In the early 1960s, Columbia reinstated its R&B subsidiary, OKeh. Of all the artists who walked through OKeh's doors in the ensuing years, the most successful was Major Lance. In fact, of all the Chicago soul artists of 1963-66, he was second in record sales only to the Impressions.
Lance was born in the Windy City on April 4, 1941 (or in 1939 in Winterville, MS, depending on which source you read), and grew up in a family that eventually included eleven children. He spent most of his childhood years on Chicago's rugged West Side. One of Lance's earliest friends was Otis Leaville. The two young men eventually took up boxing to get by in their tough neighborhood.
After a move to the Cabrini-Green projects, Lance changed schools to Wells High. During his teen-aged years, he hung around at Seward Park, along with Leaville, Jerry Butler, and Curtis Mayfield. At first, Lance had no particular interest in music, but rather envisioned himself as a professional boxer.
At the same time, however, he was a regular dancer on a locally-produced TV show called "The Jim Lounsbury Record Hop." Through Lounsbury, Lance got a one-shot deal with Mercury in 1959 to record a single called "I've Got A Girl," written and produced by Curtis Mayfield and backed up by the Impressions. It got a bit of airplay in Chicago, but not much.
Lance did not record again until 1962, when Carl Davis signed him to OKeh. His first recording for the label, written by Mayfield, was "Delilah," which became only a minor hit. Then on May 8, 1963, Lance entered the studio again to wax another Mayfield composition, which not only became a hit but ignited a dance craze. "The Monkey Time" reached #8 pop and #2 R&B, and was a certified million-seller.
In August of 1963, Lance went back into the studio to record "Hey Little Girl" and "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um." The former, basically a "Monkey Time" soundalike, reached #12 pop and #13 R&B in November. OKeh released "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" in January of 1964. By that time, Billboard had put its R&B chart on hiatus, but on the Hot 100 the single shot to #5. It was Lance's biggest hit.
At a time when many U.S. rock 'n' roll and R&B acts were having a tough time charting, 1964 proved a good year for Major Lance. He hit #20 pop with "The Matador" that spring, followed a few months later by "Rhythm," which hit #24. By the following year, Billboard had reinstated its R&B chart. Lance made the R&B top forty five times in 1965 and 1966.
By the end of 1965, Curtis Mayfield had stopped writing songs for Lance, while Carl Davis, Lance's producer, left OKeh. These departures essentially closed the book on Major Lance's greatest recordings. But starting in the summer of 1963 and continuing for two years, he was constantly on the charts and sold five-and-a-half million records to fans both black and white.
By 1968, Lance had been off even the R&B charts for more than a year, and OKeh was rapidly going downhill. Lance joined Dakar Records, an operation started by Carl Davis and Otis Leaville.
By 1969, Lance had switched labels again, this time to Curtis Mayfield's Curtom Records in Atlanta. After a pair of top forty R&B hits for the label, Lance left both Curtom and the south in 1971. He moved back to Chicago, and subsequently recorded for Stax in Memphis, for several British labels from 1972-74, and for Hugh Hefner's Playboy Records in the mid '70s.
In 1975, Lance began his own label, Osris, with Al Jackson of Booker T. & The MGs. He spent 1978-81 in prison for selling cocaine, and died in Decatur, GA, on September 3, 1994.
SOURCE: Robert Pruter, Chicago
Soul
RECOMMENDED CD: The Best of Major Lance
(Columbia/Legacy)
Born in LeFlore County, Mississippi, on July 16, 1939, Denise Craig had early childhood ambitions of becoming a fiction writer. At fifteen, after moving to Chicago to live with her brother, Craig was delighted when TAM, a magazine of African-American culture, bought one of her stories. Only rejection slips followed, but Craig—who changed her surname to "LaSalle" in order to sound French—was not easily defeated.
LaSalle turned to songwriting and, in 1968, started recording for Billy "The Kid" Emerson’s Tarpon label. "A Love Reputation" became a local hit in Chicago but failed to break out nationally, nor did its follow-up, "Count Down." In 1969, LaSalle set up her own production company, signed artists, wrote songs for them, and recorded them in Willie Mitchell’s studio in Memphis. That same year, she also met her future husband, Bill "Super Wolf" Jones, then a DJ on Memphis’ WDXI.
LaSalle produced R&B hits like Bill Coday’s "Get Your Lie Straight" and the Sequins’ "Hey Romeo." Magazine editors may have turned down her writing, but now Little Milton, Ann Peebles, and others were seeking her out and recording her songs. Encouraged by her behind-the-scenes success, LaSalle went into the recording studio to lay down some tracks with her voice up front. "Heartbreaker of the Year," released on her own Crajon label, did not chart, but inspired the Detroit-based Westbound Records to sign her.
One of the songs from her first session, "Trapped By A Thing Called Love," became a monster hit, reaching #13 pop and #1 R&B in the fall of 1971. It also gave LaSalle the hellfire-loving image that she enjoys to this day. A sassy, gritty singer, LaSalle told Blues & Soul magazine that she likes her music "mean, down-home, and funky."
Her follow-up, "Now Run And Tell That," reached #46 pop and #3 R&B in early 1972, while "A Man-Sized Job" managed #55 pop and #4 R&B that fall. After one final top twenty R&B hit for Westbound, "Married, But Not To Each Other" (#16, 1976), LaSalle left the company to sign with ABC, for whom she placed "Love Me Right" in the R&B top ten in early 1978. By 1985, she was on the Jackson, Mississippi-based Malaco label, where LaSalle remains. She also owns and manages the radio station WFXX in Jackson.
SOURCES: Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit
Wonders; Joel Whitburn, Billboard’s Top R&B Singles,
1942-1995
RECOMMENDED CD: On The Loose/Trapped By A Thing
Called Love (Ace)
Laura Lee was a child of gospel music--literally. Her adoptive mother was the spiritual singer Ernestine Rundless.
Laura Lee Newton was born on March 9, 1945, in Chicago, but was raised in Detroit. At age nine, while her mother was going through a serious illness, Laura was adopted by her church's pastor and his wife, the Reverend E.A. and Ernestine Rundless. Steeped in gospel music early on, by the time she was in her mid-teens, Laura, with her adoptive mother, was a member of the Meditation Singers.
In 1965, Laura, with the surname "Lee," made her first secular disc, on the Detroit-based Ric Tic label, after which she signed with Chess. Her first hit, in 1967, was the sassy "Dirty Man," which hit #68 pop and #13 R&B and featured the magnificent declaration, "I'm tired of you and your woman and your dog, too!" Laura made the record at Rick Hall's Muscle Shoals Sounds in Alabama.
She followed "Dirty Man" with four additional R&B hits for Chess, all in the deep-soul style. In 1971, Laura moved on to Holland-Dozier-Holland's Hot Wax label and recorded another proto-feminist song, "Wedlock Is A Padlock." Her next single, the equally inflammatory "Women's Love Rights," reached #36 on the Billboard Hot 100, her only top forty pop single.
Lee's biggest R&B hit, "Rip Off," got to #3 in the summer of 1972. In this feminist anthem, Laura said she was aware that her man was cheating, but was biding her time by treating him nicely. In reality, she was "setting him up for the rip off, girls," and explained, "I'm not going to leave him a box to sit on. I'm taking the carpet off the floor and the wallpaper off the walls. I'm taking the telephone so he can't make no calls. This fool is in for the shock of his life, I'm tired of being neglected. I'm going to slap him in the face with the unexpected." God help the man who fucks with Laura Lee!
After her soul music career wound down, Lee returned to gospel, and recorded a duet with the Reverend Al Green in 1981. She also waxed several gospel albums of her own.
SOURCE: Robert Pruter, Chicago Soul; CD liner
notes, Soul Hits of the '70s, Vols. 6 & 9 (Rhino)
RECOMMENDED
CD: The Best of Laura Lee (Rhino)
While her Atlantic recordings covered a relatively short span (1962-68), the honey-voiced Barbara Lewis left behind three classic hit singles and a lot of unjustly obscure gems, and deserves to be remembered as one of the truly great vocal talents of soul.
She was born in South Lyon, Michigan, on February 9, 1944. Barbara's affinity for music may have had a lot to do with her family. Her parents each had an orchestra! Whenever the Lewises had family gatherings, they would have jam sessions at which Barbara would sing.
She began to play the guitar, piano and harmonica, and was writing songs by age nine. Despite this, Barbara never entertained the idea of going into music professionally. In fact, if the Lewises' family friend Ollie McLaughlin hadn't stepped in, Barbara might have become a nurse.
McLaughlin was a disc jockey and promoter who Barbara's father met when he went to Ann Arbor to play with his band. After McLaughlin auditioned young Barbara, he offered to manage and produce her. He began recording Barbara on his own label, Karen Records (named after one of McLaughlin's daughters). Her first session was at the Chess Studios in Chicago on March 20, 1962. The resulting first single, "My Heart Went Do Dat Da," enjoyed enough local success to prompt Atlantic to offer McLaughlin a deal.
It was Barbara's third trip to the Chess studio, in January of 1963, that catapulted her to stardom. The session produced three songs, "Hello Stranger," "Think A Little Sugar," and "Puppy Love." Atlantic released the former, with back-up vocals by the Dells, in March. By the summer of '63, "Hello Stranger" was at #3 pop and #1 R&B.
Lewis' next hit was "Puppy Love," which came out in January of 1964 and reached only #38 pop. (Billboard did not have an R&B chart in 1964.) It took her until 1965 to hit the charts in a big way again, with the back-to-back smashes "Baby I'm Yours" and "Make Me Your Baby." Lewis recorded both songs at Atlantic's Broadway studio in New York. By this time, she was married and living in the Big Apple as well.
Lewis's final excursion into the pop and R&B top forty came in 1966, with "Make Me Belong To You." Her last Atlantic session was on October 10, 1968. Two years later, Ollie McLaughlin took Barbara to Stax Records of Memphis. She recorded fifteen tracks for them in Chicago, which resulted in one album (The Many Grooves of Barbara Lewis) and two singles.
Disenchanted with the music business and having gone through a divorce, Barbara eventually moved back to Michigan. She left show business in 1971 "to go to college, open up my own store, work at different jobs...and go fishing!" Currently residing in Florida, Barbara has done selected oldies concerts over the last several years, and often receives standing ovations. She also is looking into recording again.
SOURCE: CD liner notes (see below)
RECOMMENDED
CD: Hello Stranger (Rhino)
Milton Campbell, Jr.'s fans probably think of him more as a bluesman than a soul singer, but for "Grits Ain't Groceries" alone, he deserves inclusion here.
Campbell was born in Inverness, Mississippi, on Sept. 7, 1934, and had his own band in Memphis in 1951. Milton also recorded with Ike Turner for Sun Records from 1953-54.
Oliver Sain helped bring the singer to Chess Records in 1961. A Mississippi musician with connections to the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson, Sain served as Campbell’s bandleader at around that time. When writer/producer Billy Davis became involved, he sought to broaden Milton’s audience, and tried to put the singer into more of a pop-blues bag rather than the country-blues bag Campbell had been in. As Little Milton, he enjoyed his first hit, "So Mean To Me," in early 1962. The single peaked at #14 R&B but missed the pop charts.
Davis enlisted Chess songwriters Raynard Miner and Carl Smith. According to Davis, "When artists came up to Chicago to be recorded, I would put the writers to work, to try to come up with material. I gave them ideas, they would come back to me, and we’d work on songs until they were finished."
One such idea was "We’re Gonna Make It," which Milton cut at the Chess studios on February 6, 1965. Despite some doubts on the part of both Billy Davis and label chief Lenoard Chess, who both felt the song was too pop-flavored, the single was released on the Checker subsidiary. On May 1, 1965, "We’re Gonna Make It" began its three-week stay at #1 on the Billboard R&B charts. On the Hot 100, it reached #25, and was Little Milton’s only top forty pop single.
Campbell made the R&B top ten five subsequent times, with tunes like "Who’s Cheating Who," "Feel So Bad," and If Walls Could Talk." He left Chess for Stax in 1971, and appeared in the concert film Wattstax the following year. Little Milton went on to record for Malaco and was a highly popular live act until his death in August 4, 2005.
SOURCE: Adam White & Fred Bronson, The Billboard
Book of #1 R&B Hits; Joel Whitburn, ibid.
RECOMMENDED CD:
Greatest Hits (MCA)
In the late 1950s, Huey P. Meaux worked at a barber shop in Winnie, Texas, but couldn't keep his mind off his dream to work in the music business. One day, he got a tape from a guy in Beaumont, Texas, which had been recorded over. In between the cuts by one T-Baby Green was the girl they had recorded over. It was knocking Meaux out, so much so that he wanted to meet the female vocalist. So he played the tape for a guy who was recording for him at the time, and asked, "Who's that singer?" The artist replied, "That's Barbara Lynn. If you want her, I'll get her."
So Meaux kept cutting hair, and around 6:30, his artist came back with Lynn in tow. She was a young-looking girl who limped because one leg was longer than the other. Meaux said, "Barbara, if you'll pay the expenses for you and your mother, I'll meet you in New Orleans at Cosimo's Studio." She went for it, and they recorded "You'll Lose A Good Thing."
Singer/guitarist Barbara Lynn was born in Beaumont, Texas, on January 16, 1942. She created an instant sensation 20 years later with her first appearance on record. "You'll Lose A Good Thing" had its origin as a poem that Lynn wrote when she was sixteen. The music followed when she became a guitarist (and a left-handed one at that). No novice at singing, Lynn delivered a powerhouse performance at her first session, which Meaux produced and for which Cosimo Matassa provided the studio musicians, who included Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack.
Meaux left the tape with Matassa with instructions to try to place it on a major label. About six months later, someone from the Philadelphia-based Jamie/Guyden family of labels called Meaux at the barbershop, and said that he wanted to lease the Barbara Lynn record. "You'll Lose A Good Thing," with Lynn's trenchant vocal and the understated instrumental backing, entered the charts in the summer of 1962. It reached #8 pop and #1 R&B in August. Its success also convinced Meaux that he should stop cutting hair and concentrate exclusively on producing records. That conviction led to his eventually working with the likes of Jivin' Gene, Doug Sahm (of the Sir Douglas Quintet), Roy Head, and Freddie Fender.
Lynn's follow-up, in September 1962, was "Second Fiddle Girl," which spent eight weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 but missed the R&B charts. Jamie hastily assembled an LP of Lynn's tracks in late 1962 to cash in on the fledgling R&B album market.
Another of her songs, "You're Gonna Need Me," sold well enough during the holiday season of 1962. Her next release, a stylish re-working of Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel," failed to sell in the R&B market, although it climbed onto the lower rungs of the pop charts. Also ignored by R&B fans was "(I Cried At) Laura's Place," which nonetheless peaked at #68 pop in August 1963. "Oh Baby" followed it onto the charts almost a year later. Other minor hits for Jamie in the next year were "Don't Spread It Around" and "It's Better To Have It."
On July 24, 1964, Lynn performed in a stage show at the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia that was recorded live by Atlantic Records. The line-up also included Wilson Pickett, Patti LaBelle & The Blue Belles, Patty & The Emblems, the Drifters, and the Vibrations. Lynn was the second act on stage that night, following an Impressions-styled group called the Carltons. She sang "What'd I Say," "If You Should Lose Me," and "Oh Baby (We Got A Good Thing Going)." The last song was included on the Atlantic album, Saturday Night at the Uptown, later that year.
Lynn's composition "Letter To Mommy And Daddy" became a regional hit and remains quite popular in the Caribbean and the UK, although it never made the national charts stateside. In early 1966, Meaux ended his leasing agreement with Jamie/Guyden and started his own label, Tribe, which was distributed by London Records. Lynn's second single for Tribe, "You Left The Water Running," was an R&B hit in 1966 and was later covered by Billy Young, Otis Redding, Maurice & Mac, and Wilson Pickett. After four singles on Tribe, Meaux began to lease Lynn's material to Atlantic.
"This Is The Thanks I Get" on Atlantic made the charts in February 1968, and sold strongly in both the pop and R&B markets. Lynn recorded the song at the Grits & Studio in Clinton, Mississippi. A few months later, she returned to Clinton to record the album This Is Barbara Lynn, which included a new version of "You'll Lose A Good Thing." Further sessions for Atlantic were conducted in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, by Spooner Oldham and Charlie Chalmers, but only "(Until Then) I'll Suffer" charted, managing #31 R&B in 1971. It was Lynn's last charted single.
She toured the south for several years without the benefit of a new hit. In 1984, Lynn toured Japan, where she cut a live album in Tokyo. In 1988, she signed with Ichiban Records, and toured the Far East and the Netherlands. In 1994, Lynn cut an album for Bullseye Records. Now living in Los Angeles, she devotes equal time to her family and her music.
SOURCE: CD liner notes (see
below)
RECOMMENDED CD: You'll Lose A Good Thing
(Bear Family)