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George Olliver
I May Never Get to See You Again / Shine - 7"
Much - 1973
Michael Panontin
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George Olliver's stage show was the stuff of legend back in the day. The Mandala frontman was a soul dynamo whose frenetic, sweat-filled sets held his teenage audiences in a grip that few could match. CIUT deejay Bill King was lucky enough to catch one of their shows in Los Angeles and scribbled a few notes in his journal.
"It was the debut of Toronto soul act Mandala at the Hullabaloo Club, November 26, 1966," he wrote. "The band dressed as costumed gangsters. I didn't know what to expect, so when the band started playing a high-energy hybrid of soul and blues, I found myself consumed by the moment. Then all hell bust loose. Lead singer George Olliver starts spinning and twirling doing a blue-eyed soul imitation of James Brown. Then the strobe lights kick in, and the crowd revels in the unexpected frenzy."
The Mandala were of course riding even higher up here in Canuckistan with their monster hit 'Opportunity', which had reached an almost unfathomable #3 position on powerful CHUM-AM (whose charts back then were normally pretty top-heavy with U.S. and British acts). But as the history books show, weaker sales south of the border, internal bickering, a shelved first recording of their LP Soul Crusade and life on a paltry 40 bucks a week would lead Olliver to quit the group (to be replaced by the equally competent Roy Kenner). And aside from a stint in 1970 with the sprawling soul/jazz outfit Natural Gas - whose self-titled LP by the way is definitely worth checking out - the talented singer all but disappeared from the Canrock picture.
Olliver would spend the bulk of the seventies outside the studio, but he did manage to briefly resurface in 1973 with a single for CHUM's successful Much imprint, launched a few years back in an attempt to break out of that CanCon straitjacket. 'I May Never Get to See You Again' may have troubled few charts at the time - and likely troubles even fewer people today - but its languorous rhythm, those free-flowing horns and that silky vocal performance marked a brief, albeit mostly ignored, return to form for Olliver.
A few more recordings followed - a single ('Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You') in 1976 and an LP (Dream Girl) in 1987 - neither of which sold very well. But it hardly seems to matter to Olliver these days. After experiencing a life-changing event in, of all places, a hotel room in Woodstock, New York in 1979, he veered to the left - or is that to the right? - and issued an album's worth of gospel music in 2008 entitled George Olliver's Gospel Soul - Look Up.
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