Interview with Numero Group’s Ken Shipley
Instead of speaking to a musician, we thought it would be interesting to switch it up this week and talk to an artist of a different kind – in this case Ken Shipley, a sort of archaeologist of music. Ken’s record company Numero Group unearths long lost or forgotten classics, and gives them a second lease on life by reissuing them as albums and compilations. Though continually busy searching out “new old music,” Shipley was able to give Culture Bully’s Jon Behm some time for this week’s Five Questions.
Jon Behm: Numero Group, called in one of your press releases the “Record label America loves to ignore” releases fantastic “forgotten” music: from ancient Chicago Soul to rare Central American Funk. Everyone I have played your compilations for has loved them, why don’t you think that you have become better known nation-wide?
Ken Shipley: Don’t get me wrong, we’re a known quantity in certain circles, but as a whole the work we’re doing goes largely ignored. Consumers have a ton of choices, now more than ever in the reissue field, and there’s only so much buying of the wildly rare that they’ll do. Like a bout of Jungle Fever, middle America’s fascination with the unknown and obscured is always short lived. Sadly, they’ll walk down the aisle with Fleet Foxes 99 out of 100 times.
JB: Your mission statement reads “to dig deep into the recesses of our record collections with the goal of finding the dustiest gems begging to be released from their exile on geek street.” Are you still getting most of this stuff out of your own record collections, or are you actively out there trolling the vinyl bins for forgotten diamonds?
KS: A collection is only so deep. At a certain point you start looking at other collections to pull knowledge and ideas from. This could be a stash of records hoarded by a greying Gary, Indiana DJ or an indexed library of 45s kept by others in the field. Unfortunately, record stores are one of the last places to look for rare records. The market is over saturated with dudes looking to grip, and the best stuff rarely makes it to the floor anyway. Most of our digging is done in private collections, yard sales, flea markets, and eBay.
JB: When I imagine your offices I see vinyl everywhere – in the bathroom, on top of the refrigerator, bursting through door frames, etc. Is that accurate or is it more like an enormous, temperature controlled vault? Have you ever thought about doing music-geek tours?
KS: People think that our office is some kind of modern day Alexandria, but in reality it’s a pretty modest space. There’s plenty of LPs and 45s all over the place, but it’s not cold or sterile. It’s generally kind of a mess, as we’re constantly pulling out a box of tapes to scour and then quickly abandoning it for a massive shipment that needs to go out. 90% of what we do is not cool or interesting. Research isn’t very interesting to watch (or film according to our documenters), and unless you like hearing one side of a conversation, I think you’d be extremely bored.
When our shipping guy first came over he expected glass doors and brushed metal name plates, instead he found four guys in T-shirts and a broken sink (now fixed) and was a little underwhelmed. I think a tour would meet a similar fate.
JB: I was at the Chicago Blues Festival a few weeks ago and one of the things I noticed is that so many of the musicians were in their twilight years. I couldn’t help but to worry that when these guys (and ladies) die, the Blues will die with them. The same issue might be applied to some of Numero’s most popular genre’s: soul, funk, disco, etc. Do you think that these musical genres are/will be kept alive?
KS: Soul music, as I know it, is nearly dead. There’s a handful of modern interpretations, Sharon Jones, Nicole Willis, etc, but if you want to see the real thing you’re running out of time. Guys like Syl Johnson are still out there killing it, as is Roscoe Robinson, Betty Lavette, and Marva Whitney. I can’t think of any modern takes on disco I like, and I won’t be bummed to see it go the way of the ghost.
JB: There are a lot of hip hop artists out there like Pete Rock or the late great J Dilla who sample extensively from old soul and funk records. Do you find you get a lot of business from artists like these looking for new material? How do you feel about the art of sampling?
KS: As long as there is an equitable split between the artists, and the shit actually gets cleared, I’m all for it. Sampling is a great revenue source for artists getting up there in years, and in the case of a few people (Syl Johnson being another great example), it can completely transform their lives financially. The real problem is that a lot of these cats don’t clear samples and instead wait for the artist to find out about it. Then the artist feels like they’re being stolen from, and it makes it harder for anyone who wants to try and do it legitimately. The same goes for compilations. We pay every day for British bootleggers sleazy ways by having to explain that we are nothing like them.
