Robbie Vincent (born 9 June 1946) is an English radio broadcaster and DJ. As a champion of jazz, funk and soul music in the UK during the late 1970s he made an important contribution both live in clubs and on radio. In 1995 he was voted Independent Radio Personality of the Year at the Variety Club of Great Britain annual awards.
The teenaged Robbie Vincent moved up from newspaper messenger boy, aged 15, to print journalist reporting for the Evening Standard on the trial of the notorious gangsters, the Kray twins, and from the troubles in Northern Ireland. His broadcasting career began on 6 October 1970, along with fellow DJ David Simmons, at BBC Radio London, newly founded as one legitimate answer to Britain's avalanche of illegal UK pirate radio stations. With a potential audience in Greater London of 7.5million, he was to spend 13 years helping to shape the sound of local FM radio, starting before legal commercial competition arrived.
During the miners' strike of early 1974 and the resulting three-day week that limited the nation's consumption of electricity, Vincent was hosting a new style of show called 'Late Night London' and playing devil's advocate with listeners who called in by telephone to air their problems or opinions. The programme was broadcast late in the evening and was among the first to establish the format for the radio phone-in in the UK. Vincent said on his website, "Prime Minister Ted Heath gifted me the three day week in December 1973 and the early shut down for TV. The BBC Radio London station manager said "yes" to a night time phone in show. As the TV shut down the lights went off, radio really triumphed, and my evening phone in succeeded beyond all expectations." His celebrity interviewees included prime minister Margaret Thatcher, "at her charming best", he says on his own website.
In 1976, Vincent was pursuing his own tastes by also hosting a music show on the same station over Saturday lunchtimes. In his own words: "Moving from a mixed format of Slade, Rod Stewart, Marc Bolan and endless sound-tracks ... soul and jazz began to take over without management really noticing." He played artists such as Evelyn 'Champagne' King and Crown Heights Affair and invited guest soul DJs, such as Chris Hill, Tom Holland, DJ Froggy, Sean French, to play their favourite three records that came hot off the presses that week. The show grew to be considered essential listening by the capital's soul music fans. A year later, in 1977, Vincent was first heard on BBC Radio 1, hosting a soul and disco show on Saturday evenings which was simulcast on VHF/FM at a time when Radio 1 was only broadcast on medium wave most of the time. He returned for another stint in 1978. In 1982 he was again heard nationally presenting the discussion show Talkabout, picking up on the current affairs side of his work at Radio London.
In 1978, such was the growing appetite for soul music that he and the other DJs in what became dubbed the south of England's 'Soul Mafia' staged the first 'Purley all-dayer', a fiercely athletic black-music dance marathon at Tiffany’s in Purley, the London suburb. As a direct response to similar Northern soul all-nighters, it attracted the fanatical 'soul tribes' from across Britain. A year later, Vincent helped instigate the popular Caister Soul Weekender events in the Norfolk holiday park (the first was called '1st National Soul Weekender' in April 1979). The original Soul Mafia DJ line-up was supplemented by Greg Edwards (presenter of Soul Spectrum on Saturday evening on London's Capital Radio), Chris Brown and Jeff Young.
In 1980, Vincent's signature song was "Get It" by The Dramatics and a year later Vincent became manager of UK soul funk band Second Image, securing record deals with Polydor and then in 1984, MCA Records. He acted as their sole personal manager until the band split in 1986. Vincent became part of both a soul revival as well as a move for commercial acceptance of jazz-funk. In addition, the mainstream jazz movement, so often omitted from history, received a significant boost due to unknown and new artists being given a media platform.
Though Vincent was a figurehead in the jazz-funk-soul community, to many thousands of others he was the voice of current affairs phone-ins such as The Robbie Vincent Telephone Programme on BBC Radio London until he left in 1988. Vincent later re-emerged as the phone-in host on LBC's Nightline programme from 11 pm Monday–Friday in the late 1980s.
BBC Radio London Saturday show
The Robbie Vincent Show acquired a cult following when it was broadcast by Radio London on Saturdays from 1976. The show was broadcast in mono on the station's FM frequency of 94.9 MHz as well as being on MW (medium wave) frequency where it was allocated on 1457 kHz (206 metres) from Brookman's Park.
Many fans made pirate cassette tape recordings, normally from the FM transmissions as MW broadcasts were of poor quality, of the show which was on air from 11:30am to 2pm. He played imports, promos, new releases and the soul anthems that were filling dance-floors at cutting-edge underground clubs such as Flick's in Dartford and The Gold Mine on Canvey Island. For many, Vincent's radio show was the first source for essential listening – resulting in jazz-funk and soul DJs and fans going to specialist shops for a copy of an all-important 12-inch vinyl single or album. Vincent would play a selection of UK and US imports, thus strengthening the sales and reach of the music both in London and further afield.
The show's cult status was such that many fans would travel to locations where even the weakest signal of BBC Radio London could be received – these locations included High Wycombe, Marlow, Luton, Dunstable and even as far north as Northamptonshire. Remarkably, the signal also reached 120 miles west of London to Bath where one listener had set up an FM aerial connected to a Hi-Fi tuner and would record the shows on cassette. The recorded shows were often used as a buying guide to obtain the latest music in the specialist London import shops such as Bluebird Records and Groove Records among others.
In 1983 the Saturday show started to include a Fusion Jazz 40 (which often would mirror the Fusion Few Chart in Blues and Soul magazine). Many import 12-inch singles and albums would not have been officially released in the UK without Robbie Vincent's support. Some of these included tracks by Maze (feat. Frankie Beverly), Brass Construction, Tania Maria, Earl Klugh and Alfie Silas. The first official playing of Lionel Richie's All Night Long was by Vincent on his Saturday show in autumn 1983 as a promo, well ahead of Richie's album Can't Slow Down.
Musical artists exposure to the UK market
The Guardian newspaper described Vincent as one of the 1980s' 'taste-making DJs', who helped US jazz-funk combo, Maze with Frankie Beverly, to gain a cult following in the UK. He was one of the few British radio presenters to have interviewed Marvin Gaye. The Saturday show standard format would be displaced by Vincent's popular 'All Winners Show' where the fans would choose the tracks to be played. On 16 October 1982, one such All Winners Show unearthed a long lost jazz-funk band called Prince Charles and the City Beat Band and within weeks, their song 'In The Streets' was re-released in the UK. The band went on to have a renewed career in the next few years and UK hits. On the same show, The Trammps 'Soul Bones' was played resulting in a scurry to find deleted copies of this forgotten soul classic. On the same show, a composite of Merry Clayton's 'When The World Turns Blue', John Klemmer's 'Adventures in Paradise' and Teena Marie's 'Portuguese Love' was a sequence which has remained as a memorable highlight.
Other notable successes as a result of Vincent's UK airplay included Gilberto Gil and Sadao Watanabe. Vincent was also the first DJ to play Teena Marie's comeback recording in 1983 called 'Fix It' following her signing from Motown Records to Epic. Careers previously restricted to the US and Latin America were given prime exposure on Vincent's show, including Phyllis Hyman, Angela Bofill and Brenda Russell.