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Black & Ward
Back Up (Against Your Persuasion) / This Is My Confusion - 7"
RCA - 1975
Michael Panontin
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Terry Black's teen idol days have fallen more than a few rungs down the Canrock history ladder these days. His 'Unless You Care' from the summer of '64 was a catchy slab of Beatlesque pop written by P.F. Sloan and Jan Berri and featuring then-unknown session musicians Glen Campbell and Leon Russell. The song charted on both sides of the border - that includes a #2 position in his hometown of Vancouver and a #3 slot in Winnipeg - and by rights deserves at least the occasional spin on oldies radio.
Black left Canada for the US and issued a run of singles and even a full LP of mostly Sloan and Berri tunes. But by the late sixties, his currency of carefully coiffed hair and cutesy pop ditties was hardly what you would call legal tender. And so the singer made his way back up north, appearing in the 1969 Toronto production of Hair, where he met and eventually married a member of the cast named Laurel Ward.
As Black & Ward, the pair released a handful of singles throughout the first half of the seventies, first on the local Yorkville imprint and then in 1975 a trio of soul-tinged records for RCA. 'Back Up (Against Your Persuasion)' is clearly the best of the bunch and the one that, no surprise, the northern soul anoraks across the pond have picked up on. It's a slow burner that pairs Ward's silky vocal with all the accoutrements of mid-seventies modern soul, including strings, horns, back-up harmonies and even a bit of conga.
In other words, just the thing that the diggers in the UK are willing to shell out their hard-earned pounds for. Aside from the excellent music, 'Back Up (Against Your Persuasion)' was only ever released in Canada and limped to a barely noticeable #35 nationally, meaning that it's a rather tough disc to track down. The Rare Northern Soul site had the disc for sale with the following description: "Sensational Canadian-only seventies northern soul midtempo dancer - will be massive when it gets spins at venues for sure. It's got EVERYTHING." That copy carried a hefty price point of 150 British pounds and was later listed as 'Sold Out'.
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