Feb. 26, 1972: Pneu Breed Production

 

As noted in an earlier column, there were lots of bands called New Breed 50 years ago. But only one of them had the fabulous Lance Diamond. 

Feb. 26, 1972

Needed: Audiences

To Hear Top Band 

TROMBONIST Arthur McBride introduces him as “the master blaster soul disaster,” the band speeds through a show version of “Dock of the Bay,” lets him croon a mellow “Rainy Night in Georgia” and then wham!

        “These guys work me into a sweat every time,” Lance Diamond will tell you, drying his face with a backstage towel.

        This time the “Them Changes” medley does it to him. Lance can dig it, even though his smooth voice makes him more of a ballad singer and even though he has to ride the energy of the Pneu Breed Production all by himself tonight.

* * *

FIRST LEAD singer James Hunt, who specializes in the heavy songs, can’t get down from Niagara Falls and last night’s great crowd is swallowed up somewhere in that blizzard which has all of Buffalo thrashing and shivering.

        Even the handful of Saturday nighters who made it to the shelter of the multi-leveled ceilings here at Jan’s on midtown Main Street seem to be too wearied by the storm to celebrate.

        What gives the Pneu Breed Production its kick is the hard-driving spirit of the six instrumentalists, whose average age is 19. Give them something they can get off on (their favorite is that super-syncopated Sly Stone rhythm) and they really cook.

        Guitarist Calvin Loatman, bassist Thomas Anderson, drummer Rodney Garrett and organist Danny Spidell lay down individual parts into a tight four-cornered foundation while trumpeter Ansel Cureton and Arthur McBride put on dramatic flourishes with perfectly synchronized horn licks.

* * *

ON TOP OF the hard-working music is a visual show. Nothing fancy, none of this regimented choreography, but Ansel has accumulated a lot of spontaneous steps and things that have been cool during other gigs.

        Some of them, like the stop-action sequence where the whole band kinda takes off, make a dramatic impact. And all of them, like Ansel and Arthur’s rapid-fire mike switching, are fun to watch.

        “We believe that if somebody pays a dollar to come in and see a show, then we’re going to give them their money’s worth,” Lance says.

        On a normal night, they’d be welcoming people to dance up on the stage – a Joe Cocker Mad Dogs & Englishmen scene – or they’d be down among the tables as Lance belts out Chicago’s “Beginnings.”

        And Lance, of course, would be singing alternate sets with James Hunt until the finale, when they share the stage for “Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You.”

* * *

THE VOCALISTS pick out their songs, but the band reworks them to their own specifications, with Danny Spidell sometimes writing out arrangements.

        “A lotta pop songs you can’t have fun to,” Ansel says. “The rhythm sounds all right on the record, but not when you play it.”

        “It doesn’t take very long to pick up a song with this group,” James says. “It’s just boom and we got it.”

        The group built up steam and a pile of equipment last summer by playing the clubs on the lake around Angola. From the time Lance landed an audition at the Big Ten Club, they became a mainstay of the summer scene along with The Rubber Band and The Glass Menagerie.

        It was something of a first for an all-Black band. Nobody’s done that since Wilmer & The Dukes. In fact, most Black musicians don’t even consider making the lake.

        “It was great for us,” one of the band says. “On the Ave. (Jefferson), we be running into people and they say: ‘Where you guys getting out?’ And we say: ‘Big Ten.’ And they say: ‘Where Big Ten?’ We say Angola and they say: ‘Where that?’”

                                                * * *

FOR A WHILE the group had more jobs than they could handle, but when the summer ended, the city offered them even fewer places to play than there were in the spring.

        The Sands was closed. Brownie’s Upper Terrace, small as it was, was closed too. The Pine Grill didn’t think it could justify its cover charge with a local band.

        They wound up doing shows with the Moments at Fredonia State and with Kool & The Gang at Canisius College. Once they went to Brockport and they traveled to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in a Thanksgiving snowstorm to play a Women’s Job Corps Center.

        High point of the fall was when they became the first all-Black band to play Williamsville’s Suburban House. The group credits racially-mixed United Sound with helping to prepare the way.

* * *

BUT NOW that they’ve finished three weeks at Jan’s, there’s nothing ahead except a return to the club March 6 so that owner Bill Nunn Sr. can tape a live performance to put out on his Mo-Do Records label.

        What bothers James and Lance these days is that they feel they’ve got the best Black band in the Buffalo area and they worry about this slowdown and what effect it’s going to have.

        “We’ve been rehearsin’ and rehearsin’ and it’s good,” Lance says. “We ain’t out there beggin’. We’re scruffin’. We just wanta be out there where people can see us.”

* * *

SITTING IN Lance’s bare new apartment on Bryant Street, the group, all wearing hats, starts talking about Buffalo musicians who had to leave the city to make it, people like Darryl Banks, Donnie Albert, Dyke & The Blazers.

        “There’s a lotta Black musicians that nobody gets a chance to hear,” Lance says. “It’s all right if we go 100 miles out of the city to do a gig, but it’s easier to buy dope than it is for the Pneu Breed Production to get a gig.

        “That’s the whole idea of the picture in the bus station. Where does Pneu Breed Production go from here?”

        “It’s like going to college and getting a degree for something,” Arthur says, “and then you can’t get a job.” 

The box/sidebar: 

New-Nu-Pneu Breed 

Pertinent information about Pneu Breed Production:

        James Hunt, 23, singer, Niagara-Wheatfield High School graduate, attended Niagara County Community College, works at Carborundum in Niagara Falls, single.

        Lance Diamond, 28, singer, Burgard High, attended UB, Navy veteran, single.

        Ansel Cureton, 20, trumpet, Bennett High, attended Fredonia State, teacher aide at Diocesan Education Center, single.

        Arthur McBride, 19, trombone, Lafayette High, works at a nursing home, single.

        Calvin Loatman, 18, guitar, goes to East High night school, single.

        Thomas Anderson, 18, bass guitar, Burgard, East High nights, single.

        Danny Spidell, 19, organ and piano, Bennett, sophomore music major at Fredonia State, single.

        Robert Garrett, 20, drums, Lafayette and East, single.

* * *

THERE’VE BEEN various bands called New Breed on Buffalo’s East Side since the early ‘60s, but when Pneu Breed Production started out as the New Breed five years ago, they started fresh.

        What happened was that singer James Hunt had some bookings in Niagara Falls and lined up a four-man rhythm section from Buffalo to back him.

        Ansel and Arthur followed Danny and Robert into the group about two years ago, all having been with the All-Night Workers. Calvin and Thomas, formerly with the Dynamic Souls, came in about nine months ago.

* * *

DANNY HAD met Lance when he filled in with one of the small groups Lance was working with under the name of Alphone Yousef. Lance, a veteran of Norm Bernard’s Soul Chargers and regular on the West Side music scene, came in mid-1970.

        The name had already changed from New Breed to Nu Breed last spring, but then the group learned of another Buffalo band with the same name. Now it’s Production because they’re a unit. And Pneu was one of Ansel’s ideas. “Like in new-monia,” he says.

* * * * *

THE PHOTOS: Top photo, front, singer Lance Diamond; standing, from left, trombonist Arthur McBride, trumpeter Ansel Cureton, guitarist Calvin Loatman, organist Danny Spidell, bass guitarist Thomas Anderson and drummer Robert Garrett. Bottom photo: Singer James Hunt.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Everybody loved Lance Diamond. When he wasn’t providing excitement for the area’s biggest events, he would reign with his 24 Karat Diamond Band in a long-running gig at the Elmwood Lounge, a vintage nightclub-restaurant at Elmwood Avenue and West Utica Street.

He was featured on the Goo Goo Dolls’ 1989 album “Jed,” (Goos bassist Robby Takac lived in an apartment downstairs from Lance) and the whole city mourned when he died unexpectedly in January 2015, right after he suddenly fell ill and missed his New Year’s Eve show.

The entire Pneu Breed was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in 1998 (Lance had become a Hall of Famer by himself in 1992) and was credited with being the band that broke the color barrier in the suburbs.  

Individual members, however, are hard to track down. Guitarist Calvin Loatman’s obituary in The News in 2015 noted that he played with other local groups, notably Junction West, before moving to Atlanta in 1986, where he was active in the ministry of a mega-church, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.

Also turning up was drummer Robert Garrett. He stayed in Buffalo and in the 2000s became part of Taylor Made Jazz, led by another member of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 1998, the venerable and ever-upbeat keyboardist Van Taylor.