By Jason Yoder

Outside, a small horde of women with strollers is clamoring to get inside a large yellow bus, wielding umbrellas as a soft rain begins to descend and break the heat of summer. Apparently, Shaggy has been recording here tonight and they are all trying to get a peak at the reggae superstar. No one is paying that much attention to the small sign in the lobby that states, “Studio A: The New Highlighters.”

But they should be. After all, it is the first session for the Highlighters in over three decades.

With the band settled into their isolated rooms and their headsets on, engineer Michael Graham leans forward towards his mixing board console and speaks into a microphone, “’Let’s Get Funky Tonight’ take one.”

A thick bass line begins to snake through the engineer’s monitors. Then Garvin’s drums come in, raining snare-shots and high-hats onto the backbeat. Three guitarists lurch into the mix, playing so tight you would think they were one.

Bell pulls a hand over his hair and begins rocking slightly with the rhythm section. He looks like a tall and impossibly lanky Don King stuck in a wind tunnel. His face is intense and focused as he begins to sing in a low voice, “If you feel you want to party tonight / Don’t just sit there with your jaws all tight / Free your mind and your body will follow / Get down tonight, don’t worry about tomorrow.”

Leaning back, he opens his mouth wide and unleashes a scream that cuts through the mix like a hot blade. “Come on, groove me baby / Let’s get funky tonight.”

During a break in the four-hour session, Bell is still shaking his head in amazement. “Everything does go around in a circle!”

It’s a statement that might sound clichéd if it weren’t for the fact that the story of the Highlighters is riddled with circles — small 7-inch circles of black vinyl pressed in a Nashville factory 31 years ago.

In 1968, James Bell was 30 years old and lead singer for the Highlighters. The band had a major hit on their hands with the singles “Poppin’ Popcorn” and “The Funky 16 Corners.” But it would take another 31 years before the band was vindicated by musical historians, and resurrected like a funky Lazarus from the depths of obscurity.

Suddenly, the Highlighters are back together. Their old records are huge hits in Europe and several labels are vying for their unreleased materials. They will be featured on four major records this year alone, and are planning their own release of fresh material on Bell’s label, Three Diamonds. It will be the first Three Diamonds release in three decades. The band is cutting tracks as fast as they can, rehearsing late into the night despite exhaustion. There is a sense of urgency. Garvin has even delayed life-saving, triple-bypass surgery for weeks in order to complete the recordings.

It’s all too strange for Bell, a retired plumber who once fancied himself a singer in the style of Billy Eckstine but somehow ended up a deep funk legend in England.

“This thing divides my life in half,” he says in amazement. Fittingly, the story of how Bell and the Highlighters went massive for the second time can be divided into two halves as well.

James Bell and the record that is making him a Deep Funk legend.

When the Highlighters first started playing together in the early ’60s, they didn’t have James Bell on vocals or Dewayne Garvin on drums. They were just another jazz group gigging in the back room after band practice at Crispus Attucks High School.
It wasn’t long before the group decided to call themselves the Highlighters. “Our name came about because Clifford Ratliff had a couple of older brothers. They used to go out and party and in those days they used to call it highlighting,” says saxophonist Clifford Palmer Jr.
Rhythm and blues was the newest sound and it was quickly supplanting jazz as the most popular music along Indiana Avenue. In less than a year, the band transformed itself from a jazz group to an R&B group.

The Highlighters had a lineup consisting of James “Porkchop” Edwards on drums, James Brantley on guitar, Richard “Boola” Ball on organ, James Boone on bass and Clifford Palmer Jr. on saxophone.

One of their early shows was at a carnival across the street from Crispus Attucks. Herb Miller owned a record shop called Good Vibrations and he was within earshot of the Highlighters when they played their set.

“They were pretty good playing, but they didn’t have very much equipment, so I took them under my wing,” he recalls. In addition to owning the record store, Miller also managed bands. He was president of the Defiants Club and it was his duty to book groups to play large social events. During the early ’60s, he booked acts like James Brown and the Temptations. When he discovered the Highlighters at the carnival, he began to book them as well, having them play with the all-girl singing group the Tri-Dells.

Palmer remembers some of those early gigs well. “We played up and down Indiana Avenue. We played on the back of trucks for political campaigns. We didn’t even have cars back then so we just carried our instruments down the street. We would crash dances where they were just spinning records and ask if we could play. We were just starting out so we just wanted to play.”

In 1966, the Vietnam War would bring the band’s promise to a sudden halt. “We made a pact that when we all got out of the military we would get back together and keep the same guys,” says Palmer. Four years later that promise would return to haunt the Highlighters.

In 1968, the members of the Highlighters began slowly filtering back into the country. It was their drummer, Porkchop, who remained behind. He had signed up for the Marine Corps and would be at war for another year.

Meanwhile, music had changed. James Brown had released “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and, later, the groundbreaking “Cold Sweat.” The new funk sound was changing rhythm and blues. Ultimately, it would change the Highlighters’ sound, too.

When the Highlighters returned from the war they re-formed and began rehearsing again. But they were still missing a drummer and a lead vocalist. With the addition of singer James Bell and a drummer, Dewayne Garvin, they were developing a new sound.

Dewayne Garvin got out of the army about the same time as the other Highlighters. He was back in Indianapolis in 1968, looking for people to play music with, when he saw the Highlighters performing at a club called the Plantation. A week later, he went to one of the band’s rehearsals and asked if he could join the band as a saxophonist or keyboard player. The Highlighters were already well-stocked in those departments, the band noted, but they did need a drummer. Garvin told them he could play and the next day he bought a White Hall Drum kit for $280. If the band had known the truth — that while Garvin played a single drum in the Presidential Drum and Bugle Corps during the war, he never touched a full drum kit — they might have turned him away. Their decision turned out to be auspicious. Garvin’s fast playing and unorthodox style of reversing the normal use of his hands ultimately gave the Highlighters their signature sound. Many drummers observed that it looked like Garvin was drumming in a mirror, but his style was truly innovative.

“I was using a lot more syncopation in my style of playing than James Brown,” says Garvin, explaining that his strange new sound came from learning a style of drumming called the New Orleans funk beat. He had learned it from a friend while with the drum corps and soon adapted its rhythms for the full drum kit.

Garvin fit into the group well and even got his own nickname, the Funky Buzzard. “We were all chasing girls back then,” recalls Garvin. “James had this girl I knew when I was a kid. He was dating her and when he dropped her I picked her up. He said, ‘You’re just like an old buzzard. Anything that falls or dies you grab it up!’ From that day on they started calling me the Funky Buzzard. That name has stuck with me for the last 30 years.”

When the Highlighters re-formed in the summer of 1968, James Bell was singing with Showtime productions.

“One time we were playing at the Adams Mark out by the airport. James Brantley had just gotten out of the service and he asked me to join the Highlighters band because they were re-forming. I went to rehearsal with them and we started playing at the Days Country Club.”

Lead by organist Boola, the band was fully formed by August of 1968. In the spring of 1969, they were ready to record their first record, “Poppin’ Popcorn,” a funky instrumental with writing credits to Cliff Palmer and James Boone. The B-side was a slow-tempoed soul number, “Amazing Love.”

Bell remembers that first recording session well. “When we recorded “Poppin’ Popcorn” I came up with the money. It was $300.”

Originally, the band wanted to record and press the record on their own, but local entrepreneur Paul Majors convinced them to record under his new label, Rojam (“major” spelled backwards). The band agreed and a short time later they recorded at Midwest Studios with Majors given production credit.

Midwest Studios was a two-track operation run out of a tiny garage covered in eggshell cartons for soundproofing. The garage was so small that Boola had to play his organ in the alley because only his amplifier would fit inside.

Paul Majors and the band pressed 1,000 copies and began distributing them around town. But the song didn’t take off until WTLC DJ Spider Harrison got hold of a copy.

“I was doing my first remote broadcast at Sach Brothers Pan Shop with the manager of WTLC-FM, Tom Mathis. [James] Boone was watching me do my thing and someone told me who he was. I immediately grabbed their debut 7-inch and played ‘Poppin’ Popcorn’ on the airwaves,” Harrison recalls.

The single raced up the charts, topping out at No. 1, beating out national acts like James Brown, Wilson Pickett and Dyke and the Blazers. In all, the band remembers pressing more than 3,000 singles, a huge hit for a local market. But the band started to get suspicious that Paul Majors was pressing copies of “Poppin’ Popcorn” behind their backs, trying to skim profits on the side. It led to a falling out between Majors and the Highlighters.

From that day forward, the Highlighters vowed to be their own managers. They were planning to release a follow–up record soon. It would be the first record on their own label, Three Diamonds. All they needed was another hit single. James Bell gave it to them a few months later.

In August 1969, Bell was working as a production checker at the Ford Motor Company when a song suddenly came to him. He slipped off the line to take a break.

“I went to the bathroom, put some cardboard on the seat and put my feet up on the door and I stayed in their about 10 minutes and I had written ‘The Funky 16 Corners’ and arranged it and everything.”

That night, when the Highlighters went to rehearsal, Bell presented the song to the group. They recorded it in a single take. The resulting cut was as rough as funk ever got. Dirty and overdriven, the recording sounded like it would melt the tape off the reels. With the band hooting and hollering in the background and Bell’s piercing screams, the single sounded as if it had been recorded live in a nightclub. The resulting fast-tempo 45 spawned its own dance moves and ignited a frenzy around the city.

“Sometimes on our way to rehearsal, everybody would jump out of the car and do “The Funky 16 Corners” right in the middle of the street. Every car you passed was playing it!” remembers Garvin.

With two bona fide hits under their belts, the Highlighters were making headway into many of the city’s clubs. They gigged at the hottest places like Daddy Ray’s 20 Grand club at 34th and Illinois. They became the club’s house band, making $950 a week.

The resulting attention prompted the Highlighters to plan a tour across the Midwest and the East Coast later that year. But an old promise brought the tour to a crashing halt. The Highlighters’ old drummer, Porkchop, came back from the Marines and forced a face-off between the original band and newcomers Bell and Garvin.

In the end, the band voted to kick out Garvin and bring back Porkchop. That decision split the band in two and eventually led to its self-destruction.

Bell noticed the difference without Garvin on drums immediately. He quit two weeks after the vote. A short time later, Boola, the organist, left and the Highlighters quickly drifted apart.

During that period, the band somehow managed to record several more singles — one on Three Diamonds, three more on Chess and the last on Lulu. But by that time, interest in their material was dwindling. The Highlighters faded from the charts and, soon thereafter, from everyone’s memories. It would take 31 years for the Highlighters to get another shot at fame.

The story of how the Highlighters came back from obscurity begins at Beverly Records in a near-south suburb of Chicago. Beverly Records is a family-run record store that has been in business since 1967. In the ’90s, it became a pot of gold for collectors and DJs who poured through crates of obscure 45s for rare records and forgotten music. It was just the kind of place Jamie Hodge enjoyed. One day, he was searching the racks of 45s when he opened a drawer labeled “F.” In it he found an untouched and unplayed copy of the Highlighters’ “The Funky 16 Corners.”

“I took it home, played it to myself a lot and wondered if I was on to something,” recalls Hodge.

His discovery would have a two-pronged affect on the future of the Highlighters and would lead to two separate releases of their records on both sides of the Atlantic.

Hodge was the first to introduce “The Funky 16 Corners” to major U.S.-based collectors like Chicago’s Dante Carfagna and DJ Shadow.

Shortly after hearing Hodge’s copy of “The Funky 16 Corners,” Carfagna and Shadow found themselves in the back of Rockin’ Billy’s Record Shop, surrounded by thousands of 45s maintained by Indianapolis resident and former RCA distributor Michael Verloop. Tucked away in one of the custom-made cabinets that housed Verloop’s shrine to old records, Carfagna discovered a copy of “Poppin’ Popcorn.” Later that day, the two collectors listened to it in their car on a portable record player: Both of them practically lost their minds.

Later that week, Carfagna shared his discovery with fellow collector Egon, who was then travelling across the South trying to find lost funk records. Egon was intrigued and soon found himself on his way to Indianapolis in an attempt to license the record for reissue. He ended up at saxophonist Clifford Palmer’s house, hoping to find copies of “Poppin’ Popcorn” and “The Funky 16 Corners.”

It would take over a year of wrangling with all the band members to get approval to reissue the single. Egon and Peanut-Butter Wolf’s label, Stones Throw (www.stonesthrow.com), would release a split 7-inch with “Poppin’ Popcorn” on one side and an edited version of “The Funky 16 Corners” on the B-side with liner notes by WTLC luminary Spider Harrison. Once again the Highlighters were selling records, but this time without the aid of any radio play.

After introducing the record to U.S.-based collectors, Hodge moved to England with “The Funky 16 Corners”; the record would ignite another mania in clubs that were starting to hop with a new movement called Deep Funk.

“Deep Funk as a genre began when DJs and collectors began discovering truly obscure artists that rivaled — or were better than — the artists on the major labels. The recent discovery of these deeper groups dates back 10 years max. Before that, everyone was all about James Brown and the Meters,” explains Egon.

In London, Deep Funk collectors like Keb Darge, Ian Wright and Raw Deal were making names for themselves playing funk 45s at Madam JoJo’s every Friday night.

When Hodge moved to England he found himself surrounded by like-minded collectors. It wasn’t long before he met Keb Darge at a swap event and introduced the DJ to “The Funky 16 Corners.”

“I really had no intention of selling ‘The Funky 16 Corners,’” says Hodge of the meeting. “But I wasn’t a full-time DJ and would likely have little success getting it heard.”

After listening to the track, Darge felt confident that “The Funky 16 Corners” would become a huge hit at his dance parties. “As soon as I heard it I offered him a handsome three-figure sum. I knew it would go massive if played enough. He was short of money and let me have it, so I started to hammer it in my sets.”

Darge’s intuition was right. It wasn’t long before it seemed like every DJ in the UK wanted to get their hands on a copy of “The Funky 16 Corners.” But finding a copy was another story. With so much demand, prices began to skyrocket.

UK collectors like Malcolm Catto and Gerald Short began to take notice. The two flew to Indianapolis last Halloween in a frantic attempt to get a copy of the record. They ended up at Howard’s Hard to Find Record Shop on the intersection of 54th and Keystone, just about the time the proprietor, Howard Phillips, was getting ready to close up shop. Phillips remembers the two dealers well. “I don’t want to call them scruffy, but they looked like they had been on the road a while.” At first he ignored them, but when one of them began waiving a fistful of money in his direction, Phillips quickly changed his mind and opened up his shop. Inside, the two collectors poured over crates of 45s, hoping to find a copy of “The Funky 16 Corners.”

“They were looking through the boxes and all of a sudden one of the guys is shaking, and he can’t talk,” recalls Phillips. One of the collectors had found a scratched up and badly played copy of “The Funky 16 Corners.” The Brits immediately paid $500 for it and Short began hatching plans for his own UK release — a fully unedited duplicate of the original 45, “The Funky 16 Corners Parts 1 and 2.” Issued on his fledgling label, Jazzman Records (www.jazzmanrecords.co.uk), the single was released as a limited pressing for UK DJs and collectors who couldn’t afford the insanely expensive original.

The dual release of the Highlighters records on both sides of the Atlantic made waves in the funk collectors’ market and helped spur on the legend of the Highlighters.

Egon explains what made “The Funky 16 Corners” such a great find: “’The Funky 16 Corners’ is probably one of the best Deep Funk 45s ever unearthed. All the elements are there, and it’s rough as fuck. The groove can’t be beat, the musicianship is tight, the recording is rough and there is a monster drum break by Dewayne Garvin.”

“The Funky 16 Corners” has “that sound,” something hard to express in words, but easily identified to the educated listener (see sidebar). And “that sound” drove “The Funky 16 Corners” to the top of the charts on the Web site www.funk45.com. The audio postings on the Web site are entirely made up of Deep Funk tunes discovered over the years. Listeners get to vote on which one sounds the funkiest.

In order to help feed the mania surrounding the record, Stones Throw is releasing a 12-inch LP with funk remixes by Cut Chemist and Madlib. Cut Chemist’s “Bunky’s Pick” uses breaks and beats from several Deep Funk cuts, and it makes extensive use of “The Funky 16 Corners.” In September, Stones Throw is planning to release a full album called The Funky 16 Corners, which will feature the Highlighters’ title cut, as well as 15 other tracks of rare funk, many of which are from Indianapolis. The record will include Spider Harrison’s “Beautiful Day,” which features the Highlighters’ rhythm section.

All this gives James Bell and Dewayne Garvin plenty to think about. With everyone making money on their records, isn’t it time to bring the Highlighters back together?

When Bell called Garvin on the phone in Louisville and told him about the re-release of the records and the fact that “The Funky 16 Corners” was No. 1 on funk45.com, Garvin immediately returned to Indianapolis.

“This whole thing is tripping me out!” says Garvin. “All this hype about my playing ability? On those records that are big now, I could hardly play. I’m a much better drummer than I was then.”

Garvin and Bell began rehearsing in Bell’s basement over a month ago. These creative late-night sessions have generated enough new material for two full-length albums.

A few weeks later, Bell and Garvin formed the New Highlighters. They added Clint and Dan Jones on rhythm guitars. Bassist Kenneth Burke and lead guitarist Arnold Lee Banks joined as well, creating a tight rhythm section. In the meantime, Bell and Garvin worked on the parts to a half-dozen new songs — funk cuts like “Let’s Get Funky Tonight,” and slower tracks like “Soft Brush Funk.” They are hoping to release a full album that will include all the old Highlighters material as well as five new songs in late August.

All this attention to the Indianapolis funk scene has unearthed a number of bands like the Highlighters. But few have capitalized on the movement as well as Bell and Garvin.

“It makes you feel good, because we might have been a little bit ahead of our time,” says Bell. “At the same time, you feel good because you did something people appreciated. And it must have been good because it came back around again!”