It was Richard Bach, co-founder of a wonderful record label called Pacific Jazz, later known as World Pacific, who put the deal together. In 1971 John went to the Republic of Ghana with his clients Les McCann, Roberta Flack who were to perform and be in a feature-length musical documentary, directed by Dennis Sanders, celebrating the 14th anniversary of Ghana’s independence from British rule. Before the Republic of Ghana gained its independence in March of 1957, it had been called the British Colony of the Gold Coast. The concert also included performances by Wilson Pickett, Santana, the Staple Singers, Ike and Tina Turner, and Eddie Harris. Filmed entirely in Ghana, the documentary included traditional African music and local footage. Warner Vision Entertainment released Soul to Soul the following year.

This online image player features 6 “albums” described below.




At the Airport includes snapshots from both their arrival and departure, including a few shots of the welcoming dance.

The Soul To Soul images were shot during the rehearsal. The concert was in another big, open square set up with stadium-style seats — look at The Stadium album. The show went on all day long, one act after the other, and all of it was filmed
live. Most people in Ghana didn’t have radios in their homes or huts, but the government piped in radio programs to many town squares. Most of the music heard on their town-square radio was Glenn Miller and similar bands. They didn’t know anything about any American black artists except for Wilson Pickett. It seems they had some of his records, and for that reason his show was received with more excitement than anyone else’s.

It was very hot and humid, worse than any summer in New York. One day they toured one of the slave ports. There were luxury suites upstairs for the traveling Europeans, but downstairs were dungeons. John remembers going down a hole—there were bats down there, and it led to a platform along the ocean where the ships had come in and docked. The slaves, most of whom had been captured from inland villages, had to wait down there until the next slave ship put into port. A few of those pictures can be found in Seeing Sites. Inside it was not hard to imagine how cramped and filthy it must have been, and they were told about outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever. They toured some local villages and took lots of pictures of the People and Villages.

Another day, in the plaza outside that same slave port, there was a grand parade with delegations from all the surrounding tribes dancing into town and carrying their chieftains in sedan chairs. These were special chairs mounted on parallel horizontal poles and ornamented to reflect the power and prestige of the chieftain. The entire plaza was packed tightly with people, yet still more people kept coming. Take a look at People’s Parade.