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Lloyd Price, Music, and Boxing (1933-2021)

Music was the lifeblood of the youth culture when I was young. I came of age during the “Golden Age of Rock and Roll” and expanded my appreciation to other eras. I’ve been fortunate in that the profession I’ve chosen has enabled me to spend time with some of the icons of my youth. Muhammad Ali heads the list. But there have been many others, including some from the world of music.
Over the years, I’ve been privileged to meet Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Glen Campbell, Mary Travers, Ramsey Lewis, and others. I also spent time with Lloyd Price. Lloyd died in a longterm care facility in suburban New York on May 3 at age 88. A word of remembrance is in order.
Price was born in Louisiana in 1933 and grew up in the segregated American south. He was one of the early pioneers of rock and roll at a time when major radio stations in the United States wouldn’t play rock and roll by Black recording artists. Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis were given airtime. But “race music” was forbidden. That gave rise to a phenomenon known as the “white cover” version. A Black artist like Little Richard would write and record a song like Tutti Frutti that received limited exposure. Then Pat Boone or another white singer would release a “socially acceptable” version that might sell a million copies.
In the mid-1950s, a white disk jockey in New York named Alan Freed began playing “race music”. The time was right. The Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam. In February 1959, for the first time ever, a rock and roll song sung by a Black recording artist became the best-selling “pop 45” in the nation. The singer was Lloyd Price.
In 1952 at age 19, Price had written and recorded a song called “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” In 1958, he updated and recorded a song called Stagger Lee that dated back to 1911. Stagger Lee rocketed to #1 on the Billboard charts in the United States. One year later, Price wrote and recorded Personality which became an international hit.
What does this have to do with boxing?
Price had appeared in small clubs after the release of Lawdy Miss Clawdy. As Stagger Lee rose to the top of the charts, he was booked into the Top Hat Lounge in Louisville, Kentucky. When he arrived at the club, a tall good-looking teenager was waiting outside for him.
âI was on tour,â Price told me years later. âAli was sixteen years old, sitting outside because he was underage and they wouldnât let him in. When I got to the lounge, this crazy kid rushed over, saying, âMr. Price, Iâm Cassius Marcellus Clay; Iâm the Golden Gloves Champion of Louisville, Kentucky; someday Iâm gonna be heavyweight champion of the world; I love your music; and Iâm gonna be famous like you.â I just looked at him, and said, âKid, youâre dreaming.â But we got along. You couldnât help but like him. The Top Hat Lounge was a popular place, and each time I played there, I saw him. After a while, I started looking for him and bringing him in with me. He had all sorts of questions – about music and traveling, but mostly he wanted to know about girls. There were a lot of things he didnât know, and he asked me how to make out with girls. He was very sincere about it. I told him, âJust be yourself, and the girls will like you.â Although as part of the lesson, I gave him a couple of dollars and said, âAlways have some money. Thatâs the beginning of hanging out with the foxes.ââ
Thus began a lifelong friendship.
“You have to remember what America was like at that time,” Price explained later. “In parts of the country, Iâm being booked into white clubs. Iâm being booked to do white dances. But I canât stay at the white hotel and I have to go around to the back door if I want a sandwich. I went to some [Nation of Islam] meetings with Ali. For the first time in my life – as a grown man who was a star who had sold millions of records – I heard somebody saying, âYou are somebody.â The language gave you such a lift. You left feeling good about yourself. In the end, it wasnât my thing. But I can understand how Ali got hooked.
“That’s how our friendship started,” Lloyd continued. “Then, after he turned pro, he came to New York and stayed with me at my apartment several times. Right before he fought Doug Jones, I drove him around town to publicize the fight. That was my red Cadillac he was in.”
Price was a savvy businessman. He kept the copyright to most of the songs he wrote and founded several record labels. He’s also the man who introduced Ali to Don King.
“I used to go to Cleveland because my song-writing partner, Harold Logan, lived there,” Lloyd reminisced. “I knew all the people Harold knew and, through him, I got friendly with Don. One day, I was over at Donâs place in the kitchen talking about Muhammad. Donâs daughter Debbie said, âI want to meet him.â It was her birthday. She was about five. So I telephoned Muhammad and he sang Happy Birthday to her over the phone. Then Don got on and started talking. He was strictly a Cleveland man at the time. He didnât know anything about New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. And he was into numbers, not boxing. But that was the introduction. He and Ali got together – once I think it was – and then Don went to prison. But when he got out, you could see the wheels turning in his mind.â
After King was released from prison, he prevailed upon Price to call Ali and ask if Muhammad would box in a charity exhibition to benefit the Forest City Hospital in Cleveland. Ali did it for free. History suggests that the primary financial beneficiary of the event was King, not the hospital. Later, Price was a key figure in orchestrating the Zaire 74 music festival in Kinshasa held in conjunction with the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” between Ali and George Foreman. And in 1980, he tried his best to talk Ali out of coming out of retirement to fight Larry Holmes.
“I kept thinking about a day Iâd spent in New York with Ali and Joe Louis maybe ten years earlier,” Price told me. “Joe had been with me because there was a little bird singing in my band who he liked a lot, and Ali and I had been friends for years. Somehow or other, we got together and they were talking, mostly about boxing. I was listening. They got along well that day, no tension of any kind between them. Ali asked, ‘Joe, tell me something. What happens in the ring when you get old?’ He was asking about Joeâs fight against Rocky Marciano, when Joe was 37 years old with that bald spot in the middle of his head, when he got knocked through the ropes and was counted out. Joe said, ‘Ali, let me tell you something. When I was young and wanted to throw a punch, I could throw it as fast as I wanted. But when I got old, my brain would tell me to do something and my arms just wouldnât do it.'”
“Don’t fight Holmes,” Price told Ali. “It’s over. Father Time is calling. You’ve got to hear the bell.”

Price with Ali and Ali’s brother Rahman Ali
“You don’t know nothing about boxing and getting old,” Ali retorted. “You’re a singer, not a fighter.”
Then Price told Ali a story about going out on a national tour in 1963. As a favor to a friend who was trying to break into the music business, he agreed to let one of the friend’s groups open for him. The arrangement lasted until Price realized that the warm-up act was getting more applause than he was. So being a showman, he sent them packing with the request that his friend send him a different opening group.
“Who did you get rid of?” Ali asked.
“Some guys I’d never heard of before,” Price told him. “Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. And the next opening act made me look even worse. The first night they were on, when they finished their set, there was such pandemonium that I told the band to take a ten-minute break before I went out so the audience could calm down and I wouldn’t look bad by comparison.”
“Who were they?”
“Three Black chicks called the Supremes.”
Price then called his friend (who, of course, was Berry Gordy in the process of launching Motown records) and told him to stuff his groups where the sun didn’t shine. “Just send me one guy to open,” he instructed.
Whereupon Berry Gordy sent Marvin Gaye.
“And that was it,” Price told Ali. “I said to myself, ‘I don’t know what these folks have. But whatever it is, I don’t have it.’ So I took myself off the road, bought a club in New York [that he called Turntable], and signed a fifteen-year contract to promote concerts for Motown in Manhattan. I heard the bell.”
Over the years, I saw Lloyd maybe a dozen times. The most memorable of these occasions was a night when he and Ali were guests for dinner at my apartment. After dinner, I put an old LP of Lloyd Price’s Greatest Hits on the turntable and we sang along. There were seven of us. Ali was beginning to have trouble speaking at that time in his life. But that night he sang louder than the rest of us.
The last time I saw Lloyd, he was well into his eighties, thinner than before and walking with a cane. But his voice was clear. There was a gleam in his eye. And his contagious laugh still filled the room. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to know him.
Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book â Staredown: Another Year Inside Boxing â was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 323: Benn vs Eubank Family Feud and More

Next generation rivals Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. carry on the family legacy of feudal warring in the prize ring on Saturday.
This is huge in British boxing.
Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs) holds the fringe IBO middleweight title but wonât be defending it against the smaller welterweight Benn (23-0, 14 KOs) on Saturday, April 26, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. DAZN will stream the Matchroom Boxing card.
This is about family pride.
The parents of Eubank and Benn actually began the feud in the 1990s.
Papa Nigel Benn fought Papa Chris Eubank twice. Losing as a middleweight in November 1990 at Birmingham, England, then fighting to a draw as a super middleweight in October 1993 in Manchester. Both were world title fights.
Eubank was undefeated and won the WBO middleweight world title in 1990 against Nigel Benn by knockout. He defended it three times before moving up and winning the vacant WBO super middleweight title in September 1991. He defended the super middleweight title 14 times before suffering his first pro defeat in March 1995 against Steve Collins.
Benn won the WBO middleweight title in April 1990 against Doug DeWitt and defended it once before losing to Eubank in November 1990. He moved up in weight and took the WBC super middleweight title from Mauro Galvano in Italy by technical knockout in October 1992. He defended the title nine times until losing in March 1996. His last fight was in November 1996, a loss to Steve Collins.
Animosity between the two families continues this weekend in the boxing ring.
Conor Benn, the son of Nigel, has fought mostly as a welterweight but lately has participated in the super welterweight division. He is several inches shorter in height than Eubank but has power and speed. Kind of a British version of Gervonta âTankâ Davis.
“It’s always personal, every opponent I fight is personal. People want to say it’s strictly business, but it’s never business. If someone is trying to put their hands on me, trying to render me unconscious, it’s never business,” said Benn.
This fight was scheduled twice before and cut short twice due to failed PED tests by Benn. The weight limit agreed upon is 160 pounds.
Eubank, a natural middleweight, has exchanged taunts with Benn for years. He recently avenged a loss to Liam Smith with a knockout victory in September 2023.
âThis fight isn’t about size or weight. It’s about skill. It’s about dedication. It’s about expertise and all those areas in which I excel in,â said Eubank. âI have many, many more years of experience over Conor Benn, and that will be the deciding factor of the night.â
Because this fight was postponed twice, the animosity between the two feuding fighters has increased the attention of their fans. Both fighters are anxious to flatten each other.
âHe’s another opponent in my way trying to crush my dreams. trying to take food off my plate and trying to render me unconscious. That’s how I look at him,” said Benn.
Eubank smiles.
âWhether it’s boxing, whether it’s a gun fight. Defense, offense, foot movement, speed, power. I am the superior boxer in each of those departments and so many more – which is why I’m so confident,â he said.
Supporting Bout
Former world champion Liam Smith (33-4-1, 20 KOs) tangles with Irelandâs Aaron McKenna (19-0, 10 KOs) in a middleweight fight set for 12 rounds on the Benn-Eubank undercard in London.
âBeefyâ Smith has long been known as one of the fighting Smith brothers and recently lost to Eubank a year and a half ago. It was only the second time in 38 bouts he had been stopped. Saul âCaneloâ Alvarez did it several years ago.
McKenna is a familiar name in Southern California. The Irish fighter fought numerous times on Golden Boy Promotion cards between 2017 and 2019 before returning to the United Kingdom and his assault on continuing the middleweight division. This is a big step for the tall Irish fighter.
Itâs youth versus experience.
âI’ve been calling for big fights like this for the last two or three years, and it’s a fight I’m really excited for. I plan to make the most of it and make a statement win on Saturday night,â said McKenna, one of two fighting brothers.
Monster in L.A.
Japanâs super star Naoya âMonsterâ Inoue arrived in Los Angeles for last day workouts before his Las Vegas showdown against Ramon Cardenas on Sunday May 4, at T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will televise and stream the Top Rank card.
Itâs been four years since the super bantamweight world champion performed in the US and during that time Naoya (29-0, 26 KOs) gathered world titles in different weight divisions. The Japanese slugger has also gained fame as perhaps the best fighter on the planet. Cardenas is 26-1 with 14 KOs.
Pomona Fights
Super featherweights Mathias Radcliffe (9-0-1) and Ezequiel Flores (6-4) lead a boxing card called âDMG Night of Championsâ on Saturday April 26, at the historic Fox Theater in downtown Pomona, Calif.
Michaela Bracamontes (11-2-1) and Jesus Torres Beltran (8-4-1) will be fighting for a regional WBC super featherweight title. More than eight bouts are scheduled.
Doors open at 6 p.m. For ticket information go to: www.tix.com/dmgnightofchampions
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 9 a.m. Conor Benn (23-0) vs Chris Eubank Jr. (34-3); Liam Smith (33-4-1) vs Aaron McKenna (19-0).
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Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton

Floyd Mayweather has Another Phenom and his name is Curmel Moton
In any endeavor, the defining feature of a phenom is his youth. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Bryce Harper was a phenom. He was on the radar screen of baseballâs most powerful player agents when he was 14 years old.
Curmel Moton, who turns 19 in June, is a phenom. Of all the young boxing stars out there, wrote James Slater in July of last year, âCurmel Moton is the one to get most excited about.â
Moton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father Curtis Moton, a barber by trade, was a big boxing fan and specifically a big fan of Floyd Mayweather Jr. When Curmel was six, Curtis packed up his wife (Curmelâs stepmom) and his son and moved to Las Vegas. Curtis wanted his son to get involved in boxing and there was no better place to develop oneâs latent talents than in Las Vegas where many of the sportâs top practitioners came to train.
Many father-son relationships have been ruined, or at least frayed, by a fatherâs unrealistic expectations for his son, but when it came to boxing, the boy was a natural and he felt right at home in the gym.
The gym the Motons patronized was the Mayweather Boxing Club. Curtis took his son there in hopes of catching the eye of the proprietor. âFloyd would occasionally drop by the gym and I was there so often that he came to recognize me,â says Curmel. What he fails to add is that the trainers there had Floydâs ear. âThis kid is special,â they told him.
It costs a great deal of money for a kid to travel around the country competing in a slew of amateur boxing tournaments. Only a few have the luxury of a sponsor. For the vast majority, fund raisers such as car washes keep the wheels greased.
Floyd Mayweather stepped in with the financial backing needed for the Motons to canvas the country in tournaments. As an amateur, Curmel was — take your pick — 156-7 or 144-6 or 61-3 (the latter figure from boxrec). Regardless, at virtually every tournament at which he appeared, Curmel Moton was the cock of the walk.
Before the pandemic, Floyd Mayweather Jr had a stable of boxers he promoted under the banner of âThe Money Team.â In talking about his boxers, Floyd was understated with one glaring exception â Gervonta âTankâ Davis, now one of boxingâs top earners.
When Floyd took to praising Curmel Moton with the same effusive language, folks stood up and took notice.
Curmel made his pro debut on Sept. 30, 2023, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the undercard of the super middleweight title fight between Canelo Alvarez and Jermell Charlo. After stopping his opponent in the opening round, he addressed a flock of reporters in the media room with Floyd standing at his side. âI felt ready,â he said, âI knew I had Floyd behind me. He believes in me. I had the utmost confidence going into the fight. And I went in there and did what I do.â
Floyd ventured the opinion that Curmel was already a better fighter than Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA world featherweight champion who would successfully defend his belt the following week.
Motonâs boxing style has been described as a blend of Floyd Mayweather and Tank Davis. âI grew up watching Floyd, so itâs natural I have some similarities to him,â says Curmel who sparred with Tank in late November of 2021 as Davis was preparing for his match with Isaac âPitbullâ Cruz. Curmell says he did okay. He was then 15 years old and still in school; he dropped out as soon as he reached the age of 16.
Curmel is now 7-0 with six KOs, four coming in the opening round. He pitched an 8-round shutout the only time he was taken the distance. Itâs not yet official, but he returns to the ring on May 31 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas where Caleb Plant and Jermall Charlo are co-featured in matches conceived as tune-ups for a fall showdown. The fight card will reportedly be free for Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Curmelâs presumptive opponent is Renny Viamonte, a 28-year-old Las Vegas-based Cuban with a 4-1-1 (2) record. It will be Curmelâs first professional fight with Kofi Jantuah the chief voice in his corner. A two-time world title challenger who began his career in his native Ghana, the 50-year-old Jantuah has worked almost exclusively with amateurs, a recent exception being Mikaela Mayer.
It would seem that the phenom needs a tougher opponent than Viamonte at this stage of his career. However, the match is intriguing in one regard. Viamonte is lanky. Listed at 5-foot-11, he will have a seven-inch height advantage.
Keeping his weight down has already been problematic for Moton. He tipped the scales at 128 œ for his most recent fight. His May 31 bout, he says, will be contested at 135 and down the road itâs reasonable to think he will blossom into a welterweight. And with each bump up in weight, his short stature will theoretically be more of a handicap.
For fun, we asked Moton to name the top fighter on his pound-for-pound list. â[Oleksandr] Usyk is number one right now,â he said without hesitation,â great footwork, but guys like Canelo, Crawford, Inoue, and Bivol are right there.â
Itâs notable that there isnât a young gun on that list. Usyk is 38, a year older than Crawford; Inoue is the pup at age 32.
Moton anticipates that his name will appear on pound-for-pound lists within the next two or three years. True, history is replete with examples of phenoms who flamed out early, but we wouldnât bet against it.
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Arneâs Almanac: The First Boxing Writers Assoc. of America Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New Yorkâs Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.
The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of Americaâs largest cities.
In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.
The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writersâ dinner:
New York Times
New York News
New York World
New York Sun
New York Journal
New York Post
New York Mirror
New York Telegram
New York Graphic
New York Herald Tribune
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Times
Brooklyn Standard Union
Brooklyn Citizen
Bronx Home News
This isnât a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.
Back then, the eventâs organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasnât a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.
The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New Yorkâs charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. âJimmyâ Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.
Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. âBoxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,â said hizzoner. âSo I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesnât belong in this town or in your game.â (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)
Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.
Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldnât have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the cityâs top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.
There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew âmore than 200â according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.
In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.
There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.
The winnowing of New Yorkâs newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischerâs baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.
Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.
The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isnât necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a âtalkieâ has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put  words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.
The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.
Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.
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