It’s a moment long in coming. “The records are here,” Brent Hosier says. “Finally.”
On a sunny Wednesday in March, the not-easily-excitable music archivist learns that one thousand copies of his new “Lenis Guess Presents… Unbroken Melodies” LP are sitting in the warehouse of Blue Sprocket, a Harrisonburg vinyl pressing plant, waiting for pickup. For Virginia’s unofficial music archivist (’60s rock and soul division), it’s been yet another cycle of record digging, vault scouring, remastering, researching, negotiating and, as he puts it, “[dealing with] people who are too busy or lazy to do what they promise.”
The producer’s CD and album anthologies of forgotten music from the Commonwealth aren’t always profitable, and his efforts are sometimes met with disappointment — as when one national reissue label swooped in and outbid him on a lost soul track that he unearthed. But since the late ’90s, Hosier has been doing the Lord’s work in archiving and preserving Virginia’s hidden popular music past; those killer tracks languishing in private collections and crumbling tape vaults. “I just kind of stumbled onto this,” he says. “I became fascinated by it.”
Collecting rare sounds has long been a passion for the rabid Yardbirds fan, a Richmond native who has played in a slew of regional bands since the late ’60s – including BC & the Beeftones, the Razors, the Saps, Grief Birds — and was the vocalist for the Rhode Island-based psych band Plan 9 in the ’80s. He’s currently mastering his long-burning second solo album, “Camping With Carey West,” which features guest stars such as folk legend Michael Hurley (the disc doesn’t have a firm release date and he’d rather not talk about it now). The sandy-haired 60-something rocker is an anomaly – equal parts flamboyant old-school rock ‘n’ roller and nerdish, fanboy music collector.
Lost Virginia gems
He traces his passion for tracking down obscure music to the day he learned that a high school friend had a DJ-only Yardbirds single with a song that wasn’t on an album. “I realized then that there were records you couldn’t get on an album or buy in a store,” he recalls. “I realized you had to go out and find them. They were in the trash or scattered in various and sundry places.”
At some point — he thinks it might have been the day he and his pal Ben Cleary discovered a 45 of “Homeboy” by Richmond’s own Mr. Wiggles — Hosier began to realize that Virginia held untapped troves of largely unheard rock and soul music, from Martinsville to Hopewell to Virginia Beach; forgotten hometown heroes and one-off 45 makers with names like the Swinging Machine, the Anglos, Jack and the Mods, the Morning Disaster and Ricky and the Impressionables Band. Finding this often incredible music became an obsession, but trying to re-release it to the larger public can also yield frustration.
“A lot of the people I’ve dealt with, the people who own the rights to these tracks, are not the greatest people,” he says, making sure to say that he always legally licenses the songs he uses. “There’s a lot that’s gone wrong… not making back my money, distribution problems, pressing plant problems, a death threat or two.”
While Hosier has been successful in dealing with some hard-nosed business people — like the late “Norfolk Sound” producer Frank Guida — he’s never been able to negotiate a track from label owner and song publisher, August Moon, a.k.a. Mr. Wiggles.
“I tried to get him to license me stuff and he finally agreed and said he wanted $500 for one Sebastian Williams record. Then he changed his mind and said he was going to put it out himself, which he did.” Moon started his own reissue series on CD, but it was missing the detailed, some might say obsessive, liner notes that Hosier always provides with his releases.
Even with the near-misses, through his own independent labels Arcania International and Plut (rhymes with “boot”), the archivist has compiled four volumes of rare and unreleased garage and psychedelic music from across the state (“Aliens, Psychos & Wild Things”) and three compilations of indigenous soul and funk (“Ol’ Virginia Soul”).
Now, following a successful anthology devoted to the Hampton Roads funk band, Raw Soul, he’s issuing another revelatory set of largely unheard music produced by the prolific Norfolk-based soul man and producer Lenis Guess. Hosier first got interested in Guess when he heard his 1966 song, “Workin’ For My Baby.” He knew the unusual cut had to be included on “Aliens, Psychos and Wild Things Volume One.”
“It was a white band backing up a soul singer with an unusual time signature,” he says. “It had that crazy bass, this kooky guitar and a spooky organ – it was unique. I mean, nothing sounds like ‘Workin’ For My Baby.'”
Hosier found out that Guess, who first waxed platters for Frank Guida’s labels and then had his own Norfolk studio and independent record imprints, had been responsible for cutting sessions with a slew of great soul and funk performers in Hampton Roads from the late ’60s to the late 70s. These infectious songs from forgotten acts like Page One, Prince George and Barbara Stant, became highlights of Hosier’s “Ol’ Virginia Soul” compilations. Of that series, Tim Karr of the Kansas City Star raved that “If you’ve been numbed by the overproduced velveteen pap that passes for soul these days, this is your antidote.”
“I got to know Lenis very well,” Hosier remembers. “He was really nice. We had a bunch of phone conversations and I went to visit him in New York two or three times. We hung out in his studio and went to the movies together.” The duo had a working relationship that saw much of Guess’ formidable music archives spill out. “I would give him x-amount of money to put out a cut. One time we had a contract and then after that it was cash on the barrel.” He negotiated the rights to the material on “Unbroken Melodies” some years before Lenis passed away in 2021.
Guess first encountered Frank Guida (“If You Want to Be Happy,” “Quarter to Three”) when he was a student at Norfolk’s Booker T. Washington High School, and singing in a vocal group called the Five Latins. Years later, their collaborations began birthing songs like the majestic “Workin’ For My Baby” and the stomping ‘Just Ask Me.” These regional Tidewater hits have been championed in recent years by United Kingdom music fans (“Just Ask Me” was recently ranked as one of the top five songs of the Northern Soul movement, a trend started in Northern England that champions rare American soul music). One of Guess’ last live performances, in 2009, was at a Northern Soul concert in Wales, performing his signature tunes before a screaming throng of young English fans. “They know all about Black music in England, they’re hipper than the Americans,” the performer said in a 2019 interview, soon after he moved back home to Norfolk after decades of life and work in New York City.
“Unbroken Melodies” starts off with “No Steps Away,” a 1960s horn-driven rave-up that features Guess at his performing best, backed by a long-vamping Norfolk vocal group, the Royal Robins. The rest of the largely never-released songs follow suit, presenting mostly-shelved soul ballads and funky workouts recorded in Guess’ studio in the early ‘70s by bands such as the Symbolics, Deltones LTD, the 35th Street Gang and Jack and the Mods. The latter’s “Don’t Wake Me Up” from 1972 was previously issued as a 45 by Hosier on his Bamtown label. “300 copies were pressed,” Hosier writes in the liner notes. “Almost half were so warped they were returned to the plant for credit. No more pressed, the results being an unintended rarity.” It’s a pity, he adds. The release caught on big time with Latin-American DJs on the West Coast. “I have people calling me all the time from California asking me if I have any more copies. But I don’t.”
Demand for archival music
“Brent has such a great range of tastes. The amount of stuff he’s found that he’s managed to chase down is pretty staggering,” says Sam Richardson, the owner of Feel It Records, a record label that originally started in Richmond but is now based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Feel It concentrates on releasing contemporary bands like Drin and Stolen Promises, but dove into the reissue market in 2020 when it issued “Days of a Quiet Sun,” a complete anthology of ’60s recordings from the vaults of Richmond producer Marty Gary. The archivist helped Richardson track down information and photos for the anthology, and Richardson has returned the favor by graphic designing the new “Unbroken Melodies” release.
“He’s pretty obsessive about what he likes and what he wants to go after,” Richardson says of his friend. “But you have to be.”
With national boutique labels like Numero Group and Light in the Attic on the scene, he thinks there’s more demand for archival music now. “The audience is totally ready to discover new stuff from the well.”
Brent Hosier will no doubt be there to dig it out, even though the Lenis Guess archives may no longer be available.
“No one knows where Lenis’s tapes went,” the archivist says. “It’s a mystery. But somebody somewhere has them. I’m going to try and find out where they are.”
“Lenis Guess Presents… Unbroken Melodies” is available at Records & Relics, 2704 E. Marshall St., and Deep Groove, 317 N. Robinson, and at other stores through Groove Distribution.
Disclosure: The writer of this article has previously worked with Brent Hosier as the two were co-researchers and writers for “Virginia Rocks,” a 2012 box set and traveling museum exhibit sponsored by the Blue Ridge Institute devoted to the early rock and rockabilly music of Virginia.
