A Record Release Party 50 Years Overdue

There’s a song by Philadelphia soul band Nat Turner Rebellion on their debut release called “Never Too Late” — and it’s very fitting.

That’s because the track was recorded, along with the rest of the material on “Laugh to Keep from Crying,” sometime between 1969 and 1972 in Philadelphia’s iconic Sigma Sound Studios, when Nat Turner Rebellion were in their heyday. Back then, the politically charged, Black Power-era ensemble opened for the chart-topping Delfonics, had a hit-making agent and were signed with a renowned record label, Philly Groove Records. But only a handful of the band’s singles were ever released while the short-lived band was together, until now.

The unreleased material came to light thanks to a unique collaboration between the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design’s student-run MAD Dragon label in partnership with music publishing company Reservoir Media and online record club Vinyl Me, Please.

Reservoir Media acquired the publishing rights for Philly Groove’s song catalog in 2012. But no one realized the band had physical tapes stored in the archives of Philadelphia’s legendary, long-gone Sigma Sound Studios. Drexel preserves and manages the studio’s 7,000 historical audiotapes of pop, soul, disco and R&B recordings that were known as “the sound of Philadelphia.”

Toby Seay, an associate professor in Westphal College who manages the Sigma Sound Studios collection, first found and identified the 14 Nat Turner Rebellion tracks that comprise the album.

After the band’s sole surviving member, 75-year-old Joe Jefferson, gave his approval for the album, Seay’s talents were tapped to remaster the tracks and prepare them for release on vinyl. Students from MAD Dragon Records connected with Vinyl Me, Please, a subscription service that sends new albums to its tens of thousands of members each month, to handle distribution of the release in March.

“This sort of thing is pretty much unheard of in the music industry,” says Marc Offenbach, an assistant professor in Westphal College and adviser of MAD Dragon Records, of the collaborative release.

In May, the record’s many collaborators, supporters and Jefferson’s family and friends came together in the URBN Center Annex on Drexel’s University City Campus to celebrate the album’s release. The event featured a Q&A between Jefferson and Philadelphia Inquirer music critic Dan DeLuca, which prompted Jefferson to open up about the band’s history, reception and the reasons why the music wasn’t released to the masses back in the band’s youth.

“There was a part of me that thought I would be fooling myself if I thought I could do it,” Jefferson says of his band’s music. “There are a lot of fear factors in life, so I had a lot of them on my plate. … But what a wonderful gift that someone can give someone else: belief in yourself.”