Some 55 other artists have recorded the song Some Kind Of Wonderful, you figure John Ellison has the right to record it twice.

It was Ellison, after all, who wrote it. The longtime Hamilton resident still gets regular royalty cheques for the hit song 41 years after first recording it with his band The Soul Brothers Six.

It was a hit then back in 1967 and again in 1968 when The Fantastic Johnny C recorded it. It was a hit in 1974 when it sold more than eight million records for Grand Funk Railroad. It was a hit again in 1995 when Huey Lewis tried his luck with it. And it did really well five years ago for Joss Stone when she sang it on her debut CD. More recently, it even made it onto a Grand Theft Auto video game.

To call Some Kind Of Wonderful, John Ellison's bread and butter is somewhat of an understatement. So why shouldn't he record another version of his song? It's not easy finding copies of old Soul Brothers Six albums, you know, and the Grand Funk version sounds so ... um ... soulless.

So once more for old times' sake, at the request of his record company, the Philadelphia-based Jamie/Guyden label, Ellison returned to the United States to re-record his old hit and a dozen other new songs he had written.

The album is called Back and it recalls that old Philly soul sound that Ellison cut his teeth on back in the '60s. Strong on melody, sweet on vocals. Even at age 67, Ellison can still hit those high notes. The story of that old soul era can be heard in the album's standout track, Back In The Day.

The album was also a chance to get together with old friends and family. Ellison's son, Christopher, is coproducer of Back and much of it was recorded in his North Carolina studio.

"He loves rap (music) as most young people of his generation do," Ellison said in an interview this week. "We wanted to mix a little bit of the old school with the new school."

That "old school" sound is well represented in My Baby's Coming Home, which features the backing vocals of Soul Brothers Six original member Charles Armstrong, with whom Ellison cowrote the track.

Ellison has recently finished an autobiography and is now shopping for a book publisher. The book tells of his life growing up in the '40s on the banks of the Kanawha River in West Virginia coal country without running water or electricity. As a teenager, he moved to Rochester, N.Y., where he met up with his band mates, eventually hitting it big in the burgeoning Philly music scene. Ellison wrote Some Kind Of Wonderful on the drive from Rochester to Philadelphia.

He's open about the racism he encountered along the way and he's hoping the book will help remind people of those troubled times.

"The United States was built on a history of racism and I've experienced a lot of it," Ellison says. "I'm not bitter about it but I've experienced it. When I decided to write my story I felt a lot of people would get a better understanding of what life was about on the other side of the fence."

Ellison moved to the Hamilton area in the early '70s. He built a good life touring Ontario with his band and settled down with his family.

Some Kind Of Wonderful will be the title of his autobiography. It's also the brand name of a barbecue spice he has marketed throughout North America. The song has been a big part of his life and it will continue to be so as every couple of years more artists discover it.

"My favourite version, other than the one by Soul Brothers Six, is by Huey Lewis And The News," Ellison says. "Huey even said at the time he released it that he was trying hard to make it sound as much like the original Soul Brothers Six."

For more information about John Ellison and his CD, Back, visit his website, musicofjohnellison.com.

Hear Graham Rockingham's What's Happening In The Hammer Thursdays at 4:40 p.m. on The Scott Thompson Show, AM900 CHML.

grockingham@thespec.com

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