The Stylistics Interview - Soul Beat TV, Oakland, CA with Al Ballard & Gary Baca, G-Spot Oct.1996
Channel: Gary Baca TV
Date: 2019-11-28

Original member's Herb Murrell and Airrion Love dropped by the studios while Russell Tompkins Jr slept at the Holiday Inn, Emeryville resting up for two shows a night. The host Al Ballard, was a big inspirations to me and a lot of Bay Area personalities.  In 1979, at fourteen I was watching Chuck Johnson's Soul Beat TV Oakland, the first black owned TV network in the country. They were broadcasting 24 hours and played the newest R&B / Funk videos of that time.  It was when I watched Al Ballard interviewing Michael Jackson in a limousine leaving the Oakland Airport I was struck with inspiration.  I would study his every interview with different artist's and watch his style and technique as he was a mentor and I was his student.  It was thru watching Al one day,  I said to myself I could do that, and I could be him and I was.  I booked the Stylistics to promote their performances at Kimball's East, Emeryville, but most of all I wanted to be on TV with my hero Al Ballard and take it all the way from watching him to being him to being there and lucky for me he said yes.  

The Stylistics are an American, Philadelphia soul group that achieved their greatest chart success in the 1970s. They formed in 1968, with a lineup of singers Russell Thompkins Jr., Herb Murrell, Airrion Love, James Smith, and James Dunn. All of their US hits were ballads characterized by the falsetto of Russell Thompkins Jr. and the production of Thom Bell. During the early 1970s, the group had twelve consecutive R&B top ten hits, including "Stop, Look, Listen", "You Are Everything", "Betcha by Golly, Wow", "I'm Stone in Love with You", "Break Up to Make Up", and "You Make Me Feel Brand New".

The Stylistics were created from two Philadelphia groups, The Percussions and The Monarchs. Russell Thompkins Jr., James Smith, and Airrion Love came from the Monarchs, and James Dunn and Herb Murrell came from the Percussions. In 1970, the group recorded "You're a Big Girl Now", a song their road manager Marty Bryant co-wrote with Robert Douglas, a member of their backing band Slim and the Boys, and the single became a regional hit for Sebring Records. Producer Bill Perry spent $400 to record the song in the Virtue Studios in Philadelphia. The larger Avco Records soon signed the Stylistics, and the single eventually climbed to No. 7 on the US Billboard R&B chart in early 1971.