Radio Baby
The big time passed them by, but Skip Mahoaney and the Casuals are D.C.'s sweetest soul survivors.
Cover Story
It's Sunday night, and the faithful have gathered from all over the metropolitan area, crowding the close rows of white-clothed tables that fill the NCO club at Bolling Air Force Base. Willie Bennet, unofficial manager of United Performing Artists of the Metropolitan Area (UPAMA), anxiously paces the dimly lit room. The audience of about 300 includes middle-aged couples holding hands, unattached dapper men, well-groomed single mothers out on the town, one or two elderly ladies with canes, and one blue-jeaned young man who must have grooved on his parent's albums and never forgotten the feeling. The challenge for the evening's performers—all local soul survivors—is to re-create the neon magic of a city street corner most baby boomers abandoned years ago.
The first half of the "D.C. Review" spotlights six competent acts whose circumstances never produced a major recording contract; while they perform, the tour-savvy veterans who have serenaded thousands briefly huddle in a side room. Once-familiar rivals embrace, tease, and admire, none with more authority than Skip Mahoaney of the Casuals; Mahoaney is arguably the best remembered of Washington's classic soul balladeers.
The original Casuals—Skip Mahoaney, George Norris, Billy Jones, and Roger Chapman—are here, as is George Spann, the last original member of the Dynamic Superiors, whose 1974 hit "Shoe Shoe Shine" became part of Motown history. The Choice Four, who scored for RCA in 1975 with their remake of the Marvelettes' "When You're Young and in Love," are in the house as well, along with Al Johnson, lead singer and driving force behind the Unifics.... Continued 
Issue of Feb. 13 - 19, 1998
News and Features
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Cover Story - Rubbing Out Nine Lives
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City Lights - Doctors at the Gate: The U.S. Public Health Service at Ellis Island
City Lights - Ballet Hispț.nico
City Lights - The Japan of Shohei Imamura
City Lights - The First Americans: A New Perspective
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