FEATURE: Colonel Abrams - I'm Not Gonna Let

Colonel Abrams is a singer and songwriter from Detroit, Michigan. He was called Colonel at birth, which is his real name. At ten years of age Colonel and his family relocated to New York during the late Sixties. Colonel then joined the group Conservative Manor which featured his brother Morris Abrams. By 1976, he was singing lead vocals for the group 94 East (a band whose line-up featuredPrince on guitar) before joining the New Jersey group Surprise Package. In 1984, he recorded a ballad 'Leave The Message Behind The Door', released on New York's Streetwise label. The highly popular dancer, 'Music Is The Answer', a forerunner to the later 'house music' sound, was also featured on the same 12″.

In 1985 he signed to MCA Records for a debut album 'Colonel Abrams', including 'Trapped' (U.K. Top 5) and 'The Truth' (U.K. Top 75). The line-up of producers on the album included Cerrone and Sam Dees.

A second album, 'You And Me Equal Us', including 'I'm Not Gonna Let You' (U.K. Top 30) and 'How Soon We Forget' (U.K. Top 75), was released in 1987. Leaving MCA for the independent Horus label, Colonel released a single, 'Bad Timing', in 1990, produced by Larry Blackmon of Cameo.

Two years later, he recorded a third album entitled 'About Romance' for the Acid Jazz / Scotti Brothers Record label. The album highlighted a more soulful sound epitomised by the stepper 'Good Things' (a track later to feature on an Expansion Records compilation in the U.K.).

This from Wikipedia:

In 1985 he signed to Steven Machat's Label/Production company, AMI. Machat, who was working with the New Zealand producer Richard Burgess and hired him against conventional wisdom to produce Colonel Abrams for his company the album Colonel Abrams. Machat then talked MCA into signing the Colonel recordings to have them released throughout the world. AMI also at this time had Ready for the World and the New Edition/Bobby Brown with MCA. This collaboration with the British producer Richard James Burgessproduced the hits 'Trapped', 'I'm Not Gonna Let You' and urban contemporary ballad 'Table for Two'.

'Trapped' reached the top five and went gold in the UK Singles Chart and topped the U.S. Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1985, followed by the entire Colonel Abrams album, which spent two weeks at number one the following year. 'I'm Not Gonna Let You' also spent a week at number one in 1986. The album peaked at number 75 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart and number 13 on the U.S. Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. His second album, You and Me Equals Us saw similar success.

Abrams also enjoyed a string of entries on the U.S. Hot Dance Club Play chart in the 1980s and 1990s, including four entries that hit number one. In 1987 he had his fourth number-one U.S. dance hit with 'How Soon We Forget'.

An electronic remix of 'Trapped' was later released in 1995 by Boards of Canada under the pseudonym Hell Interface. A new version of 'Trapped' ("Trapped 2006″) was released in the UK.

On January 9, 2007, Colonel Abrams released the single 'Just When You Thought.' It became the third single released on his own record label, Colonel Records the others being 'Heartbreaker' and 'Let Us All Be Friends'. On April 2 2007, Colonel also released a dance smash called 'Never Be'. Even though all of Abrams' recent singles output has become popular, none seem to have charted on the Billboard charts such as the Hot Dance Singles Sales, Hot Dance Airplay and Hot Dance Club Play charts. Colonel Abrams' forthcoming album, entitled Tribute to My Brother will be released in either late 2007 or early 2008. Abrams released a 'Just Like Mathematics' and 'True Stories' during the Spring. June 2008 saw the release of his single, 'Only A Few.'

http://www.myspace.com/colonelabramsrecords

stay in touch
join our mailing list