I finally hooked with Al Reid, lead singer with the Capreez on their garage soul hit Soulsation on Detroit’s Sound label. We talked for about an hour about the history of the Capreez and that song, and about Al’s career: from his early bands, to going on the road with Jack Scott, to how he joined the Capreez, to why he turned down an offer from the Three Dog Night to be their lead vocalist, to the loneliness of the road, and to the joy of still playing music today with his son.
Al Reid is a great guy, and we really appreciate him sharing all those memories and stories. He’s also sending us a copy of another one of his songs that was a big hit in Canada, called Blue Eyed Girl. I am working on a big article about Al and the Capreez which I’ll drop in a few weeks here. For now, listen to this story Al told me about how the Capreez celebrated when they heard their other big hit, Rosanna, being played for the first time on CKLW:
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February 15th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Pingback from Cousins Vinyl · Detroit Rock ‘n Roll and Doo-Wop Show This Weekend
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Eric
Man, do I miss those days!
October 11th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Petey
I can not wait to hear the complete interview!
October 17th, 2007 at 7:18 am
admin
Al may stop by the shop next weekend to drop off his records and say hello. Once I get everything together I’ll write the story and post more of the interview.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Michael McNamara
Love the story about CKLW. Sounds like Al may have seen my documentary “Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of The Big 8″, given his comment about Denmark picking up the station (there is a sequence in the movie about the reach). Please let him know I’m a big fan of the Capreez.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:52 am
admin
Michael, I followed your link to your documentary. If you want to leave more info about his here at the site (just leave another comment), please feel free - it sounds very interesting - we could even plug it on the front page.
About Al Reid, we had a great conversation and I recorded about an hour of it. I was planning on writing a follow-up to this post, with a long feature article about Al and the Capreez. Al was going to come out and meet us at the shop in Plymouth, and give us a few more records of his that he did so I could post the audio in the story. I was also going to look for a copy of Soulsation so I could post it. Well, right as we were making plans to meet, my wife had our baby! That was about 3-4 months ago, and things are finally starting to come back to normal, so I\’m actually going to email Al right now and see if we can make arrangements again to meet.
So, thanks for the reminder!
-Geoff
February 14th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Cousin Justin
Hey Mike I believe I have seen your Doc on PBS, if it is the same one. I am a huge documentary fan and really enjoyed your movie.