"FREEZE" by BATISTE BROTHERS BAND ON VINYL PAYPAL
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Freeze Album by Batiste Brothers Band
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Dynasty-Batiste Brothers, Inc
The Legendary Album "FREEZE" is circulating around the globe as a collector's item. Many R&B lovers are clamering to get an original copy of the cut. The album was released in 1982 and instantly became a turntable hit. Unfortunitely, that doesn't sell many records. However, the album has been grandfathered in and stands a chance to claim it's original fame. "I Can't Get You Off Mind" is a sexy, sultry and sassy blend of funk and soul. Michael Batiste is the vocalist on the track. He has experience with major vocolist such as Jackie Wilson, David Ruffin, Spencer Wiggins and more. Michael's influiences range from the blues to the Beatles. "Party Down" doubles down on a reappearence from the past and landed on You Tube. Secretly, the underground few who embraced the "Freeze" album are celebrating the resurgency.
In 1976, I founded the Batiste Brothers Band® to establish our own identity and create a home base. Specifically, we had backed-up King Floyd on the road and when we broke down in North Carolina, we were invited over to the school simply because we were his band, but that wasn’t who we were. Sure, we were “Side persons,” but we had established ourselves as a musical family. When we’d open for King, the crowd went wild with excitement. We’d warm them up to a frenzy. Naturally, when the star came out, the crowd would grow even more frantic. They loved the show, but we’d get no credit for the night. Michael, David and I were the backbone of the night. From rehearsals to equipment and transportation, my family took most of the tasks. There were several reasons the Gladiators broke up, but the most important reason was for me to start a family group with the goal to have family members be players, and the “Band” part of the name would apply to our musician friends in the group. Family was never meant to exclude other members.
The Elm St. Practice room would soon be replaced by my living room. I set up my front room just as I’d set up the band room on Elm Street-a set of drums, bass amp, guitar amp, keyboards, keyboard amplifiers and a P.A. System.
While in college, I learned about having an identity. Music was undergoing it’s usual transformation. It was commercial to have a musical family group. Then, the Isley Brothers, the Brothers Johnson, the Jackson 5 and other musical families existed.
Besides family groups, there were groups sprouting up all over the country that featured group songs. Having a love for performing on stage with my family made it that much better. Being influenced by those family groups as a commercial success story, I recruited all Batiste family members to become a part of a record venture. It’d be and independent record company to start an industry such as Motown, or early Cosimo Studio recordings in New Orleans.
The goal would be to put out a hit record like King Floyd had done. I thought we could get picked up by a major record company and have the upper hand on a deal. I was never a fan of getting a record deal because everybody I knew who had one had been messed over. The important thing would be to negotiate a good deal. I knew of stories about deals where the producer cut the deal and he was given $150,000.00 to produce the tracks. The money would go into escrow to be recouped from record sales. The producer would agree to do an album.
I went to Dad with the idea of putting together an independent production and record company. Besides being a pragmatist, Dad was too consumed with raising seven boys and bringing in the major part of the families income. Though, Mom had the same tasks, she listened to what I told her about the music business and put up $1,000.00 as her 20% shares to start a record company. I put up money for 51% of the corporation.
It would be called Dynasty-Batiste Brothers Incorporated. Estella C. Batiste, Paul Batiste, Michael Batiste, Peter Batiste, James Batiste and Thomas Batiste are stockholders for their share of the corporation. David was not in the corporation because this time we were still separated. He’d already started another group with his wife and a white guy on guitar. The guitarist was real good. He was the first person I saw play harmonics on the guitar. Later, David would play with the Meters. He would later go on Saturday Night Live with them. The Meters would soon break up.
Times were changing and rhythm sections were becoming popular. Music was ever evolving and now we would require a large Public Address System. We were one of the first to buy a JBL system with eighteen inch woofers with horns, tweeters and mid range speakers. This was because we had my brother—Michael—who studies electronics. I delegated authority to members of the family. I looked at what each member did well and gave them an assignment. David was good with the microphone, so I made him the spokes person. Later, when Peter would join the band, I worked with him on the band account. Everyone was good at something. To improve our vocals, I hired vocalist. The female vocalist was a good addition to the band for the sound I was trying to develop. I wanted a group sound. In the sixties and seventies self contained groups were not the norm. One of the first groups that sang and played the instrument at the same time was the Beatles. The group from England took America by storm.
It was a long hot summer and we weren’t gigging often, so I came up with an idea for a festival at Lee’s Gap. In Little FarmsThe excerpts from my book tell a story about how I became the leader of the Batiste family musical group.