I can’t explain why, but those old ‘70s soul records will always mean Sunday music to me. A touch of Main Ingredient, some Delfonics, and Chic, can’t forget Sly and the Family Stone, Betty Wright, or a bit of Gladys Knight and the Pips. It goes well with toast and coffee and a lazy morning under the covers. Well, from now on, there’s gonna be another artist who you can add to that list…
Norman Whiteside hails from Columbus, Ohio, and cut his teeth on the team at the Capsoul label. In the mid-‘70s, his solo project, which he called Wee, made an album called ‘You Can Fly Me On My Aeroplane’. Just 1000 copies were ever pressed – Whiteside hoped to garner major label interest which never materialized. Maybe they felt his sound was too derivative – it definitely wears its influences on its sleeve.
Though clearly influenced by Stevie Wonder and especially by Sly and the Family Stone – like on ‘Leavin’ You Alone’ where ad-libs and even the phrasing are clearly taken from the Sly book of tricks – the material still remains impressive, with a really warm sound on the production, excellent synth work and tender vocals from Whiteside. It’s also got a slightly psychedelic feel on the guitar solos, in line with the sound of Shuggie Otis’ Inspiration Information’, a record from the same period that was three-parts Sly to two-parts Muddy
But the story behind this Wee/Whiteside album is almost as good as the music. Whiteside, when he wasn’t making music, was hustling money here, there and everywhere, in Columbus, Ohio and further afield. Spending half his life in nightclubs, he met a lot of women and it seems like he tapped them for as much money as he could. Although he was living at the time with a woman called Colleen, and had a child with her, as well as two children by an old sweetheart called Sara, Whiteside finally met his match in a pair of high-class prostitutes called Jackie and Caroline.
The story goes that one night, Jackie and Caroline invited Norman to hang out after the bar closed, but Whiteside politely declined. Street-tuff and not used to rejection, the mini-skirted duo waited for Whiteside outside the bar and held him hostage at gunpoint, until he agreed to go out with them for a night on the town. This one-night stand quickly became a steady thing, and in a peculiar twist of fate, it was Jackie and Caroline who found Whiteside the money to finance the Wee album in exchange for regular companionship – a pimp and whore situation turned on its head!
As costs on the album escalated, they needed to find a backer to help complete the record and pay for the pressing and artwork. In stepped one of Jackie and Caroline’s wealthy clients, a guy they called Bromo because of the brand of antacid he used. Check the cover and you’ll see clearly printed: ‘Produced by William Muller for Bromo Productions’.
But, in a music industry where many are called but few are chosen, Whiteside never managed to get the public recognition he was looking for. His personal life went from bad to worse as the gigs dried up and he resorted to petty crime – the only way he could support his various families (by the late 70s he’d fathered children by Jackie and Caroline, as well as Colleen and Sara). Days before Christmas, 1978, his home was raided by the S.W.A.T. team and he was arrested on charges of felony forgery and possession of criminal tools. Although released 11 months later, he went back to jail on an unrelated prior conviction, and has remained there since after he was connected to a conspiracy to cover up a murder, although he maintains his innocence to this day.
Jadakiss said on his dope track ‘Why’: “Why a brother up North better than Jordan aint get that break?” Likewise, why’s a guy Whiteman wasting away in jail and never got a chance to shine? It’s a sad story, but thankfully, we now have ‘You Can Fly On My Aeroplane’ fully remastered and beautifully re-packaged to remind us about this fantastic talent who has been fully slept on. From now on Sunday morningss will forever taste just that little bit sweeter with a little Whiteside on the stereo. Let’s pray for his speedy release from the notoriously shady US Justice system.
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