Laura Parks

Rico

Laura Parks won best female artist in Cecil Morris's Rising Star Radio (renamed PCRL later that year) talent contest and part of the prize was getting a record released. Steel Pulse who had recorded Klue Klux Klan and Handsworth Revolution in 1978 won in the group section in a previous competition he had run.  You Are The One came out in 1985 and as the first of 3 releases on the newly launched PCRL label. The label billed her as Sweet Harmony with Studio 2 Band, that also featured the great Jamaican trombone player Rico Rodrigaus who had recorded on many a Reggae  master piece in the late 1960s, he's now a member of the Jools Holland Orchestra. Laura had also wrote her own song.

First release on label Laura Parks

The Santa Rose

Cecil recalls; "Sweet Harmony were the winners of the Rising Star singing competition I ran at the then Santa Rosa night club on Soho Road, where the new Gurdwara Sahib Temple has now been built. The group broke up not long after and nothing has been heard of them since." The club was later Rialto and Thashers before it was demolished in 2000. Cecil also ran his Miss Black UK beauty contests at this venue too. (photo: Digital Handsworth)