Filmmaking duo tackle Cincinnati’s legendary King Records

“Everything starts and ends in Cincinnati,” said Yemi Oyediran. “But most people haven’t figured that out.” At the moment, he’s talking about “King of Them All: The Story of King Records,” the much-lauded film he co-produced with business partner and kindred spirit JP Leong. But his enthusiasm – and skepticism – for Cincinnati runs much deeper than that single project.

“Modern policing? Born in Cincinnati,” he said. “Medical innovations? Cincinnati has always been at the forefront. But as a community, we do a really poor job of not only telling our stories, but of even sharing them.”

This is classic Oyediran. Mention a subject that intrigues him – there are an abundance of them – and he’s almost certain to launch into a lengthy, impassioned riff. That’s not a negative thing. He’s as interesting as he is interested, as outgoing as he is outspoken.

Perhaps it’s that eagerness to champion Cincinnati that drew him to the story of King Records and its founder Syd Nathan, who launched the eclectic label in Cincinnati in 1943.

Long before “diversity” became a societal buzz word (and then a divisive one), King Records was known for the extraordinary breadth of its artist roster. “Hillbilly” music, R&B, doo-wop, bluegrass, funk and some of the earliest examples of rock ’n’ roll – they all found a home in the Evanston studios of King Records.

It wasn’t so much that Nathan was a do-gooder, setting out to save the world one record at a time. He was a pragmatist. If there was money to be made with hillbilly music, he wanted to be the guy who made that money. The same with “race” music and the Black musicians who created it. Never mind that race-mixing in recording studios was unthinkable to most record labels. Nathan’s eyes, framed in his chunky, ultra-thick glasses, rarely strayed beyond the bottom line.

That bottom line enriched America’s musical landscape, as Nathan recorded music by a pantheon of game-changing artists, including James Brown, Hank Ballard, Joe Tex, Grandpa Jones, the Stanley Brothers, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Little Willie John, The Platters, Ferlin Husky, Wynonie Harris and many others. He even released a record of music by the University of Cincinnati Bearcat Band.

“He took a chance on artists no one else would, and it paid off in a major way,” reads the plaque honoring him at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Leong and Oyediran are not the first to recognize the significance of the beloved label. Over the past 25 years, there have been numerous efforts to boost the legacy of King Records. There are a handful of small foundations devoted to it. There has been city money aimed at preserving the company’s Evanston headquarters. The Playhouse in the Park even commissioned a musical called “Cincinnati King.”

But why did it take a pair of outsiders, children of immigrants, guys not raised in Cincinnati, to put the history of King Records on a national stage?

They spent years wading through mammoth amounts of previously collected research and film footage. They scavenged material from every conceivable source, from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Dick Clark Productions to the Library of Congress and the National Archives. WCET and a number of King aficionados pitched in, as well. 

Finally, in what some might find a controversial move, the pair developed software to digitally restore and add color to the footage they had collected, “so that viewers today could experience King Records as vividly as possible,” explained Oyediran.

They were determined that “King of Them All” would be as entertaining as it was informative. They wanted this to be a documentary that would take the King Records story – and their reputations – far beyond local audiences. 

The hour-long film was broadcast nationally on PBS last October, earning a generous handful of positive reviews and an NAACP Image Award nomination for Oyediran for Outstanding Directing in a Documentary. (The winners were to be announced Feb. 28, after this issue went to print.)

“King of Them All” has not yet been picked up by a major streaming service, but that may happen. In the meantime, if you become a PBS supporter, you can watch on the network’s website. Or you can wait for it to pop up in a film festival lineup, where the filmmakers
screen their 70-minute director’s cut.

None of this was on their minds when they first crossed paths more than 25 years ago.

“We met during our freshman year in college,” Oyediran said. “It was Sept. 22, 1999.” And then, in a rare moment of self-questioning, he said, “Maybe it was the 23rd. It was the first day of classes at UC.” (He was right the first time, UC archives say.) 

The one thing the two men agree on is that they were both entering the College of Engineering and that the class was Calculus 101. 

“Yemi was good at math,” Leong recalled. “I basically bombed out of engineering. But we were weirdly drawn to each other. We instantly bonded. Maybe it’s that we were the two darkest people in the room.”

They were used to being regarded as outsiders. Though they were both born in the United States, they are the children of immigrants. Leong’s parents came from Malaysia, while Oyediran’s parents emigrated from Nigeria.

“Back in Toledo, I was one of two Asian students in my high school,” Leong said. “The other one was my brother.”

But their connection had broader roots. They were interested in the same kinds of music. They had similar senses of humor. And they both had lifelong involvements in the Assemblies of God church.

“I was the only one in class with a coat and tie,” Oyediran said, a holdover from his high school days at Western Reserve Academy, an exclusive boarding school 25 miles south of his home in Beachwood, Ohio. “I decided to start messing around, pretending I was the professor.”

Most of the other students didn’t know what to make of him.

“But JP, who is usually the quietest, biggest introvert you’ll ever meet in your life, starts talking s**t to me,” Oyediran said, laughing. “And for the rest of the day – the rest of the semester, really – we walked around slack-jawing each other.”

In time, they would form a small production company called Afrochine, paying homage to their ethnic backgrounds. (And yes, they are aware of the play on words, as the name is pronounced the same as the noted African American hair product, Afro Sheen.)

Fifteen years would pass before they began what would become their most widely seen work. And thanks to seed money from the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation and its People’s Liberty project, there was funding to move ahead.

“We worked on that film for nine years,” Oyediran said. “It should have been a lot less,” he added, launching into a long and disheartening tale of the hesitance of many local funders to get involved.

But the friends were committed to telling this King story. And, perhaps, a bit stubborn in their determination. 

“It’s a yin-yang, push-pull kind of thing,” Leong said. “Yemi is more driven. He’s the visionary. I’m more comfortable making sense of the terabytes of film footage and interviews. I don’t want the attention.”

But in King Records, they saw a story begging to be told.

“Yemi and I both like telling the stories of people who are working to create something that can benefit humanity,” Leong said. “Not just famous and powerful people – people who have something to say. And with Syd Nathan and King Records, we found that story.”