Great article! It’s about time a white act gets coverage here! Now here’s a trivia question for all of you in St. Louis….

Which of your native St. Louis artists has the most #1 hits on any chart billboard or internet?

A. Chuck Berry

B. Ike And Tina Turner

C. The Ultraviolets

D. Walt Winston

The answer may surprise you….

D. Walt Winston has 25 #1 hits, all but one on http://www.betarecords.com on various music charts (bubblegum, Folk, truck driving country, Alternative Folk)

Chuck Berry has 1 #1 Hit on billboard.

Ike and Tina Turner has 2

The Ultraviolets have none and Mr. Winston has 25 including 4 #1 hits on Beta’s website as we speak. Heres the link….with Walt Winston’s latest #1 hit!

http://www.betarecords.com/beta/music/charts/?name=&radius=&zipCode=zip+code&country=&genre=40033&limit=10

Mr. Clarke:

I am amazed by your research and didn’t realize I had more #1 hits than Chuck Berry, and Ike and Tina Turner Combined. As far as the Ultraviolets are concerned, I like the Ultraviolets and I’m not going to knock them at all as they are the most popular band back home in St. Louis, and I’m related to one of the members, believe it or not. I really didn’t expect anyone from back home to talk about me at all and this may not have been the place to do so. I don’t look at the coverage or lack of coverage as a racial thing at all and that does upset me that a fan would do this. I have many African American friends there in St. Louis and wish not to upset the apple cart at all, as this was never my intention. It would be nice for my hometown of St. Louis to invite me to play at one of these establishments, and if invited, I’ll gladly come home to play a show or two. I know Chris Noblin and I have been talking about a reunion with all 3 original members of The Waltles, but nothing is set in stone yet, and its only in the talking stages, as I’m a big rig driver and am committed to that for the time being unless something changes along that route. Thank You for the accolades, but this may have not been the time or the place for them.

Sincerely

Walt Winston

Peace, Love, and Happiness For All.

Walt, I enjoy your music greatly, and want to see you reach whatever level of success that it affords you. Having said that, and having seen enough of your antics across the Internet, I need to point that your music career is NOT served well by bragging (either in your name or that of one of your online aliases - hi, “Joe Clarke”) about reaching “number one” on specific genre charts of lesser known MP3 sites and comparing these “number ones” to those of million-selling artists, as if there were any correlation or comparison between the two. Oh yeah, and claims of reverse racism are, if anything, even more odious and worthy of ridicule. Stick to the music, have a little humility and try to promote yourself in a more dignified manner.

Janet:

Let’s get a few things straight here…
I’m not an alias of Mr. Winston and can attest to that as can Mr. Winston. The fact is this artist has achieved now 28 #1 hits whether you recognize it or not that is a fact. You can say what you want it’s a free country.
It seems that you obviously know very little about the industry or the fact that the internet is the way of the future and the internet is the new means of getting the music out there as commercial radio does not allow the independent artist any airplay at all, even if the artist is playing by the rules. The internet is the new way to chart music, and the results of those charts are in fact the way to measure artists success on the net, especially when commercial radio will not play independend artists like they were mandated by Congress to do so through the FCC a few years ago.
As for the reverse racism, you can criticize all you want, but the facts are true, your paper refuses to even acknowledge the achievements of a St. Louis area artist, and you act as if he didn’t even exist or even came from St. Louis, which in many people’s opinion is very ignorant within itself.
In 2007, when the first #1 single occurred Mr. Johnson was contacted by the band’s management about the success and Johnson told the manager he would get back to them and he never did.
Janet the Post has the right to refuse to cover the story that is your perrogative. I believe the Post should be open minded enough to even talk to him. What is the Post afraid of? Does the Post not like achievements from St. Louis area artists?

What in the world is going on here?

Mr. Johnson:

Mr Clarke and Ms Mills obviously think Mr. Clarke speak for me when in reality he does not. Mr. Clarke is a long time fan of mine who thinks there should be some kind of coverage about my feats in the music world. All I know is its been called to my attention by my management staff about this thing Mr. Clarke has started here on this forum in St. Louis where I’m originally from and have since left the area for better opportunities than I would have received here at home.
About 2 years ago my bandmates and I submitted a song on the internet called “Man Of Many Faces” which skyrocketed to the top of MP3’s folk music charts and eventually peaked at #11 overall out of all of their songs by independent artists and what have you. Our management team in which Mr. Clarke was a part of at one time but we have since parted ways sent you an article about the accomplishments and nothing was said so, I figured that’s probably the way it goes in St. Louis, and I figured it was no big deal. However, Mr. Clarke seemed to think it was a racial thing and I detest that sort of thing and I would hope The Post was a bigger paper than that, but then again, it was the Riverfront Times who did an article about my work in the music industry which was pretty nice thing on their part.
Since 2007, our staff feels we’ve been a bit slighted in some ways because the coverage has not been there on the various achievements that we have accomplished on weekly published music charts, setting records that are now starting to get broken, and again at the time, one of our staff members sent the information to the Post and other papers around the time these achievements and chart breaking records occurred and only the papers in Nebraska where I live now have covered these achievements.
My current manager who is based in Lebanon, Missouri told me that one would think that in ones hometown where someone does achieve success that its media and powers that be would be proud of the accomplishments, and I merely told her usually its true but St. Louis is different in that aspect. When I let Mr. Clarke go, I told him just to let things go and maybe someone else will notice the internet success somewhere else and I’ll be content with that.

W. Winston