“Just this morning, I was looking up something related to the book and came across a review that I did of a book about the Beach Boys in the Christian Science Monitor in 2012,” says Wolff one recent afternoon as he sits outside a Garfield Heights Starbucks to talk about the book. Negative Space hosts a release party for Invisible Soul at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, and Wolff will be on hand to talk about the book. “The tagline [to that Christian Science Monitor review] says I was developing Invisible Soul, a book about Cleveland’s music scene from doo-wop to disco. Wow. I didn’t know I had been talking about it that long.”
Wolff has written about Cleveland’s music extensively for the past couple of decades. He’s contributed to local publications such as Scene and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and he penned Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories, a history of Cleveland’s development into a rock ’n’ roll mecca.
In writing Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories, Wolff says he realized he had left out a crucial part of Cleveland’s musical history.
“I suspected there was a whole other world that I didn’t treat at all in that book, but that should have been treated,” he says. “Essentially, to not do it, is to maintain racism in a way.”
For Invisible Soul, Wolff says he collected anecdotal stories and presented them at face value.
“I didn’t corroborate everything, and the interviews were largely one-shot deals,” he says. “The idea is simply to shine a light on an obscured scene and to get people talking.”
Wolff conducted more than 60 interviews in putting the book together, and many of the musicians and behind-the-scenes players said that they didn’t believe there was anything that could be identified as a “Cleveland sound.”
Wolff says he’s not so sure.
“If something comes on the radio, I can’t say whether it is from Cleveland,” he says. “There is some outstanding Cleveland music, and Hot Chocolate’s ‘Good for the Gander’ is great and as good as funk gets — by anybody. The best track the Average White Band never wrote is ‘Soul and Sunshine’ by Harvey and the Phenomenals. That’s a Cleveland track. There definitely is a Cleveland style.”
Without someone like Motown’s Berry Gordy or Philadelphia International’s Ken Gamble and Leon Huff, Cleveland’s soul scene never really caught the national eye in the way that Detroit and Philadelphia’s did. And yet, as Wolff maintains in his book, the local scene had some terrific record labels in Saru and Way Out that nurtured local talent.
“Motown is a great story; we didn’t tell that kind of story,” says Wolff. “Ours was much more Balkanized. There were pockets of entrepreneurship but for whatever reason, they couldn’t grow.”
The book mentions several of Cleveland’s most happening soul and R&B clubs – places such as Leo’s Casino and the Corner Tavern. So which performances does Wolff wished he had seen?
“I would have loved to have seen George Hendricks in his prime,” says Wolff. “When I saw him with his current Hesitations, he still had moves. I saw Lou Ragland, who performed here. He was great. I would have gladly paid to have see any number of Ragland’s bands. He employed some serious talent. I would have liked to have seen Sly [Slick & Wicked] because they were the most refined and choreographed.”
A team effort, the book came together with the help of publisher and editor James O’Hare, who, with Jaime Lombardo, runs locally based publisher Act3Creative.
“Jim [O’Hare] and I worked together on ‘Designing Victory,’ [the first Black Cleveland architect] Robert P. Madison biography I wrote in 2019,” says Wolff. “I couldn’t have done this without Jim. Jim said he wanted to publish the Invisible Soul book, and we entered into a really good arrangement. He shaped it and helped structure it and navigated it into a book that was totally collaborative. Jaime Lombardo came up with the terrific cover.”
Wolff says there is more to the story, and he’s hoping that anyone who remembers what the scene was like back in the day will reach out to him with stories and information.
“I think [the book] will expand incrementally,” he says. “There are some things we could fix now right now but not enough to warrant another printing. If there is feedback, and we have something more to fold into it, it would come out as an expanded edition. The idea is for it to have a life of its own and be regenerative. It’s already interactive through the QR [codes that enable you to hear some of the songs].”
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Related Stories
Masonic Auditorium Poised for $8 Million Facelift Thanks to Owner Temple Live
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 8, 2023.