W. Bell

The artist, songwriter and producer known as William Bell was born William Yarbrough in Memphis, Tennessee, on July 16, 1939. He began performing in bands as a teenager, releasing his first record with the Del Rios on the local Meteor label in 1957. He developed his songwriting career at the legendary Stax label, and would be a guiding force in the evolution of the Stax sound. In 1961 had released his first solo effort, You Don't Miss Your Water (Til the Well Runs Dry), which would be one of the early hits for the label. He was drafted in 1963 and spent two years in the Army.

In 1967 he released his first solo album, The Soul of a Bell. Albert King had a hit with Bell’s song Born Under a Bad Sign, and Bell released two more albums for Stax, Relating" and Bound To Happen." In 1969 Bell moved to Atlanta and started his own label, Peachtree. At the same time, he left Stax for the Mercury label, where he would release two albums. In 1977 he enjoyed the biggest hit of his career with Trying To Love Two, which sold over two million copies and stayed on the R&B charts for over six months. He was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1997.

The records that Bell produced for his Peachtree label in the late ‘60s and early 70’s included national acts like Mitty Collier (who had previously recorded with Chess Records), the Nashville-based Johnny Jones and the King Kasuals (whose record Soul Poppin’ was later picked up by Brunswick), as well as more obscure local Atlanta acts like James Fountain, Gorgeous George and Emory and the Dynamics. Bell’s production on these records is considered some of the best of the period, and original copies of some of the rarer titles are sought-after among soul collectors. Unfortunately, no comprehensive reissue of Bell’s Peachtree recordings exists, and few of the records have appeared on compilations.