Friday’s Fitztory with Charlie Wilson
Greeting on this June 19th Friday Fitztory morning. There most certainly seems to be an Aled Jones hint of something ‘Walking In The Air’ currently with more disturbing news star side and in the UK revolving around hash tag BLM & hashtag White Privilege. There is still so much to understand and learn before there is any hope of equilibrium peace, but I will endeavour to do my bit to spread the love like butter on hot toast. Most people associate the GAP Band with the commercial classic ‘Oops Upside Your Head’, ‘Outstanding’ and if wanna go a bit left field disco wise ‘Baba Boogie’. I interviewed their front man Charlie Wilson in issue 31 9 years ago in 2011 and he shared some mind blowing previously unknown information about some historical hashtag ‘Black Lives Matter’ history. Read this short each one teach one excerpt and enjoy..FitzroyFitzroy : “Why was the band in 1967 called Greenwood Archer and Pine Street Band and later shortened to the Gap Band in the early 70’s?”
Charlie Wilson : “My older brother started the group in 1967 which I became part of in the early 70’s. Greenwood Archer and Pine were the three streets of black metropolis in Tulsa Oklahoma where we live. In the early 1920’s Greenwood was full of rich black entrepreneurs and millionaires. It was like the black Wall Street where Wall Street derives from. Everybody on that strip was black and everything was black owned. Something happened in the elevator with a black man and a white woman,where they were both on their way down in a lift. When the doors opened she ran out of the lift to an audience of white people as though the black man had done something to her.They drugged the man and burnt down Greenwood and all in the neighbourhood and there was a riot. Archer and Pine ran perpendicular to Greenwood forming an H again everything was black owned on those three streets. So we took on the name because of the story but the name was too long on the posters if you tried to read it whilst driving by. So we abbreviated to G.A.P. and once through a typographical era, the dots were emitted and the GAP jumped and stood out so we just added the band.”
To order the hard copy please go to https://www.thesoulsurvivorsmagazine.co.uk/product/issue-31-june-july-2011/