Chicago police officer Edward “Skipper” Keyes has worked in law enforcement since 1978, so he’s had plenty of practice helping people in need. He’s been a huge fan of soul music and R & B for even longer, though, and because of that devotion many of the artists he met as a wide-eyed teenager in the 60s are coming to him now looking for a different kind of assistance. “A lot of them seek me out to get advice on how to deal with these various labels that approach them, how to deal with contracts, how to get some of their royalties,” Keyes says. “I just try and put them in the right direction. It’s a joy for me to be able to help people whose music I grew up loving.”
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In his free time Keyes, now 56, works as an archivist and consultant for Grapevine, a UK reissue label specializing in R & B–most notably he’s helped it establish a Chicago soul series that’s yielded comprehensive anthologies on nearly forgotten stars like Johnny Moore, Ruby Andrews, Cicero Blake, and Jackie Ross. But even before he hooked up with Grapevine in 2002, Keyes was a one-man clearinghouse for info on Chicago’s neglected R & B heroes, providing contact details, photos, studio logs, and the like to record collectors, journalists, and labels from around the world–including Chicago-based writer Robert Pruter, who consulted Keyes while researching his authoritative books on soul and doo-wop. “He’s the exceedingly rare case of someone who was truly on the scene back in the day who’s still a collector and a fan,” says Rob Sevier of the local reissue label the Numero Group. “He’s still in touch with all the artists–he never ever lost the love.”
His second career began in earnest in the late 90s, when he encouraged Clarence Johnson, an original member of the Chi-Lites, to release a compilation of songs by the Lovelites, a late-60s girl group he’d produced. Then in 2002 Johnny Moore asked Keyes to help with a disc of his music that Grapevine was assembling; Keyes has worked for the label ever since, and its Chicago series is still going strong. “The love that people in Europe have for soul, R & B, and black music is incredibly deep–they know these different genres and artists better than the folks here in America,” says Keyes. “That’s kind of sad to say, but it’s the truth.”
Miss Alex White, local garage-rock spitfire, has just finished the follow-up to her self-titled 2005 debut on In the Red. The Red Orchestra, her band since 2004, recorded and mixed the new disc in four days flat at the Distillery in Costa Mesa, California, with studio owner and engineer Mike McHugh, who’s worked with past and present In the Red acts like the Black Lips and the Hunches. The 12-song CD, titled Space & Time, will be released in Europe in the spring and come out in the States early in the summer–but one new track, “In the Snow,” is already posted at the band’s MySpace page.
