'southward Prince,' transferring the dog's name to the owner.

"I got named later on a dog, really," Phillip said with a hearty laugh.

"And and then there was another situation where I was in Indianapolis … some girl � I don't how she got this, merely I approximate maybe from one of the local musicians, or something, who called me that and they picked it up and they just started calling me that e'er since… . I don't know if somebody called me Prince and they picked up on it, or what, only information technology's questionable which one of the stories but I practice know that the dog would bite you and every fourth dimension they'd come across me they'd holler, 'Oh, here comes Prince,' so everybody started kinda calling me that and I but kinda adopted it as my stage name. It kinda had a nice little band to it."(He told me afterwards that a record company once wanted to change his name from Prince Phillip to Reuben James. I plant that exceedingly funny, realizing how inappropriate it was for Prince Phillip Mitchell.)

Talking about his name reminded Phillip of a funny affair that happened when he played for a party at the Kentucky Horse Park and Philip, husband of Elizabeth II of Corking U.k., was in omnipresence. When Prince Phillip Mitchell was introduced, he said, "Everybody was lookin' around equally though, 'Huh?' and I came out and everybody got a boot out of it I played that up and (after the performance) he congratulated the band and it was actually neat."

Later that evening after Phillip (of Louisville) had completed a late-dark set at Role player's Theatre, a adult female, who had heard that 'Prince Phillip' was there, came up to him and said, (Phillip spoke in a loftier-pitched voice) "Oh, it's then wonderful to meet yous. How exercise you like our country?" (Phillip and I laughed so hard that he could hardly talk and I could inappreciably hear the rest of the story. 1 did hear the give-and-take "dingbat.")

That story led to another one involving England. Walking along a street. in Liverpool, Phillip turned a comer and spotted two black men, the get-go blacks he had seen in 2 days. He immediately rushed upwards to them and said, "What's happening, bro?" "They looked at me and they looked at each other and they started talking in Latin or ... 2 African guys!"

Phillip feels a strong need to live up to the prototype that the local people have of him as "somewhat of a local type status symbol, I guess, in a sense that everybody kinda looks up to me and they wait big, big things of me ... "

Does he feel more nervous performing in his hometown than elsewhere?), I asked, explaining that I had heard other musicians say that they exercise.

"Well, it's not true of me. When you've been in this business as long as I have, it'due south a way of life. It's something that yous dear to practice and each time out, rather than become out and be afraid, I just become out and think, 'Well, here's a hundred or a hundred thousand people who love me they like what I practise and they're there to hear me perform, and so it'southward just like a large homecoming each time out."

While living in Indianapolis Phillip worked with a group phone call The Cash Registers, the back-upwards band for Alvin Cash and the Crawlers. The ring had a Elevation 10 hit tape, "Twine Time," and Phillip hooked up with them, playing in area clubs. "That was kinda the kicking-off point to going on the road," he said.

Prince Phillip Mitchell at Louisville Gardens, circa 969

From Indianapolis he went to St. Louis, then to Muscle Shoals, Ala. It was there that he left the fair, eventually signing with Rick Hall at Fame Recording Studios, where he kickoff started writing songs equally a professional. His first national record was called "Go on On Talking" on Nail Records (Polydor).

At that fourth dimension (around 1966-67) Muscle Shoals was "the music capital letter of the earth for rhythm and blues music." Many aureate and platinum albums came from there, Phillip said.

"Everybody in the world that's probably of whatever mention, in this land especially, has come up through Muscle Shoals," he proudly related, so reeled off a partial list: Percy Sledge, Jeannie C. Riley, Brenda Lee, The Osmonds, Bobbie Gentry, Jimmy Hughes, Arthur Alexander, Linda Ronstadt, The Rolling Stones, Dark-brown Carbohydrate, Sonny & Cher, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and others.

"It was then like the large melting pot of music, the land mixed with the blues and the rhythm and blues and information technology was kinda like a full new audio that people weren't familiar with. And out of that came a whole bunch of wonderful records."

Just when Phillip offset went to Muscle Shoals, he was shy about letting his original songs be heard.

"At that time I didn't put much stock in my writing. I was writing music but I didn't remember I was a songwriter. I was kinda a petty shy of showing my cloth because I idea it was too personal… . I always thought I had some pretty good little songs but I was afraid to be exposed as one who thought he was a songwriter and I approximate I was afraid of being rejected."

"It helps when some of your peers … somebody you respect … when these people hear some of your material and they like it, I mean information technology inspires and does a lot of wonderful things to you. I had that happen to me on a number of occasions ... Smokey Robinson hearing some of my stuff and he was just 'Wow!"'

People would come to see what was happening in Muscle Shoals, Phillip said. People were asking, 'What is goin' on?'

"Y'all had your Detroit sound, you lot had your New York sound, yous had your W Declension sound and they had the Nashville audio, and all of a sudden and then you hear this Muscle Shoals sound. Probably lxx-75% of the records that were coming out of Memphis (Memphis was claiming to exist a recording heart, he said), well, the most of it came out of Muscle Shoals. Stax Records, they were coming to Musculus Shoals and recording and going back to Memphis and putting information technology out on their local label."

"Sam & Dave, Soul Children, William Bell, The Staple Singers … all of their big hits were cutting in Musculus Shoals at Muscle Shoals Audio Studios."

"If they (anyone) looked on most of the former Stax records they would probably come across my name a lot, considering I wrote a lot of songs back during those times."

"I had better success equally a songwriter than I did as an creative person for the elementary fact that they had realized I was writing good songs, so consequently they would work my songs for other artists. They saw me as a chocolate, wind-up song machine."

After a couple of years in Muscle Shoals, Phillip moved to Houston, where he went to work with a group called The Esquires, Percy Sledge's redundancy band. Calvin Lewis, the bass thespian and piano player Andrew Wright had written "When A Man Loves A Adult female," which became a big hitting for Sledge. When Sledge went on the road, Phillip replaced him.

While in Houston, Phillip met up with Archie Bong and the Drells and started choreographing the grouping. He afterwards produced several records for them, the most notable of which was their nautical chart song "Dancing to Your Music," which Phillip also wrote.

When he moved on to Los Angeles, Phillip got together with a dance grouping chosen The Bean Brothers � who were not brothers � and taught them to sing. The group was and so named because all the members were "long and alpine like a string edible bean," Phillip said. (Phillip towers at just nether 6'seven.")

They became famous around the southern California area for their trip the light fantastic moves and Phillip was approached by other groups in the expanse � groups such every bit The Whispers and The Young Hearts.

For a total of nearly six or 7 years (in two separate stints) Phillip wrote exclusively for Muscle Shoals Sound Publishing, specializing in what was called "consignment" writing, sometimes writing as many as ten or twelve songs a day, he said.

Phillip said that he has written "a lot of songs for many different artists which almost people locally don't have any idea."

"Prince has a track record for writing songs … God, I can't even think of half of the songs I've written ... I've had somewhere around xxx or so records that charted, in all countries … ."

"Sometimes, if it crosses my mind, I say to myself, 'God, I wonder how many songs I've written' … just I don't bother with it, because I'm forever writing new ones."

In 1987 Prince Phillip Mitchell was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

Furthermore, in a book called Say Information technology One Time for the Cleaved Hearted, author Ba rn ey Hoskyns says that Phillip'south "Be Potent Enough to Hold On" is perhaps Bettye Swan'due south "all-time masterpiece."

Hoskyns also says that "this aching land ballad may be the greatest thing he (Phillip) ever equanimous. information technology is one of the last great Shoals country-soul records."

"Being from that era of music in Alabama I'thousand kinda like a slice of history walkin' ... around and most people don't understand information technology," Phillip said.

"Like Wilson Pickett'due south 'Land of 1,000 Dances' (he demonstrated: 'nah nah-nah nah nah') … I sang background on that." That was but one of Pickett's hit songs that crossed over to popular (No. l R&B, No. six pop).

Phillip received gold records for five songs he has written: "Oh La De Da," "Hurts And then Expert," "Starting All Over Again," "Dancing to Your Music" and "Home Is Where the Heart Is."

Vandals broke into his home and destroyed iii of them, he said.

He likewise received a gold album for a compilation anthology that included several of his songs. It was a large, big tape for her," Phillip said of the Millie Jackson cut "Hurts So Expert."

Other artists who have recorded Phillip's songs include Peter Yarrow, Razzy Bailey, Don Gibson, Bobby Bland, Mel & Tim, Jolmnie Taylor, Hall & Oates and the list goes on.

Hall & Oates' album that includes Phillip's "Starting All Over Once again" is doing well, Phillip said, but admitted that he doesn't read Billboard. "I only write 'em and watch the mailbox."

"Is it necessary to get out Louisville to notice success in the music business?" I asked.

"Personally I don't retrieve you have to leave Louisville, simply your music definitely does," he laughed! "I don't know of anybody, whatsoever producer or tape company who would plow downwardly striking songs, since that is the primary ingredient of success in the music business. ... "

"Nearly local writers, they sit around, they have dreams and aspirations of going to Nashville ... fifty-fifty Nashville is a hard place to crevice. They encounter amateur songwriters coming from all over the country, trying to break into the music business organisation and information technology'southward a bit tough, because it's a clique ... " It'south that way in Los Angeles and New York, besides as in Nashville, he said.

"Today'south music is a joke," he laughed. "It'due south not the music business, it'south the money business organisation. It's not talent, information technology'due south promo, it's money, it's fast dollar and cents. Information technology's the 'dis' business organization � disgusting, discouraging, disco, video discs, disenchantment … that's what it is, it'due south the 'dis' business."

"Music to me is a way of life. It'southward not a hobby, it's not a job, information technology's strictly a way of life. And you gotta dearest it to tolerate it. You accept the biting with the sweetness, the ups and the downs and if you're a true musician or songwriter then yous'll maintain, you'll survive."

"I've had my ups and downs in it and I feel I've been a picayune more fortunate than virtually people. I had to get out and exercise information technology and when people like Barry Beckett or some of your bigger producers in the country or some of the great writers of our times and they approve of what I'yard doing … that's gratification for me ... that makes me experience skillful and it inspires me. Songwriting is just my style of life. I practice information technology naturally. I do it whether anybody ever hears 'em or not. I have to write information technology's just a proficient feeling to be able to sit down and express myself through my music and it's wonderful to know that it'south appreciated when people hear it and what feels then proficient is when you make coin doing it."

Phillip spoke about ane of the negative aspects in the music business:

"A lot of people locally, they kinda await down at yous or they want to try to push y'all around. But, meet, what they don't realize is I'm a legend in my time and I think everybody wants to attempt to take a picayune office away from that legend. Sometimes when I come up in contact with a lotta local people, (they say) "Is your proper name actually Prince?" And I say, 'Yeah.'

"Well, how'd yous get the name Prince?' And I say 'My daddy is a king,' Then I make it a little joke."

Sometimes people come up to him, Phillip said and they will say, "Hey man, you're pretty good." ' "Well, I'm non pretty adept, I'm damn good."

"And then if yous tin't add annihilation, I just don't like people to subtract," he explained.

He assured me that he doesn't mind if people genuinely want to know how the proper noun Prince came nigh, information technology'due south their taunting mental attitude that he doesn't intendance for.

Phillip disagrees with those who say in that location is a lot of talent in Louisville.

"There are a handful of great musicians, I feel, in Louisville. They don't have the necessary field of study that's going to propel them into the big musical success that everybody'south trying to be. Attitude is a big role of information technology and in one case you go into a professional person situation, somehow you suddenly learn how yous are to respond and how you should conduct yourself or how you become about becoming a professional."

He said that sometimes people will describe a grouping as "great," and all the same they tin't "tap their feet in time to a 4 count, you know, four-four timing. Simply they're gonna sit down there and say, 'Oh, yes, they're smashing.'"

"Well, what criteria do yous use?" he asked, not requiring an answer.

I asked why it seems that musicians, unless they have really "fabricated it big," get then piffling respect, fifty-fifty though music is such an of import role of people'south lives.

Phillip feels that many people aspire to be successful musicians and never make it. They and so tend to look down on those people who are out there trying to make information technology. Once a person has accomplished success, he said, they desire to "get on your coattails."

In answer to my question, Phillip said that after years of writing songs equally a staff writer in Musculus Shoals and having considerable success at it, the turning indicate in his career was probably "when I first signed with Atlantic Records and a agglomeration of my records went totally national and international" and got that exposure. That was in nigh 1977.

"I was one of these 'bubbling under' performers equally an artist. Everybody knew of me, just for example, I would be in New York and people would be talking to me, about me."

"(They would say) 'I know this guy named Prince Phillip Mitchell down in Alabama,' and they're talking to me ... so my name'south been effectually it seems like I've been around forever and I keep coming back ... I've got great, keen fans in Europe they love me at that place."

"I personally feel and I've been told this … there was some conspiracy against me to preclude me from condign a major artist for the simple fact that I wrote such great songs."

"I'm the star of the ghetto." he said. He went on to chronicle that that is the championship of one of his songs recorded by the Boilerplate White Band and Ben East. Rex some years ago.

"It was real personal to me more of my autobiography type. It was a song that I had written for me, virtually me and people heard it in New York and they loved it and I was saving the song to do for my anthology "to propel myself into the big business concern … the President of Atlantic Records heard it and he sent me a personal letter begging me, more or less, please permit me have this song, let me take this vocal for artists like Ben � E. King, which I did. They sent me a overnice little cheque of appreciation. … That's one way that convinces me," he laughed.

"I let 'em have it and they recorded it ... did real, existent skillful. After on I recorded the same song on my album, which I had to do considering it was kinda personal to me. And it kinda sums up my childhood days around Louisville as a performer."

"What is the best role of being Prince Phillip Mitchell, in music," I wanted to know.

"Well … whew … that I tin practice what I want to do I but practice … what comes natural … I similar the freedom of being an artist and existence able to express myself musically and that's a big, big relief. I notice that if I have problems, if I'm not feeling very well, I tin can always call up of a overnice lyric or a squeamish tune that puts me in a good mood. And I don't demand anybody but me and my guitar, or me and my piano to do that."

"I tin can sit down at any time, day or dark, whatsoever hr and write what I consider a skillful vocal, mayhap not necessarily a hit vocal, but what is a hitting song? Nobody know until it's proven to exist …

"I don't like a lot of the limelight," Phillip insisted. "I'k kinda a low-primal person. I don't similar crowds of people I just kinda like to practice what I like to do, when I like to exercise it."

"Information technology'southward overnice to be appreciated," he admitted, when I asked that specific question about his singing.

"I would prefer a person to sit and listen to me … I don't similar people to dance when I sing ... I'm an intimate type of performer ... I like shut quarters where I can kinda reach out and achieve people musically ... . I love to perform. I don't know whether I'm a performer first or a author 2nd or vice versa. I merely kinda experience it's a combination of the two that makes me."

Phillip decried the loss of artistry in much of today'south music.

"I have this beloved of the old artists. All my artists are either dead or retired," he laughed. "I cannot tell yous right today I can name you five current artists in the whole music industry that I know.

"That you like?" I asked for' clarification.

"That I know," he reiterated.

"Who practice yous listen to?" Phillip gave a rapid reply: "Nobody.

Absolutely nobody. ... You lot can sit at my house for months and you'll never hear me play a record ... I never heed to the radio … I hate videos … I think videos are a slap in the confront ... it takes away the artistic music. It puts emphasis on video rather than audio ... information technology's discriminatory ... if.you're ugly ... all your videos are all these sleek, suave looking guys or all these model looking women … New Kids On the Block can't sing … it cuts out the musicians … it takes abroad all the intimacy of being an artist and the love betwixt the music and the creative person or the singer and the keyboardist or whatever. All of that is gone from music today. It's all synthesized keyboards, electronics. To some extent information technology's okay, but I kinda prefer the old days, the erstwhile ways, and the sometime styles of recording considering it was more meaningful to me."

"They say that music reflects the times that you lot're livin' in. Well, God, I detest to think I'm livin' in those kind of times.

We discussed the lip-synching in today's videos and groups such as M.C. Hammer ("He can't sing," Phillip said) and the caput sets that artists clothing then as not to impede their movement. I said that I didn't like them. �

"Well, what that amounts to, Jean, is we're gettin' old." Phillip said, laughing a wicked laugh.

"I think information technology's getting so ridiculous correct at present the whole music scene is going to have to be forced to take a backward step," Phillip continued. "It's getting besides far beyond itself. And the big difference that really bothers me is the departure the requirements for blackness artists versus white artists."

"Of all the records that I've made, I've never heard any of my records played on whatever of the local stations (other than the black radio stations)."

He went on to explain that if a vocal crosses over, it might be played on a station such as WVEZ. "You lot can't get around that � that's classic."

We talked nearly the "Equally Nasty Equally They Desire to Exist" philosophy that seems to be and so prevalent today.

"Black artists find it so hard to really seriously go into the music business organization and to really have the serious side of themselves musically to offer to the manufacture that they make up one's mind to bound on the bandwagon and prostitute themselves to the rap thing. Because it's easy, it'south quick, information technology doesn't require a lot of talent � it doesn't crave any talent, really � and record companies understand that this is fast-coin music, they can have a keyboard and maybe a m dollars and become in the studio and cut a few tracks ... promote it a picayune bit and make millions of dollars off of information technology. That is why it's so lucrative."

Phillip feels that it is much more difficult for a black creative person to make it in the music business than it is for a white artist.

"The requirements of what you sing near black artists versus white artists is so diverse. Can you imagine Luther Vandross singing about a 'Little Deuce Coupe'? Come on. ... And so as a black artist you are expected to really have something wonderful … something phenomenal to offering earlier nosotros're (music industry people) gonna open the door."

"The requirements are different. ... Another 'dis' in the 'dis' business organization is discrimination. It'due south the nigh lopsided business in the world, as far as I'm concerned. … (Some people accept is said) '90% of all blacks tin sing and trip the light fantastic toe.' Well it doesn't reflect in the music industry, you know." (He chuckles.) "If you seriously look at that, it's disenchanting to me in a lot of ways because, going back to the concluding 1012 years, there'due south been no significant changes. There's been one or ii real prominent black artists to emerge, like Whitney Houston, perhaps."

"The kids, they don't have whatsoever role models of any significance. They don't see them, so what they run across on television is what they want to exist. So, drug pushers, pimps, hustlers, murderers, thieves, what accept y'all … and it's appalling, actually."

"So every little kid on the street nowadays ... they're walking downwards the street rapping, pointing their fingers, trying to get their moves together like the rappers practise. This is the starting time and foremost thing on their minds … learning how to rap. "

"I don't similar beingness involved with that. Because I don't specially feel like that's music. I think when they accept awards ceremonies, they should have totally separate ones, because they need to call rap 'rap' and let music be music."

"Thank God for James Ingram and Quincy Jones, who only seem to me to attain that level of excellence forever and I can e'er count on Quincy and James Ingram, or even Luther Vandross for that thing, to give me something I tin can feel. I similar Lee Greenwood and a lot of the state artists. ... Country is kinda similar my roots. I'g a Kentuckian, you know."

"I tin can even do the One thousand Sometime Opry ... I'thou right at home."

"Would you like to," I asked.

"Of grade, sure, I'd dear to. I beloved the Grand Ole Opry."

Phillip paid high compliments to the country musicians he met while he was in Muscle Shoals.

"What was then amazing was when I got to Alabama and ... heard all of this funky music, all this rhythm and dejection and I walked into the studio ... expecting to see a bunch of black guys and at that place was a bunch of these down-home, just country, I hateful, just typically southern Alabama white boys playing the funkiest music I'd ever heard in my life and I could not believe it. I gotta exit the door and come back in this can't be true. These were the most precise musicians that I've ever heard in my life."

Phillip said the musicians were very versatile, switching easily from i style of music to some other. For case, finishing up a session with Linda Ronstadt and immediately starting one with Wilson Pickett. "No problem," he said.

"I feel kinda lucky being able to come up in that type of surroundings … yous feed off of that and subconsciously it becomes part of you and this is why, I gauge a lot of people remember I'chiliad hard to work with … I estimate my expectations of them is and so great considering I know and understand, I've lived how information technology's supposed to exist. Most musicians do not sympathise this about me, they don't understand where I get it, where I'm coming from considering they don't know I've been in that location, I've done this, this was my life, I used to have to do this every twenty-four hour period of my life to get paid and that is to critique and make sure it's precise and brand sure it's perfect. So they cannot relate to me on this particular level … they think I'm but being obnoxious or just over-reacting or merely being very difficult to become along with, which it's non. It'due south absolutely the only way to do it."

"I give everybody a run a risk … and if a guy can't cutting it, he tin't cut it. ... And so don't blame me, because I know the divergence between good, ameliorate and best. Locally I deal with a lot of adversity from a lot of local people they don't empathise me because they don't know where I come up f r om, they don't know where I've been, have no idea who I am or where I'thou going."

Ane of those places that Phillip has come from is the jazz circuit. Back in almost 1977-78 he was the featured vocalizer with the Norman Connors jazz quartet. This is how that came about: The group had had a nautical chart hit with "You Are My Starship," featuring vocalist Michael Henderson, who was likewise the bass role player. (Connors was a drummer.) With the popularity of "Starship," Henderson was wooed away from Connors' group, leaving him with a hit song and no vocalist to sing it. Enter Prince Phillip Mitchell.

"Then I traveled the country singing 'You Are My Starship."'

Phillip went on to record a couple of albums with the group, thus becoming known to many as a jazz singer.

We spoke of the difficulties of being in the public eye and Phillip laughed and said: "You lot develop somewhat a little state of paranoia in a sense. ... When I lived out in the hillside and the mansions, everybody would say 'You lot recall you're improve than we are because you live out hither with the white people.'"

"You lot never can be everything to everybody," I commiserated.

"No. No. Well, when I lived down with the black people they robbed me, they bankrupt in my house, they throwed everything … they tore up my gold records, they killed my dog, they knocked a hole in the back of my house (Phillip was talking so fast and laughing so difficult that I barely "understood him), but at present I've developed this happy medium. So I'm back in the ghetto … non actually ghetto ... but I alive around the rappers and the tappers (laughing) ... It's not the person that changes, success doesn't change, you know, I've been upward, I've been downward and my career has taken a lot of twists and turns, but, thank God, I'm still able to do what I love to do well-nigh and that is write, sing and play my music."

How would Prince Phillip Mitchell describe himself?, I asked.

"(Laughing) I'm only a perfectionist," he said after a bit of idea.

"I would draw myself as being an unusual person, in the sense that I don't observe a lot of mutual music � on the new anthology. He has been told past an Ichiban rep that the anthology is "awesome."

"He'south promised me gilt,"Phillip said with pride.

"This particular album has got a lot of me in it. … a lot of this album is based on my experience. ... "

An album release party is scheduled for 11 p.m. on March 29-30 at Air Devils Inn and is open up to the public. Prince Phillip Mitchell will perform songs from the anthology both evenings.

A European tour to promote The Loner is scheduled to begin in April.

What would Phillip similar to say to our readers?

"I would like for people to understand that people are people, regardless of who they might exist, where they come from or what they might practice or what they might accomplish in life. Simply accept people for who they are rather than for what they are or what they take. Considering happiness and joy comes in a lot of different packages, you know. And don't alienate themselves from people, exist they black, white, greenish, orange, purple or what have you, considering y'all never know when you might exist confront to confront with one of these people, your whole existence might depend on it, so you have to look at yourself every bit a person and be a compassionate and loving type person, because you never know when it's gonna pay off for you to practice that."

I suggested that � payoff or not � he would still experience that aforementioned way that everyone should be looked at as a person, regardless of race, creed, color or other feature.

"There is no color in the music business," he answered.

"I'm the Star of the Ghetto ... if I never make Broadway."

joinesdelf1965.blogspot.com

Source: http://www.louisvillemusicnews.net/webmanager/index.php?WEB_CAT_ID=50&storyid=13915&headline=Prince_Phillip_Mitchell&issueid=26

Share this post