The big moment is almost here.
Yemi Oyediran, writer-director of King Of Them All: The Story of King Records, has avoided contemplating how his film about the legendary Cincinnati recording studio will be seen nationwide at 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10, on PBS (Channels 48, 16, and 54).
“I’m trying hard not to think about it. That’s so overwhelming,” Oyediran says. He’s been working on the film for nine years. He learned three years ago that PBS would air his film through its Open Call for Emerging Filmmakers.
King of Them All introduces U.S. television audience to Syd Nathan’s small record factory on Brewster Avenue in Evanston where “The Twist,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” and many James Brown hits were first recorded.
“I think Cincinnati had a very legitimate claim to be the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll, without a doubt,” says John Curley, co-founder and bass player for The Afghan Whigs. To wit:
- Wynonie Harris recorded “Good Rockin’ Tonight” in 1948 at King, six years before Elvis Presley recorded it at Sun Records in Memphis.
- Hank Ballard and the Midnighters recorded “The Twist” in 1958 as the B-side to “Teardrops on Your Letter.” Two years later, Chubby Checker released a cover version that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.
- Brown pumped out many hits for King, including “Cold Sweat” and the best-selling James Brown: Live at the Apollo. But not all of it was live from Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater. Engineers failed to adequately record the Apollo audience reaction, so King staffers recorded Cincinnati kids shouting at local “sock hop” dances.
“The ‘live audience’ at the Apollo was a bunch of screaming teenagers in suburban Cincinnati,” Curley says in the film.
Christian McBride, Grammy-winning jazz bassist, says that “when you think about the legacy of funk, particularly that of James Brown, much of that was created here in Cincinnati.”
So was rock ‘n’ roll.
Nathan, a ninth-grade drop-out, worked in real estate, a pawn shop, as a wrestling promoter, and at an appliance store before operating record stores on Fifth Street and Central Avenue. He opened King Records in 1943.
His first clients were country and western artists such as Cowboy Copas, Merle Travis, Grandpa Jones, and The Stanley Brothers, who played “hillbilly music.” Then he started recording Black musicians such as Ballard, Brown, Little Willie John, Otis Williams, Freddy King, and others playing rhythm and blues, which was called “race” music at the time.
It also was revolutionary at the time for one studio to be making country, rhythm and blues, funk, or rock music in the same studio. And Nathan, “a brash outsider dismissed by the industry, dared to put everything under one roof. In a single building, records were written, recorded, pressed, and shipped — capturing performances with an urgency the industry giants couldn’t match," PBS notes.
By early 1949, King “was the sixth largest record company in America, and the largest of the independent labels,” says Randy McNutt, a former Cincinnati Enquirer reporter, record producer, and author of King Records of Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Sound and Little Labels/Big Sound.
Nathan, in an audio recording in the film, explains that “we started with hillbillies, and then we saw the need to go into other categories of the record business. Why should we go into these towns and only sell to hillbilly accounts? Because you don’t make any money when your car is rolling. So we got into the 'race' business. We started to add artists, and immediately we became the factor in the ‘race’ business.”
King mixed R&B, blues, and country music, which "basically is a working definition of rock ‘n’ roll,” according to the film.
King Records cranked out 250 hit songs and more than 150 million country, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, and rock ‘n’ roll records before it closed in 1971, three years after Nathan’s death.
King of Them All includes color and black-and-white performance videos, 8mm and Super 8 color film, still photos, archived audio of Nathan, animation, and cool scenes of 1950s Cincinnati in color and black-and-white — at least in the 75-minute director's cut I previewed. I don't know what was cut for PBS' one-hour version.
Among those interviewed were two multiple Grammy winners, country musician Vince Gill and jazz composer McBride; former King executive Seymour Stein; former King musicians Otis Williams and Philip Paul; King audio engineer Chuck Seitz; and music historians Curley, McNutt, R.J. Smith, Steve Tracy, Brian Powers, and Jon Hartley Fox (The King of the Queen City).
Oyediran, 44, a Nigerian native who grew up in Huntsville, Ala., and Cleveland, discovered James Brown while looking through his grandmother’s record albums. At 16, Oyediran’s drum tutor “introduced me to every James Brown record."
For nine years, he rewrote the King script, recut the film, and interviewed more than 20 people. He offered a 90-minute version to the OTR International Film Festival several years ago. Artistic director tt stern-enzi turned him down — then helped mentor Oyediran as he crafted the current version.
The earlier version “was good, but not very great. So I started all over again,” says Oyediran, a senior application specialist who does cancer analysis and research for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. The 2012 University of Cincinnati computer science graduate also did local music reports for WVXU-FM’s Around Cincinnati Sunday night arts show in 2019-2020.
As a thank you to stern-enzi, Oyediran passed up bigger film festivals to premiere King of Them All at the OTR International Film Festival in March.
Now the whole country will see it.
How to watch
King of Them All will air multiple times on WCET-TV (Channel 48), CET Arts (Channel 48.3); and the WPTD-TV (Channel 16) multiplex stations.
It also will be available to stream on the PBS App from Friday, Oct. 10 to Friday, Nov. 7, says Joan Butcher, program director for WCET-TV, WPDT-TV and WPTO-TV. After that, the film will be available on the CET/ThinkTV Passport (which gives donors and supporters extended access to an on-demand library) for three years, from Nov. 8 this year until Oct. 9, 2028, she says.
Over-the-air broadcasts
WCET-TV Channel 48: 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday Oct. 10; 1 and 4 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 11.
CET Arts Channel 48.3: 9 p.m. Monday, Oct. 13; 9 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 14; and 11 a.m., 4 p.m., and 11 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15.
WPTD-TV Channel 16: 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10; 1 and 4 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 11; 11 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25.
WPTD-TV Again Channel 16.2: 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11; and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12.
WPTD-TV Ohio/World Channel 16.4: 11 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12.
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