He was 75.
Maxx Kidd “was the Berry Gordy of Washington and got radio stations to play go-go,” says Gregory “Sugarbear” Elliot of EU, referencing the president of Motown in speaking of Carl Lomax Kidd, the music industry entrepreneur, producer, singer, and songwriter who died in Maryland on March 13 at the age of 75. ”He really fought for us. If it wasn’t for him I don’t think go-go would ever have really gotten on the radio."
Although best known for his involvement in promoting D.C.’s homegrown funky polyrhythmic style, Kidd had first established himself locally as a part of the 1960s and 1970s local soul music scene, and later as a music industry marketing person advocating for American R&B acts to get airplay at radio stations everywhere.
Kidd, who grew up in West Virginia, came to D.C. in 1960. After a stint as a calypso singer at a drive-in restaurant, Kidd joined The Enjoyables, whose 1966 Motown-flavored single “Shame"—written and produced by Kidd on the D.C. label Shrine—never became a hit but later became a sought after piece of wax by British vinyl collectors. Shrine was the 1964-1967 R&B label led by songwriter Eddie Singleton and his wife, Raynoma Gordy Singleton (the ex-wife of Motown’s Berry Gordy). Kevin Coombe, a local DJ who is working on a book about the local soul scene, says that Kidd was active at Shrine as a songwriter, and around that time he also met and wrote for Gene “Duke of Earl” Chandler and Billy Butler on other labels. Later, Kidd's connections got a single distributed through Curtis Mayfield’s label Curtom.
Between 1967 and 1975 Kidd wrote songs for various acts, from D.C. and elsewhere, that got released on a number of different labels from ABC Paramount to Buddah to his own Cherry Blossom label. D.C.’s The Stridells, a group from Eastern High School, had a regional hit in 1970, with a song he co-wrote called “Mix it Up.” A number of tunes from this era were compiled on a now out-of-print 2006 release called Washington Lost Soul—Carl 'Maxx' Kidd Singles Collection Vol. 1. It included girl group The Fawns, proto-go-go group The Young Senators, and Elvans Road Ltd., amongst others.
The roots of Kidd’s involvement with go-go also started around this time. Coombe notes that in 1972 “Maxx Kidd was actually the one who introduced Chuck Brown to the representative at Sussex Records” who released Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers' We The People. In 1974, Kidd’s awesome and funky number “Blow Your Whistle”— that uses the term “go-go”—appeared on Brown and The Soul Searchers' Salt of the Earth.
Al Marks, who later worked for A&M Records, met Kidd in the 1970s when Marks was working for record stores, and as a buyer who sold records to various stores. “I was a 21-year-old white kid who didn’t know anything about R&B music," Marks says. "Waxie Maxie’s was the biggest R&B account in the town. Maxx took the time to educate me as to what it was all about. What the R&B scene was all about. What it took to make a record a hit.” Charles Stephenson, former EU manager and later co-author of the book The Beat! Go-go Music from Washington, D.C. called him “the professor," and says he "learned so much about the business from him.” [Read More]