O’Jays oldies allowed out

Three decades after they sang that money was “the root of all evil,” the O’Jays lost a bid to block their former record label from cashing in on songs they recorded but didn’t think were good enough to release.

A federal judge lifted an injunction that had briefly stopped Philadelphia International Records from distributing “Together We Are One,” an album of unreleased tracks recorded by the O’Jays in the early 1980s.

O’Jays founding members Eddie Levert and Walter Williams had argued in a lawsuit filed April 2 in Philadelphia that the songs were “stale and artistically inferior,” and that releasing them would hurt their legacy and ability to tour. U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick said that a contract the group signed in 1979 appeared to give the record company unlimited rights to release the songs.