African American gospel 45s from downstate Illinois are few and far between but every once in a while a new one turns up. This obscure single was released in early 1976 by the Jordan Aires, a group from Springfield, Illinois.
The Jordan Aires were performing in the capital city as early as 1967. The members of the group are unknown except for the two vocalists listed on the record: Reverend Doffie Allison and Nathan Williams.
The single was recorded at the Smoke Signal Sound Studio in Carbondale (which was later moved to nearby Makanda) and released on the studio's label, Smokey Soul. The Jordan Aires performed in the Carbondale area in July 1976 along with the Family-Aires of Carbondale and the Jones Singers from Springfield.
"They That Wait (On The Lord)" b/w "I Found Joy (In A Christian Way)"
(Smokey Soul SS 01276)
Rev Dr. Doffie Lee Allison Sr. passed away in 2012. According to his obituary, he was born in Glendora, Mississippi. He moved to Illinois by the mid-1960's, attended Lincoln Land Community College and worked for the Springfield Mass Transit District as a bus driver for many years. There is no mention of the Jordan Aires however the memorial states, "In 1979, Rev. Allison organized the New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church where he served as Pastor and worked diligently until the time of his death."
If anyone has any more information about the Jordan Aires, please get in touch and we will add it to this story. ( downstatesounds@gmail.com )
For more examples of African American gospel from downstate Illinois, including two other groups from Springfield, listen to our old radio show from 2020: SHOW #41
The Ashes of Dawn formed in late 1967 on the campus of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. The six students that made up the pop group were mostly from the Chicagoland area but included a few members from downstate.
Fred Walker, vocals (Harrisburg)
Rob Little, lead guitar (Rantoul)
Douglas Haas, 12-string guitar (Wheaton)
Howard Williams, bass (Kankakee)
Tom Parnell, electric organ (Chicago)
Richard Wittosch, drums (Chicago)
By March of 1968 the "psychedelic orchestra" was performing around Carbondale and the surrounding areas. In August the group signed a recording contract with Brave Records of Harvey, Illinois. The Ashes of Dawn were the first "contemporary rock" group to be signed by the label which typically featured country and western music. They reportedly had a contract to record six singles and possibly an album.
The group's first single was released on September 7, 1968. It included two originals, "Yesterday's Dream" and "See The Light." The music for both songs were written by Douglas Haas. Haas also wrote the words for "See The Light." The lyrics for "Yesterday's Dream" were written by Fred Walker.
A few weeks after the single was out, the Ashes of Dawn opened for the Box Tops at the SIU Arena. The group continued to perform around southern Illinois and parts of Missouri for the next year.
An article from December 1968 mentions the band was recording in Nashville. If true, nothing came of the sessions. The band never released another single. In June 1969, the group performed on Kaleidoscope, a weekly variety television show produced in Carbondale by WSIU-TV. The show was carried by 20 different stations throughout the Midwest. The band doesn't appear to have stayed together much longer however. Several of the members graduated from SIU in the spring of 1970.
Additional notes:
Prior to the Ashes of Dawn, Fred Walker had been the singer in the Scarabs, a popular teen group from Harrisburg. Other members of the group included Ed Thurmond, Joe Potts, Gary Brantley, Dennis Wilson and Curt Williams.
Before attending SIU, organ player Tom Parnell had been a member of the Exterminators and the Dimensions back in Chicago.
The Frost were a short-lived group of high schoolers from northern Illinois. A few of the young musicians however would go on to have long and distinguished careers in music far beyond their "garage" beginnings.
Greg Adams - rhythm guitar, organ, piano
Tom Miller - drums, tambourine, lead vocals
Mike Noble - lead guitar, organ, drums
Ted Patrou - bass guitar
Curt Roads - drums
Most of the band members were from Freeport, Illinois while guitarist Mike Noble was from nearby Cedarville. Noble and Adams had previously played together in the NonChalants which later became the Noblemenn.
The Noblemenn: Mike Garrity, Rick Nichol, Mike Noble, Greg Adams
The Frost started performing at local dances and teen clubs in early 1968. That March the band participated in the "Parade of Bands," a three day event held in the sportswear department of the local Penneys. According to the advertisement (top), the Frost loved to do "take-offs on the Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds, The Hollies, The Who and more." That same month, the Frost recorded their only single at Dexter Witt's Radex Recording Studios in Freeport.
The group recorded an original composition, "Behind The Closed Doors Of Her Mind," written by Noble and Adams, as well as a cover of the Capitols' "Cool Jerk." The title was misprinted on the label as "Cook Jerk." (The youth center in Freeport was known as the JERC, later renamed the Spot).
"Behind the Closed Doors Of Her Mind" and the Radex single quickly faded into obscurity. In 2020 however, the Chicago label Numero Group included the original song on a new compilation, Louis Wayne Moody High. The collection was promoted as "fourteen moody melodies of surf kings, guitar Bettys, talent show psychers, and pre-S.D.S. soft poppers. Walls of jangly guitars, maudlin organs, and melancholy harmonies deliver the bummer to ring in the summer."
The Frost does not appear to have stayed together past 1968. For a few of the band members however, their musical journeys were just beginning. Both Noble and Adams relocated to Nashville in the early 1970's. By 1974, the two were touring the country with Dave Loggins in support of his hit single, ""Please Come to Boston." Noble had already played with Roy Orbison at this point in his early career.
Since then, Mike Noble has performed and recorded with numerous big name acts including Darius Rucker, Vince Gill, Barry Gibb, Jason Aldean and many others. He appeared in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter and was Don Williams' longtime guitarist. He is also an accomplished songwriter and has an Emmy for composing the score for the PBS documentary Untamed Legacy. Since 2010, Noble has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry house band.
Another member of the Frost went in a very different direction. By 1970, drummer Curt Roads was playing with Hound Dog Moses, a Freeport band that had migrated to Champaign-Urbana. The band mixed rock, blues and psychedelia with elements of Eastern and classical music. Their live performances often consisted of long improvised jams combined with a psychedelic light show, earning them the reputation of being Champaign's version of the Grateful Dead.
Hound Dog Moses: Loren Brandenburg, Johnse Holt, Curt Roads, Sheft-Hat Khnemu Ra (James Cole)
During this period however, Roads was becoming more and more interested in synthesizers and electronic music. In fact, "Curt Rhodes (sic) and his electronic moog synthesizer" were listed as opening for Hound Dog Moses at a concert back in Freeport in November 1971.
Even though Roads never officially attended the University of Illinois while living in Champaign, he started to compose electronic music at the university's Experimental Music Studio. It was there that he saw his first computer. According to Roads, "It was love at first sight." He would soon leave drumming in a rock band behind and dedicate himself to computer music full time. For this pursuit, he would leave Illinois and head to California.
Fast forward to today, Dr. Curtis Roads is a renowned composer, researcher and educator in electronic and computer music. He is celebrated for his pioneering work in the development of granular synthesis and microsound. Roads has written several important books and articles on these subjects and many others. His compositions have been collected on CD since the late 1980's. Most recently, the French label Elli Records released a compilation of some of his work, Electronic Music 1994-2021. In 2024, Roads retired as Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) after 28 years.
John Mark Edmunds was a talented singer and songwriter from north-central Illinois whose professional career started when he was just 14-years-old. Throughout the 1960's, Edmunds sang on half a dozen different singles, both as a solo artist and as a front man with a variety of different groups.
His earliest recordings were done while he was attending high school in Morris, Illinois. His family soon moved to DePue and then Dixon, Illinois. His father, John Edmunds, was a popular disc jockey and radio personality. To differentiate himself from his father, the younger Edmunds dropped his last name, using John Mark as his stage name.
In the fall of 1962, John Mark was singing with a quartet of Morris teenagers known as the Spartans. The group included three guitarists, Rich Sparta, Rich DePung, Mike Wiechen and a drummer, Paul Sullivan. The Spartans would serve as the backing band on Edmunds' first single - "Three Pigs" and "Tribute To Tobin," which was uncredited but was actually a cover of Buddy Holly's "Think It Over." The record was recorded at a Chicago television studio and pressed by Sheldon. It was self-released on Big "J" Records in November 1962.
The Tobin in question was Chicago-area singer Tobin Matthews who had recorded the same Holly tune for USA Records a year before. An article in the Morris Daily Herald claimed that Matthews had "discovered" the young John Mark. Chances are the two met when John Mark's father emceed a dance in Morris featuring Matthews in November 1961.
A month after John Mark's single, the Spartans released their own record on Big "J" Records. It included an original instrumental written by Rich Sparta called "Jungle Call" and a rocking rendition of "In The Mood."
In late 1963 or early 1964, the Edmunds family relocated to DePue, Illinois. John Mark, who was still in high school at the time, started to perform with another group of teenagers known as the Sir-Vays. The band had members from DePue and nearby Princeton, Illinois, including Keith Dean on lead guitar; Dan Morel on bass guitar and Tom Poff on drums. Edmunds and the Sir-Vays recorded a single in 1964. It contained two original songs (one credited to John Mark and the other to "Pappy" John) and was again released on Big "J" Records.
Edmunds was still singing with the Sir-Vays in early 1965. He was also working as a disc jockey at WLPO in LaSalle, Illinois. Sometime during this period, the Sir-Vays went through a lineup change. Drummer Tom Poff was replaced by a young Keith Knudsen from Princeton and Gary Swanson also joined the group. Edmunds however graduated high school that spring and parted ways with the Sir-Vays.
In August 1965, John Mark returned to Morris to perform at the county fair with the Techniques, a group led by Les Lockridge of Seneca, Illinois. It was around this same time that he had started performing with Angelo's Angels, another popular group from the Illinois Valley. The band at that point consisted of Tony and Sharon Angello from Tonica, Illinois, Bill Seaton of Oglesby, and Bob Norris from Streator. Angelo's Angels had already recorded a handful of singles for various Chicago labels before Edmunds joined the group.
Angelo's Angels
Before the end of 1965, John Mark recorded another single under his own name. Both songs were written by Tony Angello. It is very likely that Angelo's Angels are the backing group on the record.
"Big City" and "She Wants It That Way" were presumably recorded in Chicago in 1965. It was released on Jester Records.
John Mark had started college at Illinois State University in the fall of 1965. By the summer of 1966, he had joined yet another area band, the Vengents. The group had members from LaSalle-Peru and Spring Valley and had already gone through a number of lineup changes since their formation in 1963.
Around the time that John Mark joined, the group consisted of Dick Verucchi, Dick Hally and Mike Roach. They soon added Les Lockridge of Seneca. The Vengents would change their name (or at least the spelling of their name) to the Vengeance. Under the modified moniker, the band recorded a single for Thor Records out of Chicago in late 1966.
The record included a version of "Big City" which John Mark had just recorded the year before. The flipside was an original song written by Verucchi and Hally, "You Cheated On Me."
By mid-1967, the Vengeance had changed their name to A Hat Full Of Rain, which was eventually shortened to just The Rain. Mike Roach appears to have left the group at some point before the summer of 1968.
All of the others members were attending different colleges at this point with John Mark Edmunds and Dick Verucchi attending Illinois State in Normal while Les Lockridge was at Illinois Valley Community College in Oglesby and Dick Hally at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Despite being spread out geographically, the band continued to perform together all across the state. For a time, the group was even represented by the Blytham Ltd. talent agency. In 1968 for example, they performed at the Brown Jug in Champaign, the Morgue in Decatur, and the Reservation in Pontiac.
The Rain: John Mark Edmunds, Dick Hally, Les Lockridge, Dick Verucchi
The band also went back into the studio in 1968 where they recorded a John Mark Edmunds original, "Love's Funny Like That," along with a cover of the Hollies' "Peculiar Situation." The single was again released on Thor Records.
Not long after this release, their recording of "Peculiar Situation" was re-released on Cobblestone, a subsidiary of Buddah Records. The band's name, however, was changed to The Golden Haze for the release. The A-side of the single contained a second Hollies' cover, "Have You Ever Loved Somebody."
By 1969, the Rain added an additional member, guitarist Alan Thacker. That spring Edmunds graduated college and got married.
The Rain on stage in Spring Valley, 1969
The Rain opened for Rare Earth at the Back Door in Peru, Illinois in July 1970. The poster for the show references the Rain's new release - "You Are But An Animal." This release, if it exists at all, could not be verified. A month later, the Rain were scheduled to play at the doomed Canned Heat "festival" at the Back Door. Instead they opened for Poco.
By 1971, The Rain had changed their name one more time. The group was now Stronghold.
That year, the band recorded for RCA Records. Out of the sessions came one single, released only as a promo. It included "Sow The Seed," written by John Mark Edmunds. The flip side was "Big Man," credited on the record to Les Lockridge, Dick Hally and Dick Verucchi. In the copyright records however, the song is credited to Hally, Verucchi and Alan Thacker (not Lockridge).
Stronghold appears to be the end of John Mark Edmunds' musical career. The other members of the group went on to form the band Buckacre. They recorded two albums for MCA in the late 1970's.
By the late 1970's, Edmunds' extensive record collection had evolved into a record store, Nickelodeon Records & Tapes, in Dixon.
Dixon Evening Telegraph, August 20, 1977
In 1984, John Mark and his father along with the mayor of Dixon, started a record label (Nickelodeon Records) and production company (J.E.D. Productions) with the sole purpose of producing records and tapes of President Ronald Reagan Reads Stories from the Old Testament. Reagan, a Dixon native, had visited the town earlier that year on his 73rd birthday. The tapes were sold locally at that time but were starting to be distributed nationally when they ran into legal trouble.
The recordings, which were originally produced for RCA Records in 1955, were thought to be in the public domain. The Edmunds' production company however failed to secure the necessary rights before reissuing the recordings and were promptly sued by the record label for one million dollars. For a few days in June 1984, Edmunds' Nickelodeon Records became national news. The matter was eventually settled out of court.
Outside of music, John Mark Edmunds worked at the Dixon State School for many years. He was also a Nursing Home Administrator in Illinois, North Carolina and Florida.
Sadly, Edmunds suffered a stroke in 2002 which left him partially paralyzed. He passed away five years later at the age of 59. According to his obituary, "John's life was full of music and laughter - he was a vocalist and keyboardist, and always proved to be the life of the party."
