The Foundations


The Foundations were a British soul band who were primarily active between 1967 and 1970. The group's background was West Indian, White British and Sri Lankan. Their 1967 debut single "Baby Now That I've Found You" reached number one in the UK and Canada, and number eleven in the US. Their 1968 single "Build Me Up Buttercup" reached number two in the UK and number three on the US Billboard Hot 100. The group was the first multi-racial group to have a number one hit in the UK in the 1960s.
The Foundations were one of the few British acts to imitate successfully what became known as the Motown Sound. The Foundations signed to Pye, at the time one of only four big UK record companies.

Background

The Foundations attracted much interest because of the size and structure of the group. Not only was there a diverse ethnic mix in the group, there was also diversity in ages and musical backgrounds. The oldest member of the group, Mike Elliott, was 38 years old. The youngest was Tim Harris, who, at 18, was barely out of school. The West Indian horn section consisted of Jamaican-born Mike Elliott and Pat Burke, both saxophonists and Dominican-born Eric Allandale on trombone. They were all highly experienced musicians who came from professional jazz and rock-and-roll backgrounds.
  • Eric Allandale had led his own band the New Orleans Knights in the early 1960s, releasing two singles, including "Enjoy Yourself ". He also played with Edmundo Ros and was a former member of the Terry Lightfoot and Alex Welsh bands. He was also a member of Romeo Z who recorded the title song for the 1966 film, Kaleidoscope, and an Irving Martin produced single, single "Come Back, Baby Come Back", released on CBS in 1967.
  • Pat Burke had been in groups since arriving in the UK at age 15, and had studied music at the London Music Conservatorium. A man of few words according to Bob Farmer of Disc and Music Echo, who also described him as "a dormant Desmond Dekker", Burke's first love was jazz. He played with jazz groups, but as the jobs did not pay much he joined The Foundations.
  • Clem Curtis who was born in Trinidad had been an interior decorator and professional boxer. He had also a background in wrestling and weight-lifting.
  • Mike Elliott came to the group after he had heard from one of the members that they were looking for a tenor saxophonist. He had played in various jazz and rock and roll bands, as well as the ensembles of Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott, the Cabin Boys, and others. He had recorded under his own name for Sonny Roberts' Planetone label, which issued early ska and reggae records, and he was a member of Rico's Combo, the label's house band led by Rico Rodriguez.
  • Tony Gomez, the keyboard player, was a former clerk who had worked in County Hall in the architect's department.
  • Drummer Tim Harris, who was born in St. John's Wood, London, had two brothers, including his twin, Nick. According to an article, "Digging the Foundations", by Bob Farmer in the 5 July 1969 issue of Disc and Music Echo, Harris had joined the merchant navy as a deckhand on a timber ship and had travelled to various parts of the world, including Siberia. He came back to the UK and became involved with groups.
  • Bassist Peter Macbeth was a former teacher who had taught English and draughtsmanship in Singapore and worked for a paperback publisher.
  • Guitarist Alan Warner had been in bands the Skeletones and the Line-up, a popular Dublin-based group. Warner turned down an offer to join the Black Eagles, which included Phil Lynott and Brian Downey.

    Origin

The origins of the Foundations go back to an R&B and ska outfit called the Ramong Sound, aka Ramongs. The band had two lead singers, Raymond Morrison and Clem Curtis. Curtis had come to the group by way of his guitar-playing uncle, who was impressed by his nephew's voice and told him that there was a band called the Ramongs looking for singers. Curtis auditioned and joined the band, and rose from being a backing singer to sharing the lead with Raymond Morrison.
At some stage Morrison was imprisoned for six months. In his absence, a friend of the band called Joan who ran a record store, suggested future psychedelic shock rocker Arthur Brown as a replacement. Brown was straight and clean living, and did not drink, smoke or take drugs. Decades later, Brown recalled when he walked into the Westbourne Grove bar for an audition, he saw Curtis holding a spear to the throat of the drummer, bent backwards over the bar. Brown and Curtis each performed solo numbers as well as duets and one of the band members recalled later that they had experimented with "underground-type music" when Brown was with them.
The group had unsuccessfully tried to recruit Rod Stewart as a singer. They had a jam session with him, but he turned down their offer as he preferred other musical styles. Alan Warner recalled decades later that Stewart's then girlfriend, Dee Harrington, had ended up being secretary for the Foundations' management.
The Foundations are said to have formed in Bayswater, London, in January 1967. They practised and played in a basement coffee bar club called the Butterfly Club, which they also ran. The premises were at one time `used as a gambling den. While managing the club themselves, they played music nightly and handled the cooking and cleaning. They would get to bed around 6am or 7am, sleep until 4pm, and open again at 8pm. Sometimes they barely made enough money to pay the rent, occasionally living off leftovers and a couple of pounds of rice. Gomez recalled in 1969 that he, MacBeth, Allandale and Harris were living on £2 per week and could not afford a packet of razor blades. His mother would come and tell him off for leaving his job in the County Hall architect's department. The situation of saxophonist Mike Elliott was also not ideal. He had been staying in a top floor flat, in a condemned house, where the roof had been removed. Elliott was still paying rent. Clem Curtis recalled going to see him one morning, knocking on his door which got Elliott out of bed. He asked him, "Hey, Mike, where's your roof gone?", to which Elliott replied, "I don't know, man, they just came and knocked it off."

Career

1967

The 4 February 1967 issue of Melody Maker shows a booking for the Ramong Sound to play at the All-Star Club on Sunday, 5 February.
Following the band being forced out of their club by a protection racket gang who tied up Clem Curtis and held a knife to his throat, they moved next door to the new premises, a run-down place that was once a mini-cab office. According to Alan Warner in his interview with It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine, dated 22 July 2011, this is where they were discovered. The biography on AllMusic stated that Barry Class was the first to discover them. Other sources claim they were discovered by Ron Fairway, a man with many music connections and who managed the group, the Ways and Means. Fairway had his own agency, Ron Fairway Enterprises which was located at 6 Artesian Road, London W.2. Fairway already had some success with his group, the Ways and Means. They already had record out, "Sea of Faces" on Pye. It got to no.39 on the Radio City City Sixty chart for the Sunday 1 - Sunday 8 January 1967 period, and on the 21st, no. 41 on the Radio Caroline chart. Interestingly the Ways and Means would later end up being involved with a label that Barry Class created.
In August 2023, Alan Warner was interviewed by Jack Hodgins of the Australian radio station, 2NUR FM. The interview appears to suggest that Raymond Morrison was still in the group when Ron Fairway approached them.
Ron Fairway told the group that he was going to get them a gig at Herne Bay. However, this job never materialized. The group sourced their own gigs which included a Caribbean club along Edgware Road and a few other clubs.
The Foundations were booked to appear at Eel Pie Island on Sunday 14 May 1967. Appearing as a support act, for their efforts they were paid a sum of £10.
Arthur Brown appears to have left the group between the first and second quarter of 1967. According to a 1993 interview of Brown with Allan Vorda, Arthur Brown could have signed with the Foundations and sung material from the writers of "Baby, Now That I've Found You" but he did not want to be with the group for two years.
The day Tony Macaulay came to hear the Foundations play, he was suffering from what he described as "the worst hangover of his life". The band was playing so loud he could not judge how good they were, but he decided to give them a chance. His comments are recorded in the book, 1000 UK No. 1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, that he woke up that morning with a stinking headache, and when he got to the studio and heard the Foundations, he thought they were terrible. He decided his hangover was to blame, and so he gave them the benefit of the doubt.
At first, they found progress quite slow, and one of their sax players, Pat Burke, had to drop out of the band and take another job while they went through a rough patch. He later rejoined them in 1967.
They were noticed by Brian Epstein, who added them to the roster of his NEMS Agency, but the contract became void after he died on 27 August 1967.
;"Baby, Now that I've Found You"
According to Roy Delo of Ron Fairway's group, the Ways and Means, they were offered the chance to record "Baby Now That I've Found You", but they turned it down. So it was given to the Foundations, and they recorded it with Clem Curtis on lead vocals.
It was released on 25 August 1967. Reviewed in the Quick Spins section of Disc and Music Echo, the reviewer Benny Valentine liked it but remarked that it needed a bit more drive on the production and singing. It was a sleeper And for ten weeks it did not do anything in the charts. Unlike the Ways and Means' single, "Sea of Faces" which was played on the pirate radio stations, charting on both Radio City and Radio Caroline, "Baby, Now that I've Found You" was not played on them. Luckily, the BBC's newly founded BBC Radio 1 was looking to avoid any records being played by the pirate radio stations and looked back at some recent releases that the pirate stations had missed. "Baby, Now That I've Found You" was one of them. The single then took off. The group members except for Pat Burke were pictured on page 4 of the 7 October issue of New Musical Express. The single had broken into the New Musical Express chart at no. 25 that week. And by November was number one in the UK Singles Chart. The Foundations were pictured on the front page of the 11 November issue of Melody Maker. Moving up from the previous week's no. 2 spot, they pushed the Bee Gees' single, "Massachusetts" off of the no. 1 spot of the Melody Maker Pop 30 chart. This period was the ideal time for the group because of the soul boom that was happening in the UK since 1965 and, with American R&B stars visiting the country, interest and intrigue in the Foundations was generated.
With the Foundations in the top spot with "Baby, Now That I've Found You", Ron Fairway commented to Melody Maker that most managements would have pulled them out of the "bargain priced dates" that had been booked for some time. He expressed gratitude to everyone for their support, and said that they would fulfill every engagement for which they had signed.
In addition to establishing the Foundations as a group, "Baby, Now That I've Found You" was also the song that established their song writer Tony Macaulay.
;Further activities
According to the 21 October issue of Disc and Music Echo, when the Foundations' single at no. 11 in the chart, the group had been booked for two star shows. One was for 31 October at Bily Smart's Circus at London Clapham Common, an event where a member of the Royal Family attends each year. The other was for 11 November to play at a banquet for the Lord Mayor and civic dignitaries.
Not long after their success with "Baby, Now That I've Found You", there were issues. Rock historian Roger Dopson describes what followed as a "behind the scenes struggle", where Fairway was "pushed out" and his partner, Barry Class, remained as sole manager of the group. Fairway later attempted to sue the band, alleging that he was wrongfully dismissed as the group's co-manager, though the band said that he had resigned of his own accord. The 2 December issue of New Musical Express wrote that it was likely to be several months before the case would be heard. According to Dopson, Fairway had leaked a story to the media saying that the Foundations had broken up which only served to keep the Foundations name in the news headlines.
Barry Class was quoted in the 18 November issue of Melody Maker as saying that it was a friction of personalities and it had been going on for about four months. It was also confirmed by New Musical Express that same week that Fairway no longer had any association with the group and that agency representation would be only handled by Class. New Musical Express had the exclusive on the follow up to "Baby, Now That I've Found You" being "Back on My Feet Again". The article also said that the group would be doing a string of radio and television appearances to tie in with the single's release. With "Baby, Now that I've Found You" being released in the United States on the Uni label that week, they were filming a US promo for the single and hoping to fit in a three-day visit to the States at the end of the month. They were also planning to fly to the United States after the completion of their radio and television promotions for "Back on My Feet Again" in January.
With the success of "Baby Now that I've Found You" having been established, there was talk within the group of adding a trumpet player to the line-up. Both Allandale and Burke could double on trumpet, but they were still looking to add one.
;Debut album
The readers of New Musical Express were alerted to the new album by the Foundations with the words in bold, New LPs by ''Foundations and Jimi Hendrix on the front cover of the 25 November issue. The album From the Foundations was issued on Pye NPL 18206. Nick Logan, NME'' reviewer gave the album a solid review and a track by track analysis, noting the Four Tops feel of "The Writings on the Wall". One of his favorites was "Mr. Personality Man". One song he did not warm to was "Call Me". Other tracks on the album were Joe Tex's "Show Me" and "Jerking the Dog", a Mighty Hannibal song, mistakenly referred to as a Rufus Thomas song.