🥁 Darrell Banks – Open The Door To Your Heart…

Born illegitimately, Darrell Eubanks on July 25th 1937 in Mansfield, Ohio he died from a single gunshot wound aged just 33 on 24th February, 1970 in Detroit, Michigan.

Banks was raised by his grandparents and sang in the local church choir with his half sister Lois Williams. Williams told the Detroit Metro Times that Darrell was a joker who would often skip Sunday school and head off to teen clubs and pool halls. “My grandmother would give him $5 to go and get milk and he would be gone all day playing pool and when he came home he wouldn’t have any milk or money”.

Following a failed interracial marriage to Beverly Kay Simon, the couple split up in the 1960’s and Darrell relocated to Buffalo, N.Y. Here, he met club owner Doc Watson who had music connections in Detroit.

Don Davis and his business partner formed the production company Solid Hitbound Inc. With labels Groovesville, Solid Hitbound Records and Revilot the company was producing records for The Parliaments, J.J Barnes, Edwin Starr and now one Darrell Banks.

That brings us to his debut single Open the Door to Your Heart which reached No’2 on the R&B charts and No’27 on the pop charts. Smooth as whipped cream, this is a beautiful song. Originally released on Revilot in the USA, it’s an evergreen and sounds as good today as it did over 50 years ago. PLAY

The flip side is an uptempo dancer with great breaks and backing vocals. PLAY

This Stateside demo is in very good condition and plays well. Priced at £225, it’s a nice collectable item.

Wrong place, wrong time!

February 24th 1970

According to a report in the Michigan Chronicle on 7th March, 1970, this is what happened.

Banks had been in a relationship with Marjorie Bozeman and she was attempting to bring it to a close. Banks was waiting at her house in Detroit when she came home with Aaron Bullock, a serving police officer.

Banks approached Miss Bozeman and grabbed her saying “we have to talk”. Apparently, Bullock identified himself as a cop and ordered Banks to let go of Bozeman. Banks produced a pistol and pointed it at the cop, Bullock drew his gun and fired one shot which struck Banks in the neck, he died an hour later in hospital. Because Banks drew his weapon first, no charges were brought against Bullock.

So that was the end of the Darrell Banks story, well not quite…

This fabulous foot tapping dancer is backed by a beautiful deep soul ballad. (EX+) £75

…Now for that £14,000 record. Sadly, I don’t have one and it was actually sold for £14,500. John Manship explains…

Someone living in the vicinity of Decca found a copy of the record amongst a bunch of records won at auction. When he tried to locate it on Discogs for a valuation, no previous example of the record was found. 

“We were pleased to auction the record and such was the interest that our website crashed”.

This is a holy grail record and the rarest British issued soul record of all time. The record eventually sold for £14,500.

Thought to be a one off at the time, John says a second copy is now believed to exist. In any event, when you are scouting for records in junk shops, this is what you’re looking for…

Pete Smith sent this…

I saw this on Ebay for £1200 and it’s one of quite a few London demos issued with typed labels.

Is there a happy ending?

Well sort of, and it came by way of a Scotsman.

Banks was buried in an unmarked grave which remained that way until 2003. It was, David Meikle, founder of the website http://www.Soulfuldetroit.com who organised a worldwide fund raiser among the many fans of Banks’ music. With $2,000 raised, a monument was placed in Detroit Memorial Park.

Thanks to John Manship > raresoulman.co.uk and Pete Smith of Planet Records