Phil Cohen War Stories: The Hottest Act in the Labor Movement

WAR STORIES BY Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of Phil’s bittersweet story of the Local 1077 Whiteville Choir

During April 1995, the North Carolina District of ACTWU held its yearly conference in Greensboro’s spacious union hall. The delegates and staff were blown away by the choir providing entertainment. The twenty-three singers and one electric keyboard player named Kenneth Stanley all worked at the Whiteville Apparel suit factory in Eastern North Carolina and were members of Local 1077.

To be perfectly candid, most union choirs are unprofessional, boring, and often cliché. But these folks rocked the house with a unique sound, synergizing Holy Roller gospel with activist lyrics in a way never done before. The singers were mostly women and veteran performers in church choirs. Their primary lead vocalist was an attractive young woman named Melvin Chambers. Her powerful voice reverberated with emotion and she moved about the stage with the dynamic grace of a movie star.

The historic merger of ACTWU and the Garment Workers Union took place in Miami three months later to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). I convinced the union bureaucracy to present the Whiteville Choir at the convention. For five days they kept four thousand delegates on their feet, dancing and cheering.

I have a good eye for talent and potential. This group displayed it all in triplicate and I had an epiphany: with some training, I could polish their rough edges, turn them into recording artists, and take them into the studio where I made my own albums…if I could convince Southern Regional Director Bruce Raynor to fund the project.

I pulled Bruce aside as the conference adjourned and began pitching my idea in terms he’d find attractive until he interrupted—“So, how much would all this cost?”

“About $2,500, including travel expenses and manufacturing cassettes. I’ll put it on my credit card and send you an invoice. The first proceeds will reimburse the union and the rest will become a vehicle to raise PAC (political action committee) money. You have my word I’ll consider this part of my job and not make a penny off it.”

Bruce was in a hurry to catch a flight but replied, “Yeah, sure, go ahead and do it.”

I had a sense the director’s easy capitulation was made with the certainty I could never actually pull it off.  It reminded me of when a small child asks a busy parent if the family can go to Mars on their next vacation, and gets told, “Of course, we’ll all go to Mars.” But for the record, I’d gotten a green light and huddled with a very excited choir before we boarded shuttles to the airport.

I drove to Whiteville the next month to rehearse in the auditorium of an old church. Whiteville was a small, semi-industrial, and low-income Southern town. After setting up a portable four-track recorder and microphones, used to critique my own rehearsals, I asked choir members to take seats while I explained the musical journey we were about to embark upon.

“You guys are incredibly talented,” I said. “I saw the way union members were all on their feet dancing and shouting during the conferences. But there’s some big differences between performing live and being in a recording studio. In front of a crowd, if they dig your energy and material, being off key for a moment or changing tempo won’t even get noticed. But in a studio, you’ll have no audience to bounce off of. You’ll be singing to a merciless set of ears: thousand dollar microphones that pick up every small mistake and throw it back in your face. Before we think of recording professionally, you’re gonna have to be studio ready, meaning as close to perfect as possible. It’s gonna take a lot of hard work and discipline. Are you all down for that?”

The choir enthusiastically agreed and Melvin stood up to address them, “Okay then. Let’s do it. Everyone take their places.” She relocated some of the singers, placed microphones appropriately, and chided three women still standing in a corner, engaged in conversation. Melvin was clearly the choir’s director in addition to featured vocalist, and I was impressed by her leadership.

We spent the next two hours taping and I promised to mail a song-by-song assessment so we knew where work was needed. I checked into a hotel at 10 p.m. As this was now officially part of my assignment, I could expense it.

Listening to the recording over the weekend, I detected all the expected issues. The real brilliance of the choir rested with Melvin, two secondary lead singers named Anna and Robert, along with a few from the chorus. The rest, while providing a wall of sound, were frequently off-key and possessed little musical instinct. I sensed some were included for reasons of local union politics rather than talent. But this obstacle could be overcome at the studio through skillful editing and mixing. I went to great lengths composing a tactful review, complementing the strong points of each song before describing problems that would need to be addressed during rehearsals.

Robert Jones, who often served as spokesman for the choir, called two weeks later. “Everyone from the choir is really shook up by what you wrote. We didn’t know you thought so poorly about our music. Maybe we should just forget about the whole thing.”

“What about all the places where I talked about what I love?” I asked. “We agreed I was gonna point out areas that needed improvement to get you studio ready. You’re already great performers, but I’m preparing you for a whole new league. You need to think like professionals, accept criticism and then work to fix the problems.”

“Well, I’ll meet with folks next week and tell them what you had to say. Then we’ll vote on whether we should move forward.” I’d had my first taste of how emotionally fragile and reactive the choir could be.

Robert was a short, wiry man with a forceful personality who could be reasonable and persuasive when putting these attributes to good use. I continued traveling to Whiteville every month, first taking the choir to dinner at a seafood joint and then rehearing at one of several churches. My respect for Melvin as a born leader continued to grow as I watched her identify flaws in a performance and effectively keep the less mature singers focused on their work. “Y’all can chit-chat when we’re done,” I’d hear her sternly say. “Right now, remember why we’re here.  Okay, next song.”

Following our third session, Melvin stayed behind and asked to talk with me. We sat together on a bench where she broke down in tears. “I don’t think I can do this anymore,” she sobbed. “Everyone resents my being in charge and they jump all over me when you’re not around. You don’t understand what’s really happening here. Almost everyone in the choir is a Stanley…brothers, sisters, cousins…They resent being told what to do by someone who isn’t a Stanley. The worst is Kenny, the keyboard player. He resents not being in charge because he’s the musician and a man. ”

I was certain the project would unravel without her talent and leadership. Her stage presence, more than anything, had been what inspired me to make the offer, and she was essential to turning the choir into a disciplined, cohesive unit. “Look, Mel,” I responded, reassuringly placing my hand on her knee. “What you’re dealing with is jealousy. They know you’re the star and most of them are just backup, and they’re union folk who don’t like being told what to do by anyone. But I can’t make this happen without you. I’m giving you a shot to do more with your music than you ever imagined, but you got to decide if you’re enough of a leader to stand up to your own people if necessary. I sometimes have to play that role in every union local I deal with.”

“I hear you, she said. “Thanks for talking with me. I’ll try to hang in there for now.”

The choir members were all deeply religious in a sweet, loving and nonjudgmental way, but I continued getting glimpses of their other side: quick to take offence and paranoid. Following every rehearsal, I spent an hour with a tearful Melvin, encouraging her to stick with it.

At our dress rehearsal before recording, Kenny stepped forward and aggressively challenged me in front of the group. “I don’t see why we have to go all the way to Chapel Hill to make a record and I don’t see why you need to be there. I can take the choir to a studio right here in Whiteville and produce our album myself!”

“How many albums have you recorded?” I asked.

Kenny paused for a moment before attempting to defend himself. “None. But I’ve been playing gigs for the last fifteen years and I know what I’m doing. You can go back to negotiating contracts or whatever it is you do.”

Part of a union organizer’s job description involves unexpected debates with loose cannons before a crowd. “Look Kenny, we all appreciate your talent, but you don’t have a clue about how to mix and master a recording. And whoever runs your local studio, if he was worth a damn, wouldn’t be doing business in Whiteville. But the bottom line is the union’s funding comes through me. If I’m not involved and making decisions, Bruce sure as hell isn’t going to trust you with several thousand dollars.

The truth is that Kenny, who fancied himself “Mr. Music Business,” was the least gifted of the primary performers. He was sufficiently competent to play weddings in Whiteville, but brought nothing special to the table.

The Recording Session

On Friday, April 12, 1996 I got choir members off work on union business and we rendezvoused at an inexpensive motel I’d found on the outskirts of Durham. We were on a very tight budget that necessitated keeping travel expenses to a minimum. I presented my credit card to the proprietor and the choir then followed me on the drive to TGS Studio.

As we pulled up an hour later, we were greeted by Steve Gronbeck, the studio’s owner and a veteran sound engineer. His large wooden house was surrounded by acres of forest and he led us down a long flight of stairs to the recording chamber sprawled across an expansive, slightly musty basement. A small room filled with a twenty-four track recorder and mixing board, along with other equipment, was segregated from performers by walls and a soundproof window.

Cutting corners in regard to lodging was nothing compared to what would be necessary while recording. For decades, records had been made with sound-on-sound:  Each musician recorded separately, listening to existing tracks through headphones, ensuring that mistakes not only wouldn’t bleed over into the rest of the music, but could be easily edited. Unfortunately, our budget left us with under $2,000 to pay Steve. We were obliged to try this as a live performance, the way albums were cut in the 1950’s. The upside was this would at least be familiar to the choir.

Kenny was placed in an isolation booth with his own microphone. Melvin’s mike was up front near the mixing room, with three rows of back-up singers, paired two to a mike, standing behind her. Steve pushed a button allowing communication between the rooms. “Is everyone set?” he asked and received acknowledgement. “Okay then,” the engineer responded. “One…two…three…and we’re rolling!” It was 4 p.m. and we had time for two songs that evening. Melvin rose to the occasion even more than usual, but we kept hearing strange clicks coming from the keyboard as notes were played.

As the choir gathered in the mixing room, Steve asked Kenny, “Is there something wrong with your keyboard? I keep hearing these little clicking sounds.”

“Yeah, it started doing that two days ago,” “Mr. Music Business,” nonchalantly remarked. Under normal circumstances the session would have been postponed until the instrument was fixed. But these weren’t normal circumstances and we were now obliged to play the cards we’d been dealt.

“Where can we find a fish restaurant near the hotel?” Anna Stanley asked Steve, who provided the location. We agreed to reconvene at 9 a.m.

I remained behind to confer with Steve. “What do you think?” I asked.

“Your lead singer is really hot and the overall group energy is very powerful. But I can’t believe this guy Kenny walking into the studio with a broken instrument. I can do my best to identify the sound wave of the clicks and turn them way down but because the keyboard volume was loud enough to support twenty singers, some of it will have bled through to other microphones. All in all, they’re a really nice bunch…but tell me this…who lives near the coast and then comes to Durham looking to eat seafood?”

The next day we burned through ten songs in as many hours. Anna sang lead on two (including a song I’d written for them called “Angel of Freedom”) and Robert was out in front on two gospel tracks. Melvin took center stage for the rest. All three had very different voices which would add a dimension of variety and surprise to the finished product.

As the choir was preparing to leave, Kenny asked, “So when do we get our copy?”

“The real work has just begun,” I told him and did my best to explain the complexities of mixing and mastering.

“I’ve got to be there for that!” exclaimed the keyboard player. “I’m the musician in this group.”

“I’ll let you know when a date gets scheduled,” I lied. Steve and I had already made arrangements for the next day. But all Kenny would have brought to the session was a never-ending wave of arguments and we’d have been lucky to finish one song. It’s fairly standard for the producer and sound engineer to collaborate unaccompanied during this process.

Steve and I sat behind the mixing board on Sunday morning, cringing at off-key notes from some of the background singers and at the unwanted sounds coming from the keyboard. As I’d told the choir, recording studios are brutally honest.

“Look, we need to identify which mics the sour notes are coming from and turn then way down, if not off,” I suggested.

“But an important part of their style is this wall of sound behind the lead singer. We’ll lose some of that if we cut some of the mics.”

“No we won’t. Double the best mics and turn each into two. It will still sound like twenty singers.” The microphones had all been recorded on separate tracks. While not pure sound on sound because they did contaminate each other to some degree, emphasis could be established where needed.

We set about analyzing the individual tracks for each song, making adjustments and establishing the EQ (bass, midrange, treble) along with reverb for the key performers and choir as a whole. Steve spent an hour reducing the unwanted sounds from the keyboard by eighty percent, surgically removing the offending sound waves. The lead vocalists were so vibrant that the average listener would focus on them without even noticing the remaining background noise.

“This came out a hell of a lot better than I thought,” said Steve at 8 p.m. “Are you ready to dump it?” He referred to transferring the music onto a two-track tape which initiated the fairly simple mastering process of the 1990’s. We equalized volume throughout the recording and adjusted panning, determining which performers would dominate either the left or right speaker of a sound system.

Steve then downloaded the cumbersome tape onto a cassette which would serve as the manufacturing master. “I’d like a few additional copies,” I told him.  The final studio charges came to $1,685.

I sent a copy of the master to Bruce Raynor, with the intent of keeping him on board with the project. Another was mailed to John McCutchen, an acquaintance who was both a famous folk singer on Rounder Records and union activist, who might be able to open some doors for us.

Three days later, I was sitting at my desk in the union hall when I received a call from John. “I’ve been trying to track you down all morning,” he told me. “Please tell me you recorded the keyboard on a separate track. I can cut it out, use my own keyboard player and then bring it to Rounder. They’ll love it and offer you a contract.”

“I hate to tell you this, but we were on a very tight budget and had to record this live. The keyboard player had his own mike and track, but some bled over into other mikes. We were able to edit out most of the unwanted noise and…”

“That’s really too bad,” John cut in. “I could never bring this to Rounder with that keyboard player. But I really respect what you’ve done here. It’s otherwise a great album and people will go crazy for it.”

Ignorantly arrogant “Mr. Music Business” had destroyed the choir’s chance at a record deal and dream come true. Rounder wasn’t a major company like Columbia, but it was the largest and most respected of the independent labels. It would have put the choir’s music in a position to be sold in stores and go on tour.

I was about to turn in the following night at 12 a.m. when my phone rang. I knew only one person disrespectful enough to call that late, and said hello to Bruce Raynor who expected staff to be available 24/7.

“What’s this tape of the Whiteville Choir you sent me?” he began. “Did one of them bring a tape recorder to a rehearsal?”

“It wouldn’t sound half that good if it hadn’t been professionally recorded in a studio. Don’t you remember our discussion? Lavonne (union comptroller) has already cut a check for the studio’s invoice.”

“Look, I don’t recall ever agreeing to this and I’m too busy flying around the country to keep track of every invoice Lavonne receives. But that’s already spilled milk. What are you planning to do with these? Give them out at the next conference?”

“I’m not doing anything with what you’re holding. That’s a master, sent to you as a courtesy. In about a month, after we’ve created an album cover, I’m taking a virgin copy of the master to a place in Burlington that manufactures cassettes for professional musicians.”

“You keep using the word “professional” the director snarled, with his volume rising. “The Whiteville Choir aren’t professional anything, especially not musicians. They’re sewers in a garment factory and members of our union. Don’t go putting stars in their eyes and making them think they’re anything more than that. You’ve got a lot of goddamn nerve going out on your own spending the union’s money on something like this,” he screamed loud enough to shake my walls. “But since it’s done, it needs to stay within the union. They’re our resource. No publicity, no press coverage! I don’t want them getting a swelled head! This stays in-house. Do you understand me?”

“I understand your instructions,” I said, while having no intention of following them. “As for the money, during the conversation you forgot, I promised all money from sales would go toward reimbursing the union, and after that be contributed to PAC.”

“And you really fuckin’ think you’re gonna sell enough of these goddamn tapes to pay us back?!”

“Yes. But to ease your comfort levels, I guarantee that if the union hasn’t broken even within a year, I’ll make up the difference with my own money.”

This seemed to unnerve the director who responded, “Look, I don’t want your money.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve given you my word!”

When we finally hung up it was 2 a.m. This had been the most furious anyone had ever gotten with me. It felt like I needed a wash cloth to wipe his spit off my face.

Bruce was a brilliant tactician and administrator who ruled the Southern Region with an iron fist. He was a master at shrewdly manipulating people by understanding their ambitions and fears. It infuriated him that he could never find any buttons to push in me. I was one of only two people in the union who on occasion looked him in the eyes and said, “No.”

PART II: Paranoia Strikes Deep