Roger Wade’s and Alberta Adams’ early 1962 records Thelma were both issued AFTER Richard Street’s Distants’ Thelma release. Wade’s was later leased to New York’s Harmon Records [[Through Bob Shad).
As we can see, The Distants' record has a pressing plant code starting with Columbia Terre Haute, Indiana ZTSC # 82335, which indicates early 1962, while Alberta Adams' has 82363, soon after, and Roger Wade's has 84946, indicating a few months later in the spring.
But, I’ve been told that the FIRST Sonnettes’ record on Whitfield’s K.O. 0001, in early 1962, was his first released production, unless his recording of Tom Storm’s “Alone” WAS actually released commercially.
But there is some uncertainty about exactly when in 1962 K.O. 0001 was released. So, it might be possible that Richard Street or Boladian brought Whitfield into Thelma BEFORE the first Sonnettes’ record was released. So, Richard Street and The Distants’ early 1962 Thelma issue MIGHT be the first commercially-released record which Norman produced.
NONE of the DaCo records or leased productions I have [[Joe Weaver, O’Jays, Fabulous Playboys) had Norman’s name on their credits. And there were no DaCo master tapes found in Don Davis’ stash of masters [[although I think he had them, originally, as I don’t believe that The Colemans ended up with them).
The story I heard years ago was that DaCo went bankrupt, or to make their operation more professional and stable, The Colemans and Davis got their distributor, Armen Boladian to finance a restructuring of their record company, which allowed them to add staff and sign new artists. Richard Street was hired to be Davis’ assistant [[right-hand man). He had left The Distants to get into record production and concentrate more on his songwriting, and to spend more time with his new girlfriend [[presumably, Thelma Coleman [[Gordy) [[long divorced from Berry). When he and James Crawford left the group, Otis and the remaining group members needed to add 2 new members, and The Primes’ Kell Osborne left his group soon after, to try his luck in L.A. So, the remaining Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks took Street’s and Crawford’s places in The Distants, who were soon signed by Berry Gordy and Motown. They immediately changed their group’s name to The Temptations. So, when Richard Street started his new group soon after he was hired by Thelma, he was free to call them The Distants, and they were promptly signed by Davis to that label.
Like Richard Street, Norman Whitfield, a struggling songwriter, wanted to become a record producer. He had some friends who were a girls group who he thought were really good singers. They wanted to record a record and get it released to promote their act to get work. So, Norman recorded a demo of them singing two of his songs, and started shopping it around. After no success [[presumably with Robert West, and maybe The Browns at Fortune, he ran it by Armen Boladian, who liked it so much he decided to finance a recording session and the pressing and distribution of the record. That became K.O [[Knockout) Records 0001 [[“I’ve Gotten Over You”/“Teardrops”). The record had some local sales, and Boladian brought Whitfield into Thelma to work with them. Too. K.O. was distributed along with Thelma, and seems to have become a subsidiary of Thelma. There was a second Sonnettes.’ record released in 1963, after Norman worked on several of The Thelma unnumbered issues by The Distants, Alberta Adams, and Roger Wade.
It was also rumoured that The Sonnettes recorded the first version of Don Davis’, Armen Boladians’ and Eddie Kendricks’ “Lonesome Native Girl”, which was used as the demo for the eventual commercial release by Scepter’s Shirelles on one of their 1963 LPs. That was probably intended for K.O. # 0003, but never pressed up, perhaps because Whitfield left Thelma/K.O. to go to work for Motown, and sales of The Sonnetts’ second record were low.
The fact that Tom Storm mentioned that he and Eddie Kendricks were good friends throws a little light on Kendricks writing some songs for Thelma Records, after Storm and his Fabulous Peps were signed to the label. One or the other must have gotten the other into the company. Norman or Eddie could probably have gotten Storm into Motown in 1962, IF Storm’s mother hadn’t refused Berry’s 13-year 1% artist contract in 1959.
Bookmarks