Tracks:
1) Never Going To Be 2) As Long As We're Together 3) Let Me Love You 4) Reasons 5) This Feeling 6) Always 7) Is It Love 8) Don't Take Your Love Away 9) I Just Want To Tell You 10) Giving All My Love To You 11) Join The Party 12) It's Alright Tonight
Vocals: Ron Hollins, Sandra Hollins Keyboards: Jimmy McKinney, Wayne Wallace, Ron Dimassey Guitar: Ray White, Bill Shrey, Bob Castell-Blanch Drums: Eddie Serrano, Dean Revelo Bass: Phil Organo Trumpet: Jim Aron
Sax: Johnnie Bamont Trombone: Wayne Wallace
Liner Notes (Excerpts):
It's Alright Tonight / Released in 2000 by First Experience Records/England
Badwater Bridge was one of the most popular club attractions in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970's and were clearly ahead of their time. Organised in 1972 by trombonist/keyboardist/arranger Wayne Wallace and vocalist Ron Hollins, the brassy nine member R&B band broke new ground on the local Top 40 club circuit with their use of a horn section and jazz inflections, as well as surmounting an unwritten but very racial barrier in employment with their mix of African-American lead vocalists and a number of instrumentalists of Asian descent. "We were influenced by everything that was happening at that time" Wallace says. "We were a real San Francisco-type band, you had Asian people playing R&B because that's what they'd grown up listening to. It was very natural for all of us as native San Franciscans to be totally involved in the R&B and jazz scenes, going to the Fillmore, Both/And and whatever else."
Recorded between 1975 and 1978, the 12 tracks on this project were all penned by Wallace and Hollins and reflect Badwater Bridge's eclectic influences. These include Blood Sweat & Tears, Chicago, the Buddy Miles Express, the Ohio Players, Earth, Wind & Fire and such horn-fueled Bay Area bands as Tower of Power, Cold Blood and the Whispers who were based in Oakland at the time. Lead singer Hollins at times brings to mind Wallace "Scotty" Scott of the Whispers as well as Jeffrey Osborne. "He's singing that way naturally, without trying to sound like them" Wallace says..............