Steve Bellamy is a fellow ex-Sheffield native (that’s Sheffield, UK!) with a wealth of stories around the music, lifestyle, the business that made rhythm and blues – go to the R&B Editorials section in the R&B Primer main menu above to reminisce with him (if you’re not already here)! They are dated to the time of the original submissions (apart from this entry, obviously) and are not fully checked for accuracy. Any errors, please be kind and report and I will correct them.
One of his claims to fame is that it was a company he owned that brought the original STAX/VOLT tour to England with Otis Redding, Booker T, Sam and Dave etc.
Of the tour itself Steve says “It was a seminal event for the UK. Things had been building up with a few individual artists coming over but nobody had ever considered a label specific tour. Actually getting all the big names together for one show was difficult enough but try putting them all together and then flying them round Europe. I had a great time but I swore I would never do it again. After Otis died ’67 I kinda dropped out from things……“
He also used to be married to Wilson Pickett’s niece (now you can’t get much more authentic than that). He also takes full responsibility for all the trouble Wilson gets into because he was the one who taught him to shoot….so we’ll gloss over that bit and concentrate on the wonderful stories he can tell.
Many thanks to Steve for the contributions and I hope (shout out to one Mr. Glover for the prompt) you enjoy the reminiscences. 🙂