February 18, 2025 • 38 mins
Before they were wards of the state, Neal, Jamal, and Cupcake were twenty-somethings criss-crossing the south in traveling cover bands. That was before felony convictions for armed robbery landed them at Powhatan on extraordinarily long sentences. Having grown up under segregation, they now found themselves in a disproportionately Black national prison population–one that would double in size before the last of them got out.
The prison music program gave them incentive to start writing songs of their own. But where, under such dark circumstances, did they draw inspiration to start putting pen to paper? Jamal reveals some painful family secrets, Neal talks about love lost to prison, and Cupcake talks about love found behind bars.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
An A and E original podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This episode contains discussions of sexual situations. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
How saying it an well say it graiers against you.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Just before the COVID lockdown in twenty nineteen, I sat
down with the remaining members of Edge of Daybreak. We
were listening to their album Eyes of Love at a
south Side Richmond apartment. It was the first time I
saw them all together. Former soundman Bill Crawley even drove
in from Maryland in his signature Cowboy hat Hey bich
(00:45):
look at. It didn't take long for Cupcake to get nostalgic.
She started to talk about how she and Jamal used
to push each other when they were singing compete even
and hearing Neil's guitar soul reminded her of just how
good he was.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I can't stand it because he can play an instrument
and I can't.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I wanted to listen to the album with the band
because it's such a great window into their lives, and
I enlisted the help of my partner, Dorian Missic to
help me make sense of what we heard. Do you
feel like you get to know them individually.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
Through their tracks? Do you feel their personality coming through totally.
You told me you feel the person that he's coming through.
You imagine when Howel's written in confinement, in prison, where
you spend a lot of time with yourself, your own thoughts,
not a lot of exposure to the outside world. Uh
So that that that causes the right to dig inside
and to write a lot of really personal stuff. And
(01:47):
it shows when you get to know the guys, you
really feel like, Oh, that's that's Jamal on that record,
Like that's Jamal's heart and soul on that record, as
Neil's hert and soul on the record's Cupcake singing her
heart out.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Up until this point, I'd spent a lot of time
thinking about what a feat this album was, how the
band found inspiration in such a terrible place, and how
they pulled off this incredible recording session in a prison
visiting room. But their lives didn't start and end in Powatan.
While they were incarcerated, these tracks might have been the
(02:21):
only place they could preserve a version of themselves that
existed outside of the prison. So when I got the
band together to listen to the album, I wanted to
hear their commentary. Yes, but as we listened, I started
picking up clues in the music itself, clues about the
lives of these individual artists and what exactly it was
(02:43):
that made Edge of Daybreak more than the sum of
its parts.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
You don't let us out. That's the thing right there.
That's the jump jack.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
While the bird say the sound.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
We started with the song let us. Jamal wrote and
sang lead on this one. It's about sex, one of
the pleasures he'd left outside prison walls.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
He says it's.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Inspired by a fantasy his former wife once shared with.
Speaker 7 (03:37):
Him, making love outside under the sun. You know what
I mean, And that's what the song was about. You know,
Nature's bed is the grays. You know, as we get
covered that the sun going down and you see that
shadow come across. That's our couple. So I'm saying it,
that's a beautiful picture.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
When you listen to it, it's clear that this is
really Jamal and Cupcakes song.
Speaker 8 (04:02):
I told Cake, I said, look, I said, I want
you to saying father the song here said huh, Look,
I said, we're gonna make this juice. I said, just
think about you making love or somebody making love to
you or whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And there the moon and they glown I Wish for It.
That was my favorite song on the ALP.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
I got the moan and groan and act like I
was out in the street and I love it.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
That definitely is not something that you would hear on
a pop record back then. Now it's kind of commonplace,
but back in that era that immediately needs you're not
getting played on the radio.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I talked to Dorian about why those sex sounds and
racy lyrics in particular tell us so much about the
scene these artists came.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
Up In the idea that Cupcake is making those sex
sounds and and really getting down and making love on
a record, it just tells you right there, like the
background from which these musicians come from, where you have
a space where you're speaking directly to a very specific
black audience who wants to talk about their very specific
(05:15):
black experience, and Black people, just like everybody else, surprised.
We make love, we romance each other, and at the time,
music was not something where they wanted to imagine black
bodies doing anything to each other. So imagine this record
that celebrates making love and beach gental towards each other,
(05:35):
which is not something that was pushed forward in the media,
but I'm sure it felt kind of placed in them
because they're used to singing it for black people about
black people. It's amazing how something like that can be revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It was revolutionary at the time. The music industry was
tightly controlled by labels and executives, catering to a white
audience that had the most spending power. But Jamal Neil
and Cupcake worked holden tall of that. See, when they
were playing music before prison, they were part of a
tradition that operated outside the water down mainstream. What is
(06:12):
the Chitlin circuit For those who aren't familiar, The Chiltin.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Circuit was a circuit of venues in all black towns
and neighborhoods where there were small venues where black artists
could come and perform. And it was during the height
of segregation, so it was like music that can be
directed directly at the black audience, for black people, about
(06:37):
black people.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
The Chitlin circuit came about during the nineteen thirties at
the start of the jazz Age. By the fifties and sixties,
earlier styles of jazz and blues gave way to the
emerging forms of rock and roll. In r and b The.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Thing about the more mainstream music, you know, the nat
King Coles at the time, the sam Cooks of the
eras that they were, you know, they were croon. They
were very much like the polite versions of black men
that your grandmother would like you to present to white company,
where what you would see in the chilling circuit is
like how black folks got down when the doors were
(07:13):
closed and white folks weren't around. And that's a very
different experience.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Let me tell you, Neil and Jamal grew up going
to those shows, or at least standing outside them hoping
to catch a few songs.
Speaker 7 (07:26):
See their little building on the corner right there, at
brick building, but the regular bricks. There was Castle's record shop,
it was a barber shop, and another store there where
their parking lot. He that was a black theater, Virginia Theater.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
For Jamal, the local stops were on Henry Street, the
four block stretch of clubs, restaurants, and black owned businesses
just north of the train tracks that cut through downtown Roanoke.
Growing up, Jamal used to walk to Henry Street hoping
to spot a tour bus from James Brown or ikeing
Tina Turner. He loved music, and so did his sisters.
(08:00):
His oldest sister, Leonora, turned him on to records forty
fives from artists like The Temptations and Smokey Robinson in
The Miracles. His younger sister Karen was his dance partner
at neighborhood parties. They dance for pocket change.
Speaker 7 (08:16):
People throwing dollars on the floor. Of course, at dinner
with like silver dollars, you know, the big silver dollars,
and a fifty cent piece of love for a kid man,
Oh them big bucks man, you know, specially doing that time.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
The records, the neighborhood parties, the dancing that'll help Jamal
grow into his own musical voice. And it all happened
in the shadow of Henry Street when he got a
little older. Jamal actually played there himself with one of
his early bands. They called themselves The Love Men.
Speaker 7 (08:49):
We was the closest thing to a professional group that
you could ever think of.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Jamal had joined the Love Men after serving eighteen months
at the Southampton Correctional Center. That was for the robbery
charges he'd gotten as a teenager. He auditioned as a
tenor to round out the group's sound.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
It just came naturally, you know, from heard it and
you know, mimicking peopled in this song, that song, that song.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
With the Love Men, Jamal covered groups like the Stylistics
and the Shylights. They sounded like big name crooners, and
they dressed like them too. The Love Men wore matching
tuxedo vests, pants and gloves. George Miller was the Love
Men's trumpet player. He died in twenty twenty one, but
I had a chance to interview him a year earlier.
(09:36):
Here's how he described Jamal's performances.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Of course, all the girls loved him. He had big, big, big, big.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Big girl and all the girls just loved him and
out there and hollering and like he was like the
top of performer in the country.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
The Love Men played mostly black clubs around Virginia and
West Virginia. They even played Henry Street's Star City Auditorium
and Rowing. But just as the Love Men were making
a name for themselves, Jamal's robbery case hit. He went
to Powatan and the Love Men broke up. So we
(10:13):
can't hear the Love Men's songs today, but we can
hear the same kind of scrappy musicianship, a band totally
in the pocket. On the other track, Jamal wrote, your destiny,
hold on before you start your destiny.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I'm getting a here for this one. I'm gonna getting
them two.
Speaker 9 (10:35):
To I did my drunk drinking yesterday.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I mean, one of the beings that I pick up
on when I hear the music is that you hear
the actually mused and ship where there are you know,
some rhythm lags here and there. The kind of thing
that we know this is, you know, live guy's playing,
no metronome or anything like that. It's just live musicianship.
And you feel that in the beginning of this song
(11:14):
because they kind of lag a little bit and they
catch up to each other, which is cool with me.
I love it. You know, from a DJ standpoint, its
a little bit of a pain in the ass, but
that's a different stuff. But it's great to listen to.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
If you listen closely, you can even hear a hiccup.
Speaker 7 (11:34):
I needed some water, but we couldn't stopped, and I
felt it coming before.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
I got to that prison.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
If one song really reflects Jamal's way of thinking, it's
this way.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
You know, you have people there that always procrastinate, you know,
even want somebody else to take them where they need
to go on it.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Oh, so what I'm saying this song isn't just about
destiny itself. It's about seizing control over your destiny, that
instinct to take control. Jamal told me that goes back
to his childhood when he still went by Henry Calloway Junior,
named after his dad.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I did it was Can I say this nice?
Speaker 11 (12:20):
He was pretty much a monster.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Jamal and his sister Karen spoke to me about their dad,
Henry Sr. At Karen's apartment in Roanoke. They said he
was in and out of prison for getting into fights,
sometimes with a weapon, and his family bore the brunt
of his anger.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
Can you imagine your father running you down the street
swinging an axe that you no Yeah, we went through
that several.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
Times, do you know?
Speaker 11 (12:51):
And just see if I did to do stuff to
Jamal and I couldn't helpen.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Karen explained to me how Jamal agreed to move out
when he was just sixteen so he could get away
from his dad.
Speaker 11 (13:04):
Jamal ended up in faster care and stuff like that
because he made it impossible for him to be there
at the time, it was the best thing for him
to do is.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
To do that. He didn't want to kill him. I
knew what I was gonna do.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
I already had a twin or two pistol, you know,
and if he had hit my mama one.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
More time, that was it.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Jamal knew he wasn't his father. He knew he didn't
have to be like his father, and he made it
clear during our listening session that he knew it was
up to him to make a new pass, okay, And people.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Got to push that.
Speaker 8 (13:37):
They mean, you know that, well, my daughter was an alcoholic,
so that's why I drink.
Speaker 10 (13:41):
You know.
Speaker 8 (13:41):
My vetter was just you put them on other people,
you know what I'm saying, you know, And like I said,
you know, it's just that.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So like God, that's to town.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I got his own and that determination is exactly what
you hear in this song.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
What inspired this song cupcake Donald sung I was in
love with Donald sum and that stuffs.
Speaker 11 (14:17):
H.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
That was my That was my diva back then. That
was the disco era too, the eightieth shit.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
The next track we listened to was Cupcakes love song
Bring Me You?
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Does this feel like a cupcake song?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Do you both her songs are love are kind of yeah,
songs about wanting affection, missing affection.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Like so much feminine and you told me like like
your auntie or something.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
It's like, that's totally about Now.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
That was a Donald Sungs fanatic because at the time
she was high.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
She was high, you know, she was.
Speaker 9 (14:56):
The heat that at that time when I was empower
to and she was the heat.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
You can totally hear the influence of Donna Summer's Last
Dings totally. That was the point to have that start
off the slope build that it feels like you're going
into a ballot. It's a good technique because it makes
(15:22):
you really pay attention to what the song is about
to be about. The beat comes in and as so jamming,
you can just lose yourself and just dance and not
even think about what the record is about. And I
think that's a smart device by writers to do that,
is to start off slow, pull you in like, oh,
this is about to be an emotional tune, and then
once you get over the emotions and understanding like this
is what the song is about, Hi, y'all, just dance.
(15:52):
How good of a singer is Cupcake upcack singing abilities
like I mean, as a non singer, I don't really
know how I can really gauge them other than just
how they make me feel. And her vocal ability to
me is top not because I feel everything that she sings.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Cupcakes says she channeled what she was feeling about her
longtime boyfriend, who she'd met in prison.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I was the baby. He was the stape and that's
what everybody called him. Bababy ay snape. You have fun
memories of him now? Yes, No, every day I think
about that.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
He was.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
He was my savior and my laundry. He paid for
me to get my hair cuts. He paid for me
to get all my clothes made. He paid for every
rid thing that hey everything.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
She told me that when she wrote the song, he'd
been transferred to another prison.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
He was being transferred to be a Figo and Kate
Pond again. I had to stay on power pay and
just like I said, the dount just came to my mind.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
I want himp that. I don't want to go no
way about him.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
I just want to be with him. I don't want
no postcard, I don't want no letters, I don't want nothing,
but you bring you away, so get.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
If you got bobbed down by the message, could kind
of drag you down to a certain extent, like would
probably be more befitting to a slow, slow jam a
ballot so you can sit back and just ruminate, and
instead it's kind of like it energizes you. So when
she's saying bring me you, it almost feels like she's
like looking for you, know, bring me you. Where are you?
(18:01):
And that's a different feeling than sitting back loathing missing someone.
It's like, I'm going to find you, And that's an
energetic love record, and I think that was a great juxtaposition.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Cupcake brought energetic force to the band's music and their
live performances, falsetto vocals, women's style, ad libs and swaggers.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
And I was still young, beautiful and excited to back.
Then soon was class there what they needed to get
out back can.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
And that's how we used to do, That's how we
used to feel.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Cupcake was channeling her inner diva long before she got
locked up. She says she first got into drag when
she was about fourteen years old.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I went to a party and the other front of
mine they said they were going in dre I said,
what the hell is that? They said, what We put
on women's clothes and put on makeup and go to
the you know, go out.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I had never done that before, knew and exciting.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Cupcake kept at it, performing in drag whenever and wherever
she could. Eventually she joined a vocal trio, the Affections.
She sang lead and covered songs by popular female artists.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
We had our own singing group in the street, but
we sang dressed as women. Our voices were like women,
because all of us had those high hoigh tenor voices,
and we used to cover like Risa Franklin's Respect, the
Three Degrees Maybe, and all the little female hot throb songs.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
We cover them, and fellows.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Actually thought we were women until at the end of
the show we'd come back to the dressing room and
we sitting back at ball hitting with the wigs on
the Whig's Gang.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
For Cupcake, drag wasn't a matter of performance. It was
an extension of the gender fluidity she'd begun exploring at
a young age. She told me about that the first
time I sat down to interviewer.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Oh Lord, we said fun.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
When I was young, I used to get only toys
that I wanted, but little girl toys.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
You know, I'd ask them toys.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
So, even at that young age you were, you were
identified as identifying with feminine things.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
By her teenage years, she'd fallen in love with drag.
Drag parties gave her an outlet for self expression that
she hadn't had before.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
I could be downa Rolls, I could be Areetha Franklin,
I could be anybody I wanted to be at dead time.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I've had a few conversations with Cupcake about growing up
gay in the sixties and wearing makeup in women's clothes.
I assumed I'd be hearing stories of routine harassment from
classmates and neighborhood bullies, but she says no one at
either of the high schools she attended harassed her for
being gay or expressing her feminine side. The only disparaging
(20:50):
remarks she recalls had to do with race. Cupcakes says
people were scared of her friends, so nobody pushed it.
As for family, her mom was her biggest supporter. Cupcake
and her friend Kelly Branch explained that to me and Dorian,
when I.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Graduated from high school, my graduation present from my mother
was a white friends dress that was hers and I
had always liked it.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Every show I ever did, she was in every show,
every time. Every time it does open.
Speaker 12 (21:26):
For a show, she was in it. And she dragged
her husband right there.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
I gotta make it's a super inspiring to hit because
when I think of, you know, black gay experience in
the United States, I think of pain, you know what
I mean, And not all the time, but right it's aspiring,
you know, I think it's going to be inspiring to
other people to to hear it that, you know, you
can't support his family.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You know, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Cupcake was still a teenager when she started playing with
The Affections in the late sixties. A friend of the
band started booking them shows so.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
All over the state of Virginia singing.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
I mean, we sang all over the l and these
were straight clubs, mostly white people, most of them. As
a matter of fact, the wagon wheel was all white
because it was blue rays country people.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Now a quick note about the drag scene around this time.
After World War Two, right around the time Cupcake was born,
American gender.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Roles got even more rigid.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Think nineteen fifties Housewives and Leave It to Beaver. Drag
had been popular on mainstream vaudeville stages before the war,
but with this shift toward gender conformity, it was largely
forced underground, and it didn't really come back into the
public eye until the nineteen seventies with the gay liberation movement.
So I was curious to hear that the Affections had
(22:59):
this vibe in drag career in the sixties. Dorian and
I sat down with Cupcake and Kelly Branch, the group's
dress manager, to talk about that. They told us they
promoted themselves as a girl group, not a drag act,
so some of the club owners didn't really know who
they were booking.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I remember the wagon Wheel red neck boss.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, whoa old time about what I red Nick Bob, Yeah.
Speaker 12 (23:25):
They hired us not knowing what the hell it was high.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, because they at that time they thought it was winning.
When they found out it was gas.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
By the time anybody figured it out, the Affections had
already won the crowd over. Sometimes they passed entirely.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
We went to an army base and went that tail
hunted out and they didn't did they know after the
show though.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
At the end of the show, Yeah, Dorian and I
asked Cupcake if things really never went sideways, if they
they were always accepted when the club owners and audiences
found out they were watching a drag act. She said,
it all came back to respect.
Speaker 12 (24:08):
It was my opening number every time we did a show, respect,
and I got my respect. I've never had any problems
in drag. I've never hated any problems out of drag
because they know when they see me in a dress,
the bit's going to make money.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
They see me out of the address, the bitch ain't
to be fucked with.
Speaker 12 (24:27):
So that's the way they go. And I just let
her say that's my opening song. Respect.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
What we learned about Cupcake is that she lived with
her heart on her sleeve, and she was very vigilant
about protecting her heart. But it wasn't because she was
trying to be tough. It was to protect herself.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I think it's right on brand, that combination of power
and vulnerability. That's quinn essentially Cupcake. Our Love is Neil
Cade's song. It's the one that was featured in Moonlight
and without a doubt, the band's best known track. But
(25:07):
when I talked to Cupcake about it. I understood the
song was a little divisive our love.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I didn't particularly a cambod because it was so doom.
It sounds so funerally, the slow jam.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Let us is the slow jail that the doom doom
let that that chord right there just gets to know.
It sounds like it's like you have funerals, you get
ready to bury somebody else, you know, Dredge the stalled.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
To me, Neil wrote the lyrics and the music on
this track. It's the high mark of a musical career.
Neil says was inspired almost exclusively by his idel Curtis mayfieldorld.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
The fact that he says that Curtise Mayfield was a
influence on him is not surprising. The way he picks
it up, you know, like he kind of scoops some
of the first parts of the words.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
If you listen to them side by side, the resemblance
is hard to miss. First, here's Curtis.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
You demand you could really see you knew you'll come
say miss me.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Now here's Neil.
Speaker 6 (26:38):
As I will but you.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
In our very first interview, Neil told me that he's
always been a Curtis Mayfield fanatic ever since he had
a chance encounter with the singer as a kid at
the local rec center.
Speaker 10 (26:54):
And that's what Curtis Mayfield's come in practice him the
keyboard player, in the bass player, and that's thought looking
at him and I can went out heard and copy
and it was so smooth, you know. I said, Man,
I want to be like that. That's how I want
to sound. I trained my voice to sound just like Curtis,
and people used to be crazy about me. Everybody called
me Curtis back then. Nobody never called me Cornelius O'Neil.
(27:18):
They didn't even know that name. They called me Curtis Mayfiel.
I'm serious.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Neil's a product of his influences distilled into a smooth
style that's all his own. He taught himself how to
play chords on an old cigar box guitar when he
was a teenager. He says he just mimicked what he
saw at James Brown shows. He and his friends would
catch the Godfather of Soul at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium when
(27:44):
Rody's would let them in free in exchange for helping
them carry equipment for the band. In high school, Neil
started his own band, but his early music career was
interrupted by his first conviction for armed robbery. He ended
up serving two in prison. But sometime around nineteen seventy,
a twenty four year old Neil got a big idea.
Speaker 10 (28:08):
I had heard Curtis Mayfield had left the group The Impressions,
and I said, well, maybe I can get to sing.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Lead, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Neil says, he took a bus from Spartanburg to Chicago
to try out for the Impressions himself. And this is
the thing that gets me about Neil. He has all
this ambition and he doesn't shy away from a challenge.
Like how many people would hear that Curtis Mayfield left
The Impressions and think yeah, I'm going to go try
out for them. And not only that, he actually got
(28:37):
himself into Curtis's manager's office. He walked right in and
told the manager, Marv Stewart, that he was going to
be the next Curtis Mayfield.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
He was sitting at his desk office desk, you know,
he said, looking at closet and getting that keep on
pushing the album and bringing out here. He had a
phonograph on his table while he said, they eating lunch right,
and now he said, put that album on.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
He's in a single with this album. I sung even
one of them song just liking, and man, he was shocked.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Neil didn't end up getting the gig. He did, however,
start touring with a traveling cover band, the Twisters. They
were a hard working band, playing weddings and fraternity parties.
They also played shitlin surgate venues, like some of the
ones Jamal and his band were playing. That is until
Neil got picked up on a robbery charge and the
(29:28):
Twisters went their separate ways. Neil got to Powatan in
nineteen seventy five. He'd never written music, but in prison
he started writing a lot. He wrote Our Love there
when he was thinking about his wife. They'd split up
right before his conviction, but they were technically still married.
Speaker 10 (29:52):
The reason that I kind of thought about a solid
because I wanted people to know what it takes to
stay together, you know, And that's what the song was about.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Love me, I love you too, oop me what you know?
You kind of talk about things, see love.
Speaker 10 (30:09):
Most people now they just get together, they don't sit
down and talk about nothing.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Today I think of Neil as the band's most prolific songwriter.
He's told me at least a dozen times that he's
got notebooks filled with songs ready to go. So learning
that Neil didn't start writing until prison really surprised me.
When you met Neil, like you already knew the song.
When when you met the guy that wrote the song
(30:34):
did a surprise you?
Speaker 6 (30:34):
It was like, was he what you expected?
Speaker 5 (30:37):
Yeah, it's only the guy who I met when I
met Neil. Yeah, the soft spoken, very introspective. I mean,
the way you talk to me thinks of things from
all the different angles. And that's the thing that I
love about this band as a whole, you know, Jamall,
even you know Company. I love that that they tendency
peace from all the different angles. There's the thing that
(30:57):
I picked up from Neil first time I met them
was that, you know, he's able to see things from
a lot of different perspectives and that helps him in
a songwriting.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Dorian pointed out that in some ways, our Love is
the inverse of bringing me here. It's a hopeful song
with a melancholic sound.
Speaker 5 (31:14):
Instead of making this like this upbeat, these are the
steps to making a relationship work kind of record it's
very much what my mother calls zipper rubber music. And
what she meant is they would have these basement parties
and that was when the lights went down or the
red light was on, and they would play these records
and that's when he's slow dance real close, and the
(31:35):
zippers from one your pants and your partner's pants rubbed together,
and it's act and then they're talking about like how
you can make it work, like it's a great makeup song. Actually,
not only are you talking some good stuff about how
to make a relationship work, but the music is right
in that speed where y'all can get to the making
up sex.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It's an incredible closer for an album that is and
is not of its era.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
I just have this image of the Doop era of
people standing around garbage camp, passing around bag whiskey. Is
something harmonizing. They started singing on the corner, and the
subject matter is very much down home and local. So
my image of the band was just that I just
assumed I knew their story. The ignorance of my part
(32:30):
was like, that's probably how they got together. There to
some brothers knew each other from maybe the community center,
and they would stand outside and they were like, hey man,
you sound good man. We should make a group.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
But Eyes of Love isn't a douop record. Their sonic
palet draws from a range of influences.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
The thing that I would point out the most is
this album is a virtual time capsule of the music
of the era because it perfectly captures like the late
mid to late seventies sound of where it was like
the do wop sound was going into disco. It perfectly
meshes that with the transition into the early eighties sound,
(33:12):
the introduction of certain kinds of keyboards, and the sound
became a lot more electronic, which is funky.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I'm thinking in my head about a group like Cameo
in the mid eighties, right, So this would sort of
be like the transitional moment.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
Yeah, it's just changing the sound because you know, Cameo
is like they're out gigging in the clubs and they
can feel people losing interest in the old sound and
realizing that there's a need and desire for something new.
So they were right on the cusp of that. But
that's something you're gonna get when you're out in the
world touching people, when you are sort of stuck in
(33:50):
a time capsule, that is prison, without any real interaction
with the outside world, that can kind of get lost.
So they just kind of played from their heart, and
you see all the influences of the music that influenced
them prior to them being incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
They got tapes and listened to the radio in prison,
so they had some idea of what was going on
in pop music, but they weren't going out to clubs,
meeting other bands, or performing for audiences outside of prisons.
They kind of did everything in a vacuum, which is
in part what makes their genre bending album so impressive.
(34:34):
It also tells me that as much as you can
hear their backstories in the music, Neil, Jamal and Cupcake
weren't just drawing from their past. They were pushing their
respective styles forward. I think that might be the special sauce.
This alchemy of personal reflections and influences heightened by a
(34:58):
desire to maintain some sense of self in prison, combined
with an innovative style that's totally specific to this combination
of artists.
Speaker 10 (35:06):
You gonna do what.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
It took years, decades for people outside Virginia to recognize
just how unique this album was, and even so, the
people that really appreciated it were a cult following of
record geeks and rare music collectors until twenty fifteen, when
(35:28):
it seemed like things were finally turning around. The album
resurfaced with the help of one of the band members
an indie record label in an Oscar winning movie. But
there would be comeback. It wasn't exactly what it seemed.
Speaker 5 (35:43):
I'm not sure he took me seriously that there was
really any kind of interest in re releasing a record.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Like, she said, who is your song in a movie?
I said, how did this?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
He?
Speaker 3 (35:55):
She said, I don't know what is on this award
winning movie Moonlight.
Speaker 10 (36:00):
I definitely was disappointed because I didn't think he was
like that after being incarcerated with him all the years
and playing together, getting together, smiling, laughing and grinning all whatever,
and he turned out to be like that.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
He never told me anything about selling my music. Nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
That's next time on Soul Incarcerated. If you want to
hear more of Edged day Breaks music. Their new EP,
New Horizon, is available on all digital platforms. Sole Incarcerated
was written and hosted by me Jamie Petris co hosted
and produced by Dorian Missic, story edited by Yasmine Kahan,
(36:42):
and sound designed by Bill Moss and Isaac Lee. Executive
producers are mckamie, Lynn, Jesse Katz, and Warren Ostrogard. Special
thanks to everyone who helped us research this story. TAMARV Hyman,
Bill Crawley, and Snethia Lewis. To the author, Dale Broomfield,
Attorneys David ba and Morameltzer Cohen. To doctor Heather Thompson
(37:04):
and Lisia McCarney for lending insights on American car Sero history.
Thanks to the entire staff of the Library of Virginia
and to Ben Himmelfarb from the Henrico County Public Library.
To the vocal coaches kJ Rose and Elise tanjak A
and E's Jennifer and Sonia, Michael Greenwald and Elaine Fontaine Bryant.
(37:26):
Thanks to the team at silver Lining Entertainment, One Story
Up Productions, the Numer Group, the crew at Sunset Sound
and In Your Ear Studios, Alex Lambert, Lucas Bankin, Will
Bethel and Marty Keith. Thanks to all of the band's friends,
family members, and associates who took the time to talk
to me for this story, and most of all, to
(37:46):
the edge of Daybreak, Harry Coleman, Jamal Nuby and Neil
Cade for sharing it with me.
An A and E original podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This episode contains discussions of sexual situations. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
How saying it an well say it graiers against you.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Just before the COVID lockdown in twenty nineteen, I sat
down with the remaining members of Edge of Daybreak. We
were listening to their album Eyes of Love at a
south Side Richmond apartment. It was the first time I
saw them all together. Former soundman Bill Crawley even drove
in from Maryland in his signature Cowboy hat Hey bich
(00:45):
look at. It didn't take long for Cupcake to get nostalgic.
She started to talk about how she and Jamal used
to push each other when they were singing compete even
and hearing Neil's guitar soul reminded her of just how
good he was.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I can't stand it because he can play an instrument
and I can't.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I wanted to listen to the album with the band
because it's such a great window into their lives, and
I enlisted the help of my partner, Dorian Missic to
help me make sense of what we heard. Do you
feel like you get to know them individually.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
Through their tracks? Do you feel their personality coming through totally.
You told me you feel the person that he's coming through.
You imagine when Howel's written in confinement, in prison, where
you spend a lot of time with yourself, your own thoughts,
not a lot of exposure to the outside world. Uh
So that that that causes the right to dig inside
and to write a lot of really personal stuff. And
(01:47):
it shows when you get to know the guys, you
really feel like, Oh, that's that's Jamal on that record,
Like that's Jamal's heart and soul on that record, as
Neil's hert and soul on the record's Cupcake singing her
heart out.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Up until this point, I'd spent a lot of time
thinking about what a feat this album was, how the
band found inspiration in such a terrible place, and how
they pulled off this incredible recording session in a prison
visiting room. But their lives didn't start and end in Powatan.
While they were incarcerated, these tracks might have been the
(02:21):
only place they could preserve a version of themselves that
existed outside of the prison. So when I got the
band together to listen to the album, I wanted to
hear their commentary. Yes, but as we listened, I started
picking up clues in the music itself, clues about the
lives of these individual artists and what exactly it was
(02:43):
that made Edge of Daybreak more than the sum of
its parts.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
You don't let us out. That's the thing right there.
That's the jump jack.
Speaker 6 (03:07):
While the bird say the sound.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
We started with the song let us. Jamal wrote and
sang lead on this one. It's about sex, one of
the pleasures he'd left outside prison walls.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
He says it's.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Inspired by a fantasy his former wife once shared with.
Speaker 7 (03:37):
Him, making love outside under the sun. You know what
I mean, And that's what the song was about. You know,
Nature's bed is the grays. You know, as we get
covered that the sun going down and you see that
shadow come across. That's our couple. So I'm saying it,
that's a beautiful picture.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
When you listen to it, it's clear that this is
really Jamal and Cupcakes song.
Speaker 8 (04:02):
I told Cake, I said, look, I said, I want
you to saying father the song here said huh, Look,
I said, we're gonna make this juice. I said, just
think about you making love or somebody making love to
you or whatever.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And there the moon and they glown I Wish for It.
That was my favorite song on the ALP.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
I got the moan and groan and act like I
was out in the street and I love it.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
That definitely is not something that you would hear on
a pop record back then. Now it's kind of commonplace,
but back in that era that immediately needs you're not
getting played on the radio.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I talked to Dorian about why those sex sounds and
racy lyrics in particular tell us so much about the
scene these artists came.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
Up In the idea that Cupcake is making those sex
sounds and and really getting down and making love on
a record, it just tells you right there, like the
background from which these musicians come from, where you have
a space where you're speaking directly to a very specific
black audience who wants to talk about their very specific
(05:15):
black experience, and Black people, just like everybody else, surprised.
We make love, we romance each other, and at the time,
music was not something where they wanted to imagine black
bodies doing anything to each other. So imagine this record
that celebrates making love and beach gental towards each other,
(05:35):
which is not something that was pushed forward in the media,
but I'm sure it felt kind of placed in them
because they're used to singing it for black people about
black people. It's amazing how something like that can be revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It was revolutionary at the time. The music industry was
tightly controlled by labels and executives, catering to a white
audience that had the most spending power. But Jamal Neil
and Cupcake worked holden tall of that. See, when they
were playing music before prison, they were part of a
tradition that operated outside the water down mainstream. What is
(06:12):
the Chitlin circuit For those who aren't familiar, The Chiltin.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Circuit was a circuit of venues in all black towns
and neighborhoods where there were small venues where black artists
could come and perform. And it was during the height
of segregation, so it was like music that can be
directed directly at the black audience, for black people, about
(06:37):
black people.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
The Chitlin circuit came about during the nineteen thirties at
the start of the jazz Age. By the fifties and sixties,
earlier styles of jazz and blues gave way to the
emerging forms of rock and roll. In r and b The.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Thing about the more mainstream music, you know, the nat
King Coles at the time, the sam Cooks of the
eras that they were, you know, they were croon. They
were very much like the polite versions of black men
that your grandmother would like you to present to white company,
where what you would see in the chilling circuit is
like how black folks got down when the doors were
(07:13):
closed and white folks weren't around. And that's a very
different experience.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Let me tell you, Neil and Jamal grew up going
to those shows, or at least standing outside them hoping
to catch a few songs.
Speaker 7 (07:26):
See their little building on the corner right there, at
brick building, but the regular bricks. There was Castle's record shop,
it was a barber shop, and another store there where
their parking lot. He that was a black theater, Virginia Theater.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
For Jamal, the local stops were on Henry Street, the
four block stretch of clubs, restaurants, and black owned businesses
just north of the train tracks that cut through downtown Roanoke.
Growing up, Jamal used to walk to Henry Street hoping
to spot a tour bus from James Brown or ikeing
Tina Turner. He loved music, and so did his sisters.
(08:00):
His oldest sister, Leonora, turned him on to records forty
fives from artists like The Temptations and Smokey Robinson in
The Miracles. His younger sister Karen was his dance partner
at neighborhood parties. They dance for pocket change.
Speaker 7 (08:16):
People throwing dollars on the floor. Of course, at dinner
with like silver dollars, you know, the big silver dollars,
and a fifty cent piece of love for a kid man,
Oh them big bucks man, you know, specially doing that time.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
The records, the neighborhood parties, the dancing that'll help Jamal
grow into his own musical voice. And it all happened
in the shadow of Henry Street when he got a
little older. Jamal actually played there himself with one of
his early bands. They called themselves The Love Men.
Speaker 7 (08:49):
We was the closest thing to a professional group that
you could ever think of.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Jamal had joined the Love Men after serving eighteen months
at the Southampton Correctional Center. That was for the robbery
charges he'd gotten as a teenager. He auditioned as a
tenor to round out the group's sound.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
It just came naturally, you know, from heard it and
you know, mimicking peopled in this song, that song, that song.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
With the Love Men, Jamal covered groups like the Stylistics
and the Shylights. They sounded like big name crooners, and
they dressed like them too. The Love Men wore matching
tuxedo vests, pants and gloves. George Miller was the Love
Men's trumpet player. He died in twenty twenty one, but
I had a chance to interview him a year earlier.
(09:36):
Here's how he described Jamal's performances.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Of course, all the girls loved him. He had big, big, big, big.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Big girl and all the girls just loved him and
out there and hollering and like he was like the
top of performer in the country.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
The Love Men played mostly black clubs around Virginia and
West Virginia. They even played Henry Street's Star City Auditorium
and Rowing. But just as the Love Men were making
a name for themselves, Jamal's robbery case hit. He went
to Powatan and the Love Men broke up. So we
(10:13):
can't hear the Love Men's songs today, but we can
hear the same kind of scrappy musicianship, a band totally
in the pocket. On the other track, Jamal wrote, your destiny,
hold on before you start your destiny.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
I'm getting a here for this one. I'm gonna getting
them two.
Speaker 9 (10:35):
To I did my drunk drinking yesterday.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I mean, one of the beings that I pick up
on when I hear the music is that you hear
the actually mused and ship where there are you know,
some rhythm lags here and there. The kind of thing
that we know this is, you know, live guy's playing,
no metronome or anything like that. It's just live musicianship.
And you feel that in the beginning of this song
(11:14):
because they kind of lag a little bit and they
catch up to each other, which is cool with me.
I love it. You know, from a DJ standpoint, its
a little bit of a pain in the ass, but
that's a different stuff. But it's great to listen to.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
If you listen closely, you can even hear a hiccup.
Speaker 7 (11:34):
I needed some water, but we couldn't stopped, and I
felt it coming before.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
I got to that prison.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
If one song really reflects Jamal's way of thinking, it's
this way.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
You know, you have people there that always procrastinate, you know,
even want somebody else to take them where they need
to go on it.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Oh, so what I'm saying this song isn't just about
destiny itself. It's about seizing control over your destiny, that
instinct to take control. Jamal told me that goes back
to his childhood when he still went by Henry Calloway Junior,
named after his dad.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I did it was Can I say this nice?
Speaker 11 (12:20):
He was pretty much a monster.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Jamal and his sister Karen spoke to me about their dad,
Henry Sr. At Karen's apartment in Roanoke. They said he
was in and out of prison for getting into fights,
sometimes with a weapon, and his family bore the brunt
of his anger.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
Can you imagine your father running you down the street
swinging an axe that you no Yeah, we went through
that several.
Speaker 6 (12:48):
Times, do you know?
Speaker 11 (12:51):
And just see if I did to do stuff to
Jamal and I couldn't helpen.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Karen explained to me how Jamal agreed to move out
when he was just sixteen so he could get away
from his dad.
Speaker 11 (13:04):
Jamal ended up in faster care and stuff like that
because he made it impossible for him to be there
at the time, it was the best thing for him
to do is.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
To do that. He didn't want to kill him. I
knew what I was gonna do.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
I already had a twin or two pistol, you know,
and if he had hit my mama one.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
More time, that was it.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Jamal knew he wasn't his father. He knew he didn't
have to be like his father, and he made it
clear during our listening session that he knew it was
up to him to make a new pass, okay, And people.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Got to push that.
Speaker 8 (13:37):
They mean, you know that, well, my daughter was an alcoholic,
so that's why I drink.
Speaker 10 (13:41):
You know.
Speaker 8 (13:41):
My vetter was just you put them on other people,
you know what I'm saying, you know, And like I said,
you know, it's just that.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So like God, that's to town.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I got his own and that determination is exactly what
you hear in this song.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
What inspired this song cupcake Donald sung I was in
love with Donald sum and that stuffs.
Speaker 11 (14:17):
H.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
That was my That was my diva back then. That
was the disco era too, the eightieth shit.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
The next track we listened to was Cupcakes love song
Bring Me You?
Speaker 5 (14:31):
Does this feel like a cupcake song?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Do you both her songs are love are kind of yeah,
songs about wanting affection, missing affection.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
Like so much feminine and you told me like like
your auntie or something.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
It's like, that's totally about Now.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
That was a Donald Sungs fanatic because at the time
she was high.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
She was high, you know, she was.
Speaker 9 (14:56):
The heat that at that time when I was empower
to and she was the heat.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
You can totally hear the influence of Donna Summer's Last
Dings totally. That was the point to have that start
off the slope build that it feels like you're going
into a ballot. It's a good technique because it makes
(15:22):
you really pay attention to what the song is about
to be about. The beat comes in and as so jamming,
you can just lose yourself and just dance and not
even think about what the record is about. And I
think that's a smart device by writers to do that,
is to start off slow, pull you in like, oh,
this is about to be an emotional tune, and then
once you get over the emotions and understanding like this
is what the song is about, Hi, y'all, just dance.
(15:52):
How good of a singer is Cupcake upcack singing abilities
like I mean, as a non singer, I don't really
know how I can really gauge them other than just
how they make me feel. And her vocal ability to
me is top not because I feel everything that she sings.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Cupcakes says she channeled what she was feeling about her
longtime boyfriend, who she'd met in prison.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I was the baby. He was the stape and that's
what everybody called him. Bababy ay snape. You have fun
memories of him now? Yes, No, every day I think
about that.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
He was.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
He was my savior and my laundry. He paid for
me to get my hair cuts. He paid for me
to get all my clothes made. He paid for every
rid thing that hey everything.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
She told me that when she wrote the song, he'd
been transferred to another prison.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
He was being transferred to be a Figo and Kate
Pond again. I had to stay on power pay and
just like I said, the dount just came to my mind.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
I want himp that. I don't want to go no
way about him.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
I just want to be with him. I don't want
no postcard, I don't want no letters, I don't want nothing,
but you bring you away, so get.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
If you got bobbed down by the message, could kind
of drag you down to a certain extent, like would
probably be more befitting to a slow, slow jam a
ballot so you can sit back and just ruminate, and
instead it's kind of like it energizes you. So when
she's saying bring me you, it almost feels like she's
like looking for you, know, bring me you. Where are you?
(18:01):
And that's a different feeling than sitting back loathing missing someone.
It's like, I'm going to find you, And that's an
energetic love record, and I think that was a great juxtaposition.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Cupcake brought energetic force to the band's music and their
live performances, falsetto vocals, women's style, ad libs and swaggers.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
And I was still young, beautiful and excited to back.
Then soon was class there what they needed to get
out back can.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
And that's how we used to do, That's how we
used to feel.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Cupcake was channeling her inner diva long before she got
locked up. She says she first got into drag when
she was about fourteen years old.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I went to a party and the other front of
mine they said they were going in dre I said,
what the hell is that? They said, what We put
on women's clothes and put on makeup and go to
the you know, go out.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I had never done that before, knew and exciting.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Cupcake kept at it, performing in drag whenever and wherever
she could. Eventually she joined a vocal trio, the Affections.
She sang lead and covered songs by popular female artists.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
We had our own singing group in the street, but
we sang dressed as women. Our voices were like women,
because all of us had those high hoigh tenor voices,
and we used to cover like Risa Franklin's Respect, the
Three Degrees Maybe, and all the little female hot throb songs.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
We cover them, and fellows.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Actually thought we were women until at the end of
the show we'd come back to the dressing room and
we sitting back at ball hitting with the wigs on
the Whig's Gang.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
For Cupcake, drag wasn't a matter of performance. It was
an extension of the gender fluidity she'd begun exploring at
a young age. She told me about that the first
time I sat down to interviewer.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Oh Lord, we said fun.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
When I was young, I used to get only toys
that I wanted, but little girl toys.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
You know, I'd ask them toys.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
So, even at that young age you were, you were
identified as identifying with feminine things.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
By her teenage years, she'd fallen in love with drag.
Drag parties gave her an outlet for self expression that
she hadn't had before.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
I could be downa Rolls, I could be Areetha Franklin,
I could be anybody I wanted to be at dead time.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
I've had a few conversations with Cupcake about growing up
gay in the sixties and wearing makeup in women's clothes.
I assumed I'd be hearing stories of routine harassment from
classmates and neighborhood bullies, but she says no one at
either of the high schools she attended harassed her for
being gay or expressing her feminine side. The only disparaging
(20:50):
remarks she recalls had to do with race. Cupcakes says
people were scared of her friends, so nobody pushed it.
As for family, her mom was her biggest supporter. Cupcake
and her friend Kelly Branch explained that to me and Dorian,
when I.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Graduated from high school, my graduation present from my mother
was a white friends dress that was hers and I
had always liked it.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Every show I ever did, she was in every show,
every time. Every time it does open.
Speaker 12 (21:26):
For a show, she was in it. And she dragged
her husband right there.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
I gotta make it's a super inspiring to hit because
when I think of, you know, black gay experience in
the United States, I think of pain, you know what
I mean, And not all the time, but right it's aspiring,
you know, I think it's going to be inspiring to
other people to to hear it that, you know, you
can't support his family.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You know, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Cupcake was still a teenager when she started playing with
The Affections in the late sixties. A friend of the
band started booking them shows so.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
All over the state of Virginia singing.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
I mean, we sang all over the l and these
were straight clubs, mostly white people, most of them. As
a matter of fact, the wagon wheel was all white
because it was blue rays country people.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Now a quick note about the drag scene around this time.
After World War Two, right around the time Cupcake was born,
American gender.
Speaker 5 (22:35):
Roles got even more rigid.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Think nineteen fifties Housewives and Leave It to Beaver. Drag
had been popular on mainstream vaudeville stages before the war,
but with this shift toward gender conformity, it was largely
forced underground, and it didn't really come back into the
public eye until the nineteen seventies with the gay liberation movement.
So I was curious to hear that the Affections had
(22:59):
this vibe in drag career in the sixties. Dorian and
I sat down with Cupcake and Kelly Branch, the group's
dress manager, to talk about that. They told us they
promoted themselves as a girl group, not a drag act,
so some of the club owners didn't really know who
they were booking.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I remember the wagon Wheel red neck boss.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah, whoa old time about what I red Nick Bob, Yeah.
Speaker 12 (23:25):
They hired us not knowing what the hell it was high.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, because they at that time they thought it was winning.
When they found out it was gas.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
By the time anybody figured it out, the Affections had
already won the crowd over. Sometimes they passed entirely.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
We went to an army base and went that tail
hunted out and they didn't did they know after the
show though.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
At the end of the show, Yeah, Dorian and I
asked Cupcake if things really never went sideways, if they
they were always accepted when the club owners and audiences
found out they were watching a drag act. She said,
it all came back to respect.
Speaker 12 (24:08):
It was my opening number every time we did a show, respect,
and I got my respect. I've never had any problems
in drag. I've never hated any problems out of drag
because they know when they see me in a dress,
the bit's going to make money.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
They see me out of the address, the bitch ain't
to be fucked with.
Speaker 12 (24:27):
So that's the way they go. And I just let
her say that's my opening song. Respect.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
What we learned about Cupcake is that she lived with
her heart on her sleeve, and she was very vigilant
about protecting her heart. But it wasn't because she was
trying to be tough. It was to protect herself.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I think it's right on brand, that combination of power
and vulnerability. That's quinn essentially Cupcake. Our Love is Neil
Cade's song. It's the one that was featured in Moonlight
and without a doubt, the band's best known track. But
(25:07):
when I talked to Cupcake about it. I understood the
song was a little divisive our love.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I didn't particularly a cambod because it was so doom.
It sounds so funerally, the slow jam.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Let us is the slow jail that the doom doom
let that that chord right there just gets to know.
It sounds like it's like you have funerals, you get
ready to bury somebody else, you know, Dredge the stalled.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
To me, Neil wrote the lyrics and the music on
this track. It's the high mark of a musical career.
Neil says was inspired almost exclusively by his idel Curtis mayfieldorld.
Speaker 5 (26:01):
The fact that he says that Curtise Mayfield was a
influence on him is not surprising. The way he picks
it up, you know, like he kind of scoops some
of the first parts of the words.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
If you listen to them side by side, the resemblance
is hard to miss. First, here's Curtis.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
You demand you could really see you knew you'll come
say miss me.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Now here's Neil.
Speaker 6 (26:38):
As I will but you.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
In our very first interview, Neil told me that he's
always been a Curtis Mayfield fanatic ever since he had
a chance encounter with the singer as a kid at
the local rec center.
Speaker 10 (26:54):
And that's what Curtis Mayfield's come in practice him the
keyboard player, in the bass player, and that's thought looking
at him and I can went out heard and copy
and it was so smooth, you know. I said, Man,
I want to be like that. That's how I want
to sound. I trained my voice to sound just like Curtis,
and people used to be crazy about me. Everybody called
me Curtis back then. Nobody never called me Cornelius O'Neil.
(27:18):
They didn't even know that name. They called me Curtis Mayfiel.
I'm serious.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Neil's a product of his influences distilled into a smooth
style that's all his own. He taught himself how to
play chords on an old cigar box guitar when he
was a teenager. He says he just mimicked what he
saw at James Brown shows. He and his friends would
catch the Godfather of Soul at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium when
(27:44):
Rody's would let them in free in exchange for helping
them carry equipment for the band. In high school, Neil
started his own band, but his early music career was
interrupted by his first conviction for armed robbery. He ended
up serving two in prison. But sometime around nineteen seventy,
a twenty four year old Neil got a big idea.
Speaker 10 (28:08):
I had heard Curtis Mayfield had left the group The Impressions,
and I said, well, maybe I can get to sing.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Lead, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Neil says, he took a bus from Spartanburg to Chicago
to try out for the Impressions himself. And this is
the thing that gets me about Neil. He has all
this ambition and he doesn't shy away from a challenge.
Like how many people would hear that Curtis Mayfield left
The Impressions and think yeah, I'm going to go try
out for them. And not only that, he actually got
(28:37):
himself into Curtis's manager's office. He walked right in and
told the manager, Marv Stewart, that he was going to
be the next Curtis Mayfield.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
He was sitting at his desk office desk, you know,
he said, looking at closet and getting that keep on
pushing the album and bringing out here. He had a
phonograph on his table while he said, they eating lunch right,
and now he said, put that album on.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
He's in a single with this album. I sung even
one of them song just liking, and man, he was shocked.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Neil didn't end up getting the gig. He did, however,
start touring with a traveling cover band, the Twisters. They
were a hard working band, playing weddings and fraternity parties.
They also played shitlin surgate venues, like some of the
ones Jamal and his band were playing. That is until
Neil got picked up on a robbery charge and the
(29:28):
Twisters went their separate ways. Neil got to Powatan in
nineteen seventy five. He'd never written music, but in prison
he started writing a lot. He wrote Our Love there
when he was thinking about his wife. They'd split up
right before his conviction, but they were technically still married.
Speaker 10 (29:52):
The reason that I kind of thought about a solid
because I wanted people to know what it takes to
stay together, you know, And that's what the song was about.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Love me, I love you too, oop me what you know?
You kind of talk about things, see love.
Speaker 10 (30:09):
Most people now they just get together, they don't sit
down and talk about nothing.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Today I think of Neil as the band's most prolific songwriter.
He's told me at least a dozen times that he's
got notebooks filled with songs ready to go. So learning
that Neil didn't start writing until prison really surprised me.
When you met Neil, like you already knew the song.
When when you met the guy that wrote the song
(30:34):
did a surprise you?
Speaker 6 (30:34):
It was like, was he what you expected?
Speaker 5 (30:37):
Yeah, it's only the guy who I met when I
met Neil. Yeah, the soft spoken, very introspective. I mean,
the way you talk to me thinks of things from
all the different angles. And that's the thing that I
love about this band as a whole, you know, Jamall,
even you know Company. I love that that they tendency
peace from all the different angles. There's the thing that
(30:57):
I picked up from Neil first time I met them
was that, you know, he's able to see things from
a lot of different perspectives and that helps him in
a songwriting.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Dorian pointed out that in some ways, our Love is
the inverse of bringing me here. It's a hopeful song
with a melancholic sound.
Speaker 5 (31:14):
Instead of making this like this upbeat, these are the
steps to making a relationship work kind of record it's
very much what my mother calls zipper rubber music. And
what she meant is they would have these basement parties
and that was when the lights went down or the
red light was on, and they would play these records
and that's when he's slow dance real close, and the
(31:35):
zippers from one your pants and your partner's pants rubbed together,
and it's act and then they're talking about like how
you can make it work, like it's a great makeup song. Actually,
not only are you talking some good stuff about how
to make a relationship work, but the music is right
in that speed where y'all can get to the making
up sex.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It's an incredible closer for an album that is and
is not of its era.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
I just have this image of the Doop era of
people standing around garbage camp, passing around bag whiskey. Is
something harmonizing. They started singing on the corner, and the
subject matter is very much down home and local. So
my image of the band was just that I just
assumed I knew their story. The ignorance of my part
(32:30):
was like, that's probably how they got together. There to
some brothers knew each other from maybe the community center,
and they would stand outside and they were like, hey man,
you sound good man. We should make a group.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
But Eyes of Love isn't a douop record. Their sonic
palet draws from a range of influences.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
The thing that I would point out the most is
this album is a virtual time capsule of the music
of the era because it perfectly captures like the late
mid to late seventies sound of where it was like
the do wop sound was going into disco. It perfectly
meshes that with the transition into the early eighties sound,
(33:12):
the introduction of certain kinds of keyboards, and the sound
became a lot more electronic, which is funky.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I'm thinking in my head about a group like Cameo
in the mid eighties, right, So this would sort of
be like the transitional moment.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
Yeah, it's just changing the sound because you know, Cameo
is like they're out gigging in the clubs and they
can feel people losing interest in the old sound and
realizing that there's a need and desire for something new.
So they were right on the cusp of that. But
that's something you're gonna get when you're out in the
world touching people, when you are sort of stuck in
(33:50):
a time capsule, that is prison, without any real interaction
with the outside world, that can kind of get lost.
So they just kind of played from their heart, and
you see all the influences of the music that influenced
them prior to them being incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
They got tapes and listened to the radio in prison,
so they had some idea of what was going on
in pop music, but they weren't going out to clubs,
meeting other bands, or performing for audiences outside of prisons.
They kind of did everything in a vacuum, which is
in part what makes their genre bending album so impressive.
(34:34):
It also tells me that as much as you can
hear their backstories in the music, Neil, Jamal and Cupcake
weren't just drawing from their past. They were pushing their
respective styles forward. I think that might be the special sauce.
This alchemy of personal reflections and influences heightened by a
(34:58):
desire to maintain some sense of self in prison, combined
with an innovative style that's totally specific to this combination
of artists.
Speaker 10 (35:06):
You gonna do what.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
It took years, decades for people outside Virginia to recognize
just how unique this album was, and even so, the
people that really appreciated it were a cult following of
record geeks and rare music collectors until twenty fifteen, when
(35:28):
it seemed like things were finally turning around. The album
resurfaced with the help of one of the band members
an indie record label in an Oscar winning movie. But
there would be comeback. It wasn't exactly what it seemed.
Speaker 5 (35:43):
I'm not sure he took me seriously that there was
really any kind of interest in re releasing a record.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Like, she said, who is your song in a movie?
I said, how did this?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
He?
Speaker 3 (35:55):
She said, I don't know what is on this award
winning movie Moonlight.
Speaker 10 (36:00):
I definitely was disappointed because I didn't think he was
like that after being incarcerated with him all the years
and playing together, getting together, smiling, laughing and grinning all whatever,
and he turned out to be like that.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
He never told me anything about selling my music. Nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
That's next time on Soul Incarcerated. If you want to
hear more of Edged day Breaks music. Their new EP,
New Horizon, is available on all digital platforms. Sole Incarcerated
was written and hosted by me Jamie Petris co hosted
and produced by Dorian Missic, story edited by Yasmine Kahan,
(36:42):
and sound designed by Bill Moss and Isaac Lee. Executive
producers are mckamie, Lynn, Jesse Katz, and Warren Ostrogard. Special
thanks to everyone who helped us research this story. TAMARV Hyman,
Bill Crawley, and Snethia Lewis. To the author, Dale Broomfield,
Attorneys David ba and Morameltzer Cohen. To doctor Heather Thompson
(37:04):
and Lisia McCarney for lending insights on American car Sero history.
Thanks to the entire staff of the Library of Virginia
and to Ben Himmelfarb from the Henrico County Public Library.
To the vocal coaches kJ Rose and Elise tanjak A
and E's Jennifer and Sonia, Michael Greenwald and Elaine Fontaine Bryant.
(37:26):
Thanks to the team at silver Lining Entertainment, One Story
Up Productions, the Numer Group, the crew at Sunset Sound
and In Your Ear Studios, Alex Lambert, Lucas Bankin, Will
Bethel and Marty Keith. Thanks to all of the band's friends,
family members, and associates who took the time to talk
to me for this story, and most of all, to
(37:46):
the edge of Daybreak, Harry Coleman, Jamal Nuby and Neil
Cade for sharing it with me.
Host
Jamie Pietras
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