Vancouver soul legend Bobby Taylor dead at 83
Bobby Taylor had the voice of an angel, but he was a bit of a devil.
“He was a legend among singers, and Motown people, R&B people (from the 1960s),” said his former guitarist Tommy Chong.
“He’d been singing doo-wop, I think since he was 15. And so everybody around knew him, but he was sort of like a wild child, you know — he was untameable.”
“On the bandstand he was phenomenal,” said guitarist Henry Young, who also played with Taylor.
“Off the bandstand . ... If you want to (put it in) today’s terms, he was exactly like Justin Bieber, (there was) no control over him.”
This may be one of the reasons Taylor never became a big star. But he did have one major claim to fame — he discovered Michael Jackson, and produced the first Jackson 5 album.
Taylor died in Hong Kong on July 22 after a battle with cancer. He was 83.
Taylor had been living and performing in Asia since 2006, first in Beijing, then in Hong Kong. In Vancouver, though, he’ll always be known as the singer in Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, one of Canada’s great soul acts from the ’60s.
Chong was the guitarist in the band, and co-wrote their big hit, Does Your Mama Know About Me?, a ballad about a mixed-race love affair.
Taylor had a mixed-race background himself — his father was Native American and his mother was Puerto Rican. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C., where his childhood neighbour was Marvin Gaye.
By the mid-’60s he was living in San Francisco, where he played in a band that backed the strippers at Big Al’s, one of San Francisco’s most notorious topless clubs.
Chong saw him in action and was blown away. He talked Taylor into coming north to join his group, which had the house gig at the Elegant Parlour, an after-hours club run by Chong’s family on Davie Street.
Over time the band evolved into Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. One night Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson of the Supremes saw the group and told their label, Motown, about them. The Vancouvers signed to Motown, moved to Detroit and recorded an album that was produced by Motown head Berry Gordy, with a lot of help from Burnaby’s Tom Baird.
Does Your Mama Know About Me? went to number five in the rhythm and blues charts in 1968, and the group toured non-stop.
“We toured with Diana Ross and the Supremes,” said Chong.
“We did the southern chitlin circuit and theatres, the Uptown Theatre, the Apollo Theatre, the Regal Theatre, we did all the soul clubs.”
The opening act for one of their gigs at Chicago’s Regal Theatre was the Jackson 5. Taylor loved Michael Jackson from the get-go.
“I just loved to watch that little sucker dance,” Taylor told Vancouver writer Al Campbell in 2007.
The Jackson 5 stayed at Taylor’s apartment in Detroit when he pitched them to Motown.
Unfortunately for the group Motown steered Taylor towards the Jackson 5, and Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers were no more. Chong came back to Vancouver and formed the legendary comedy duo Cheech and Chong.
In the 1970s Taylor survived a bout with throat cancer. Around 1990 he moved back to Vancouver, where he formed a band with Young.
The Taylor/Young band did quite well for a few years, but by the mid-’90s the gigs were getting slim. So he joined Vancouver keyboard player Doug Louie when Louie got a gig in China.
After a couple of years in Beijing he moved to Hong Kong, where he had a regular gig at a club and worked as a producer and mentor to young musicians.
He didn’t seem to have any regrets.
“I have 12 kids, met three presidents and in general, I wouldn’t change a thing,” Taylor told the South China Morning Post in 2009. “I won’t retire until God takes me away.”