The Sound Man Behind The Soul Of The Nation’s Capital

Most people wouldn’t think of Washington, D.C., as one of R&B’s great cities. Despite the fact that soul music greats Marvin Gaye and Roberta Flack grew up in D.C. neighborhoods, the city never had the equivalent of Detroit’s Berry Gordy and Motown, or Memphis’ Willie Mitchell and Hi Records. But in the early 1970s, D.C. did have producer Robert Williams and his Red, Black and Green Productions. A new compilation album called Eccentric Soul: A Red Black Green Production revisits Williams’ influence on the sound of R&B in D.C.

Williams was born in Indiana but moved to Silver Spring, Md., in 1947, when he was 11. By his early 30s, he had become a gifted and sought-after engineer; he was once the on-call technician for the presidential press corps of Westinghouse Broadcasting. Recording musicians was his main trade, and by 1972, he’d also begun producing bands, beginning with a seven-man outfit that called itself Father’s Children, from the Adams Morgan neighborhood.

The group was heavily influenced by Afrocentrism and the Black Power movement, and this rubbed off on Williams, who dubbed his new production company Red, Black and Green — after the colors of the Pan-African flag. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, RBG Productions would connect a web of different R&B and funk artists based around the capital city. That included the four members of The Summits, a vocal group that took its name from the Silver Spring neighborhood of Summit Hills.