Bob Thiele on Billy Valentine

In 1994 I began a brief and unspectacular stint as an A&R executive at a major record company. My first order of business: sign Billy Valentine.

When my boss instructed me to create a marketing plan that could theoretically prove album sales of one-quarter of a million units (LPs/CDs in record company parlance) it hit me like a brick. Billy was a very different artist compared to the hitmakers of 1994. And even if I bucked the trend, I lacked real signing power. Put simply, this was not my father’s A&R. 

Naturally, being shot down by my boss at EMI was a blow but ultimately understandable. He was running a business! But my wish to make a Billy Valentine record never escaped me.

Billy and I go way back. 1987 to be accurate. A record company friend introduced us at a time when we were both figuring out how to pay the rent. Literally. “Money’s Too Tight To Mention” was how the Valentine Brothers put it so aptly in 1982. 

But the story begins much earlier. It’s the early 1960s and Billy, a 15-year old kid from Columbus, Ohio, would spend the summer visiting his older brother Alvin who had a regular gig playing organ at Leon’s Cocktail Lounge in Patterson, New Jersey. Sitting in with Alvin one night, Billy impressed Leon so much that he was given the weekend slot as the opening act for the bigger name acts who crossed the Hudson after their stint at the Apollo. Leon’s was Billy’s college and graduate school. He earned his degree and was soon singing with the Young-Holt Trio, touring with the original road company of The Wiz in the 1970s and ultimately landing a record deal with his brother John at A&M Records with brother John as The Valentine Brothers.

Back to ‘87. Billy and I were living in LA, writing songs when we were soon joined by songwriter Phil Roy who completed our successful writing trio. In a very short period of time, our songs would be recorded by Ray Charles, The Neville Brothers, and both Pop and Mavis Staples to name only a few. Our heroes. Icons. And it was Billy’s voice that sold our songs, making them irresistible to the artists who would cover them.

Others caught on and Billy would become the secret weapon of nearly every songwriter in L.A. His vocal performances on demos made their songs (and ours) irresistible to Bonnie Raitt, Joe Cocker, Bette Midler, and countless others. And yet, no one outside of the privileged few knew who Billy Valentine was.

My father had a very storied career as a record producer. Perhaps his most notable recordings were with iconic Black artists. John Coltrane. Louis Armstrong. Duke Ellington. Gil Scott-Heron. Eventually, in 1969 he would start up his own label, Flying Dutchman Records. Many of the initial releases on Flying Dutchman were by important Black voices, both musical and political. 

Cut to the summer months of 2020. America, in the throes of a global pandemic, was experiencing one more come-to-Jesus moment in our violent history: the murder of George Floyd. On the heels of a powerful new movement revolving around the hash-tag #BlackLivesMatter, it seemed the right time to resurrect Flying Dutchman and seed it with this collection of eight recordings by Billy Valentine and The Universal Truth.

Billy has seen more than his share of dreams deferred. America’s dark history of racial injustice is no secret. So the timing seemed right for Billy, without hesitation or inhibition, to convey the outrage and the struggle, the sadness, betrayal and despair of these songs by Gil Scott-Heron, Curtis Mayfield, Prince, Stevie Wonder and War. And not atypical of the Black experience in America, he also sings of hope in the words of the spiritual “Wade In The Water” and the idea of universal love, peace and brotherhood in Leon Thomas’ “The Creator Has A Master Plan.” 

The 21st century has created an entirely different world for music and the artists to put forth their message. The impediments still exist and they are numerous. But maybe the landscape has changed enough for a record like Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth to find an audience. 

At the heart of every great spiritual teaching is the invitation for each of us to do something meaningful whether small in size or large. And as my late friend Bob Neuwirth used to ask of an artist, “But do you have something to say…?” It is with those two principles in mind that we make this humble offering. Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth.