Thursday, February 4th 2010

By Corrigan Hammond

Hamilton based soul and blues icon John Ellison is a bit of an oddity. Despite the overwhelming success of his 1967 single, “Some Kind of Wonderful,” which in 1995 earned Ellison a citation of achievement from Broadcast Music for having composed the third most played song in the world, the rest of the musician’s body of work has only ever achieved modest commercial success. And while, with the recent release of a new disc of love songs, Ellison is entering his fifth decade of professional songwriting and music-making, the artist has primarily earned for a niche for himself as a critically praised performer with a modest, albeit loyal, international fan base.

His songs, as “Some Kind of Wonderful” proves, have the sort of distinct longevity capable of earning them continuous praise. This year Ellison received the Hamilton Music Award’s fifth annual life-time achievement award—a distinction that has been previously been bestowed upon such musical heavyweights as U2 and Bob Dylan producer Daniel Lanois, classic rock legends, The Band, and Westdale based punk-pioneers Teenage Head.

“At the time that I wrote [‘Some Kind of Wonderful,’]” Ellison recalled to me, “We weren’t with any label. After I wrote that song in Philadelphia, the guy that was managing us, had a friend that was a DJ. He called his friend and said ‘you should come and hear this group.’ So [the DJ] came over to this house where we were practicing, … and he heard us doing ‘Some Kind of Wonderful,’ and said ‘whose song is that?’ And I said ‘it’s mine. I just wrote it.’ He goes ‘wow, man, that’s a hit. You guys need to record this song.’”

Afterwards, as Ellison explained, the DJ took his then group, The Soul Brothers Six, into a makeshift studio where the version of the track that would later be passed on to Atlantic Records was recorded. Indeed, it seemed that the DJ and his stations programming director had ties to with the legendary soul label.

“At the time Aretha Franklin was their main artist. There was another artist called Solomon Burke. He was really big on the label at the time. … Atlantic Records was the label to be with at the time, especially for a black artist because most of their artists at the time were black,” Ellison explained to me.

Since then the song has been covered by over fifty artists—reaching the number three spot on the Billboard Pop Chart in 1975.

“My favourite version of that song would have to be, other than Soul Brothers Six, Huey Lewis and The News. I really like the way they did it,” Ellison explained.

“Grand Funk Railroad’s version was OK, but it didn’t really do anything for me—although … it sold more than Huey Lewis and The News’ [version]. I think by the time Huey Lewis and The News did it, it had been covered quite a few times. But I actually made more money from Huey Lewis and the News even though they didn’t sell as much as Grand Funk Railroad. … Because Grand Funk Railroad recorded it in 1974, and Huey Lewis and The News recorded it twenty years later, which meant that there was more avenues for the song to make more money. So they didn’t sell as many copies, but it was played a lot more than Grand Funk Railroad’s version. There were more videos done with it, [that version was] just an all around … larger moneymaker. … When I hear different versions of [‘Some Kind of Wonderful,’] it is just sort of mind-boggling. I listen … and [then] I go ‘I wrote that song.’”

Ellison, who was originally born in a West Virginia mining town, was prompted to move to Hamilton after performing here several times. “After being here for a few years,” he recalled, “I just grew to like Hamilton. I feel right at home. … It was a wonderful place to be, the people are great. I’ve been in a lot of cities, I’ve done some extensive travelling in my time, but for me Hamilton is the place to be.”

Indeed, following the warm reception that he received last December, when, as part of a small festival held throughout the city in conjunction with the Hamilton Music Awards, Ellison played a special performance at Mohawk College’s McIntyre Theatre, it is clear that the city is eager to return the sentiment. After the set, Ellison was able to greet many of the audience members by name—it seems that over the many decades that he has spent playing sets in his adopted hometown, the blues man and smooth R&B songsmith has built up a local reputation as being the sort of proven performer that audiences never grow tired of.  Surely, so long as this Hamilton hero continues to write and perform, more critical praise and warm receptions await him.