Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth

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With the reactivation of the iconic jazz label, Flying Dutchman, veteran singer and songwriter Billy Valentine becomes the perfect artist to reintroduce the imprint with his sensational new album, Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth . Since last September when we announced our collaboration with Billy Valentine, Bob Thiele Jr and the Flying Dutchman label, with Billy’s peerless cover of Curtis Mayfield’s ‘We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue’, we have been looking forward to the moment when we could share more music with you. Earlier this month we shared Billy’s take on Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘Home Is Where The Hatred Is’ and it followed its predecessor onto Jazz FM’s A list. Today we can share with you the news that the album ‘Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth’ is out on March 24th. It’s one you don’t want to miss. I just want to make a difference,” Valentine adds. “I had to get this stuff out of my gut, and say what needs to be said in a way that could change someone’s mind, someone’s attitude, or just make them stop and think.” Having rediscovered his voice singing the protests of others, he’s begun working on songs of his own once again tapping into the protest song tradition that made his name four decades ago. Billy Valentine’s time, it seems, has come again. “My work’s not done,” he nods. “I still have more songs I want to sing, social commentary things, if it’s meant to be. I’m a vocalist, and just like a runner has to run, a singer has to sing.” Gart, Galen. First Pressings: The History of Rhythm and Blues: 1950. At Google Books. Retrieved 8 August 2019.

Valentine was born in Birmingham, Alabama on December 16, 1925. [1] [2] In 1948, Valentine replaced Charles Brown in Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, [3] then featuring jazz guitarist Oscar Moore. In 1950 that line-up did a couple of recording sessions for RCA Victor before embarking on a 50-date tour. [4] The "R & B Blue Notes" section of the May 27, 1950 issue of The Billboard, in announcing the tour, stated that Valentine had also recorded for Mercury Records [4] (Mercury 8173 [5]). The note added that the Blazers would be joined by Hal "Cornbread" Singer for part of the tour. [4] The same line-up accompanied Mari Jones, Maxwell Davies (probably) and the former Nat King Cole Trio bassist Johnny Miller for a recording session in Los Angeles in 1952. [6] All of these songs speak to everything that we are going through now,” Valentine explains. “It feels like history is repeating itself. Once I stepped into these songs, beautiful things happened, because I’ve studied each of them. With each song, I was able to find a place within my soul.” The making of Billy Valentine and the Universal Truth seems to have started more than 30 years, after Valentine first met Bob Thiele Jr. in the late-1980s. Around that time, Valentine had recently ended his partnership with his brother John. Together, they’d recorded as the Valentine Brothers. Beginning in 1979, the Valentine Brothers released a handful of (now rare groove) modern soul LPs on Source, Bridge, A&M, and EMI Records. Some of their most renowned singles include 1982’s “Lonely Nights” and “Money’s Too Tight (to Mention).” The latter was covered three years later by the British soul group, Simply Red.

Credits (5)

Hoffmann, Frank. Rhythm and Blues, Rap, and Hip-hop, p. 143. Infobase Publishing, 2005. At Google Books. Retrieved 8 August 2019.

Album Features Accompaniment From Theo Croker, Pino Pallodino, Jeff Parker, Immanuel Wilkins & Many More Since last September when we announced our collaboration with Billy Valentine, Bob Thiele Jr. and the Flying Dutchman label, with Billy’s peerless cover of Curtis Mayfield’s ‘We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue’, we have been looking forward to the moment when we could share more music with you. Find out more about Billy Valentine and this album via out recent interview… https://www.soulandjazzandfunk.com/interviews/speaking-a-universal-truth-the-billy-valentine-interview/a b Porter, Lewis; Chris DeVito, David Wild, Yasuhiro Fujioka, Wolf Schmaler. The John Coltrane Reference, pp. 43, 374-6. Routledge, 2013. At Google Books. Retrieved 8 August 2019. Valentine began recording the album right before the coronavirus pandemic. As the sessions proceeded, the world erupted in protest after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department. “Making the album suddenly became very cathartic,” Valentine recalls, “The pandemic was one thing. Then to see what happened to George Floyd – that just broke my heart.”

Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. William A. Valentine (born December 16, 1925), also known as Billy Valentine and Billy Vee, [1] is an American blues, R&B and jazz pianist and singer. a b c Eagle, Bob; LeBlanc, Eric S. (2013). Blues - A Regional Experience. Santa Barbara: Praeger Publishers. p.370. ISBN 978-0313344237. At Google Books. Retrieved 8 August 2019. Singing demos opened doors for Valentine to work in television too. In television, Valentine sang on songs produced for Boston Legal and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch . And on the popular FX series Sons of Anarchy, over its entire 7 season run, Valentine’s voice would become a staple on so many memorable cover songs produced by the series’ composer Bob Thiele, Jr.The new single from Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth is out now: a sublime cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘Home Is Where The Hatred Is’, originally on Heron’s 1971 Flying Dutchman album ‘Pieces Of A Man’. Billy Valentine is a Los Angeles-based soul singer, songwriter, and producer who has been performing for five decades. He scored some hits during the 1980s with his brother John in the Valentine Brothers, including "Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)" and "Lonely Nights," and has sung for film and television. He has held club residencies for many years, playing to sold-out houses. Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth collects eight topical, spiritual, and socially conscious soul and gospel songs. This is the first release from the newly revamped Flying Dutchman label run by producer Bob Thiele, Jr. It was founded by his producer father and was the home of seminal recordings by Gato Barbieri, Leon Thomas, Lonnie Liston Smith, Gil Scott-Heron, and dozens of others. Thiele, Jr. is a longtime creative associate and business partner of Valentine's. In addition to his core band, they brought on an impressive cast of session players including vibraphonist Joel Ross, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, pianist Larry Goldings, bassists Pino Palladino, and Linda May Han Oh, trumpeter Theo Croker, drummer Abe Rounds, and guitarist Jeff Parker. With the break-up of The Valentine Brothers, Billy, Phil Roy and Bob Thiele, Jr. formed a songwriting partnership penning songs for Ray Charles, Aaron Neville, The Neville Brothers and for Robert Townsend’s film The Five Heartbeats. (Billy also provided the singing vocals for fictional lead singer, Eddie King, Jr.) After earning some on-the-road experience singing with the Young-Holt Trio and touring with the original road company of The Wiz, Billy and his brother John were signed to a deal at A&M Records to record as The Valentine Brothers. While The Valentine Brothers never became household names, they did have some fairly successful R&B chart hits, including the Reaganomics-critiquing “Money’s Too Tight (To Mention),” and the crate digger quiet storm classic “Lonely Nights.”