The Radiants perfectly represented the early 1960s, when doo-wop was giving way to soul. They created a spirited and highly melodic yet sophisticated form of rhythm and blues.
The Radiants’ story begins in Chicago in 1960, when Maurice McAlister distilled a vocal group from the members of the Greater Harvest Baptist Church youth choir. He sang the lead, and rounded out the group with Wallace Sampson (baritone), Jerome Brooks (second tenor), Elsie Butler (bass), and Charles Washington (first tenor). The group sang gospel and toured the local churches, but they also worked on secular material. After a few months, Green McAllen, also a member of the youth choir, replaced Washington.
By 1961, the Radiants had given up gospel completely and had recorded a demo of McAlister-written songs. They sent it to a number of record companies, including Chess and Motown, but none of them were interested. The group finally got signed to Chess/Checker because their manager, Lee Jackson, was tight with Leonard Chess. The Radiants’ first session, in May of 1962, produced the single "Father Knows Best"/"One Day I’ll Show You." It did well in Chicago and in a few other locales.
In February of 1963, the Radiants followed up with "Heartbreak Society." Despite being a first-rate piece of early Chicago soul, the single failed to make any impact. In October, the group released the uptempo "Shy Guy," which received a lot of airplay on Chicago’s AM Top 40 stations and was hugely popular in the city’s dance clubs. "Shy Guy" also introduced a new member of the Radiants, Frank McCollum. He replaced Green McLauren, who had entered the Army.
In 1964, the Radiants experienced internal difficulties, fell into disarray, and broke up. Only Maurice McAlister and Wallace Sampson remained. They hooked up with a fellow choir member and organist at the Greater Harvest Church, Leonard Caston Jr., who had just gotten out of the Army. The three men formed a new Radiants group.
The trio re-entered the Chicago R&B scene with a splash in November of 1964 with the release of "Voice Your Choice." Using the three-part harmony and switch-off lead made famous by the Impressions, the Radiants created an instant soul classic. The song, written by McAlister and Gerald Sims, shot to #1 in Chicago and even broke nationally. It reached #51 pop and #16 R&B in Billboard.
The Radiants followed in early 1965 with "It Ain’t No Big Thing," another McAlister masterpiece, which also made the national charts, peaking at #91 pop and #14 R&B early that summer. Later in 1965, Caston decided to leave the group to work in-house as a songwriter and producer at Chess. He was replaced by James Jameson, who appeared with McAlister and Sampson on the next Radiants single, "Baby You’ve Got It," in March of 1966.
Shortly thereafter, Maurice McAlister jumped ship. The loss theoretically should have ended the Radiants, but did not, thanks to another group at Chess called the Confessions. The group had a terrific gospelly lead in Mitchell Bullock and had recorded a breathtaking single called "(Don’t It Make You) Feel Kind Of Bad," but broke up before Chess could release the song. Producer Billy Davis paired Mitchell Bullock with Sampson and Jameson, and added a fourth member—Victor Caston, Leonard’s younger brother. The Radiants were born again!
Their first release, in early 1967, was the original Confessions’ record, retitled "(Don’t it make You) Feel Kinda Bad." It was a big hit in Chicago and a few other cities, but missed the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked only at #47 on the national R&B chart.
Leonard Caston wrote and produced the new material for the Radiants, but his only success with the group was "Hold On," which climbed to #68 pop and #35 R&B in the spring of 1968. When follow-up productions by Caston and then Bobby Miller all stiffed, the group left Chess in 1969 and broke up in 1972.
SOURCE: Robert Pruter, Chicago Soul
RECOMMENDED CD: Baby, You Got It: The Ultimate Collection (Marginal)
Lou Rawls, Sam Cooke protege and baritone extraordinaire, was born in Chicago in December 1, 1935. Like Cooke, Rawls got his start singing gospel music, and was with the Teenage Kings of Harmony, the Holy Wonders, and the Chosen Gospel Singers. He also sang with the Pilgrim Travelers from 1957-59.
Rawls eventually moved to Los Angeles, and made his first secular recordings for Capitol in 1961. Four years passed, during which his only chart entry was Black and Blue, and that made only the lower rungs of the LP charts. There was even talk of Capitol dropping Lou Rawls. In 1966, however, things began to look up for the singer when his album Lou Rawls Live! became a smash. That fall, his single "Love Is A Hurtin’ Thing" climbed to #13 pop and #1 R&B. By the years’s end, the boss baritone was getting $5,000 a concert and 50% of the gross over $10,000. Six years earlier, he had been singing in a coffeehouse at ten dollars a night.
In 1969, Rawls entered another aspect of showbiz, when he hosted the summertime replacement TV series "Lou Rawls & The Golddiggers." He later acted in the films Angel Angel, Down We Go and Believe In Me, and provided the voice of numerous Budweiser beer ads.
Rawls’ association with Capitol continued through 1971 and produced nine R&B chart singles, including "Dead End Street," "Show Business," and "Your Good Thing Is About To End." Then he moved on to MGM. Under the stewardship of label president Mike Curb, Rawls saw his first single for the label, "A Natural Man," reach the pop and R&B top twenty in late 1971. The following year, however, Rawls left MGM when Curb entered the political arena. Rawls wanted no part of politics! He also did not want to be cast in a bubble-gum image.
In 1974, Rawls moved on to Bell and did exactly one album for the label. Its title track, "She’s Gone," was released as a single but lost out in a cover battle with Tavares, who took the song to #1 R&B. (It also became a huge pop hit for Daryl Hall & John Oates two years later.) Rawls ended up leaving Bell when Clive Davis took over and changed the label’s name to Arista.
Rawls was friendly with a number of the artists at Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International Records. When several people suggested that he contact Gamble & Huff to see if they might have any songs for Rawls, he did so and was met with a positive response. At the producers’ invitation, he flew to Philadelphia. Gamble & Huff subsequently wrote a song with Lou Rawls in mind: "You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine." It became the baritone’s all-time biggest hit, zooming to #2 pop and #1 R&B in the summer of 1976.
Rawls stayed with PIR through 1982, during which time he enjoyed sleek R&B hits like "Groovy People," "See You When I Git There," "Lady Love," and "Let Me Be Good To You." In 1983, he moved on to Epic, and peaked at #60 R&B with the original version of "Wind Beneath My Wings," which Bette Midler would take to #1 pop six years later. By 1987, Rawls was back with his old producers, on their Gamble & Huff label, and reached #28 R&B with "I Wish You Belonged To Me."
Lou Rawls died of lung cancer on January 6, 2006. He was 70.
SOURCES: Adam White & Fred Bronson, The Billboard
Book of #1 R&B Hits; Joel Whitburn, Billboard's Top R&B Singles,
1942-1995
RECOMMENDED CD: Love Is A Hurtin’ Thing (EMI
Heart of Soul)
While there’s only one Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, any number of male singers could have laid claim to the title of King. And Otis Redding was as strong a contender as any.
He was born in Dawson, Georgia, on Sept. 9, 1941. He and his parents came to Macon, about 100 miles to the north, in 1944. The Reddings lived in the Tindall Heights Housing Project while Otis’ father worked at Robins Air Force Base and preached occasionally on weekends.
Throughout much of Redding’s childhood, his father was sick with tuberculosis. The rest of the family—a younger brother named Rodgers, four sisters, and Otis’ mother, Fannie—all managed the best they could. For a time they had a small house of their own in West Macon, but when it burned down they returned to the project.
Like so many other soul singers, Otis Redding got his start singing gospel music in church. He also played the drums in the school band, and he and some friends liked to sing a capella on the street corners of their neighborhood, much like the doo-wop groups in New York City. Redding took up the piano and started to write his own songs in about the eighth grade. A woman by the name of Gladys Williams, who had a band, let the teen-ager play the piano she kept at the local Hillview Springs Social Club.
Ms. Williams also ran a Sunday-night talent show at the club, at which Redding frequently performed. He would do a Hank Ballard & The Midnighters song or an Elvis Presley number; but Otis really became a hit at the club when he performed Little Richard’s "Heebie Jeebies." He won the talent show for fifteen straight weeks with just that one song, until they wouldn’t let him sing anymore. But the bug was planted. Otis Redding knew that he wanted to sing.
He dropped out of school in the tenth grade to go to work and help support his family. Otis went out on the road with Little Richard’s old band, the Upsetters, and sent home twenty-five dollars a week. He also played with Gladys Williams’ band and played all the little clubs around the Belleview section of Macon. Redding worked other jobs, too. For a while he was a well-digger, and for an even briefer period he was a gas-station attendant. But his mind was always on music.
Redding began to get really well-known when he played "The Teenage Party," hosted by disc jockey Hamp Swain, who already had a hit show called "Night Ride" on radio station WIBB. "The Teenage Party" began in 1958 and was a live talent show broadcast first from the Roxy and later from the Douglass Theater. Almost from the beginning, Otis Redding was the winner, week after week.
At the Douglass, Redding met local guitarist Johnny Jenkins. Soon, they were playing gigs together in Macon. It also was at the Douglass that Otis met a fifteen-year-old named Zelma, who would become his wife; and Phil Walden, a brash, fast-talking white kid, who would become Redding’s manager. At first, Walden booked Redding’s band, the Pinetoppers, exclusively on the college fraternity circuit within a few hundred miles of Macon. Otis did songs like Brook Benton’s "Endlessly," the Drifters’ "There Goes My Baby," and all of Little Richard’s material.
Redding apparently was unsatisfied with his progress in Macon and briefly went to California, where he stayed with his sisters. He found work at a car wash and cut a session in July of 1960, from which there came a couple of singles that were eventually released on the Finer Arts and Alshire labels. When Otis returned to Macon, he hooked right up again with Johnny Jenkins. He also cut a single on the local Confederate label.
The record, whose A-side was a Little Richard soundalike called "Shout Bamalama," enjoyed some local success, but only after label president Bobby Smith was forced to change his company’s name to get airplay on the R&B stations. Up in Nashville, disc jockey John R., on the 50,000-watt powerhouse WLAC, rode the single all through the summer of 1961. While it seemed that Redding was finally beginning to go places, sales of the record eventually died out and the singer was at another dead end. When he and Zelma married in August of 1961, they were broke with no prospects. But Redding still never thought of anything but music.
Phil Walden, meanwhile, had set up an office downtown on Mulberry Street in the old Professional Building (now known as the Robert E. Lee). It was the same building that housed WIBB, Hamp Swain’s radio station, and Bobby Smith had offices upstairs. By now, Walden was an upperclassman at Mercer University in Macon and had expanded his booking activities. He called his agency Phil Walden and Associates, and he and Otis fixed up the office together.
Then Johnny Jenkins had a hit with "Love Twist." It came out originally on the Tifco label on a deal Phil had set up with a local banker. When it started to get some regional airplay, Joe Galkin, Atlantic’s southeastern representative and an admirer of Walden’s spirit, brought it to Jerry Wexler, and Atlantic took an option on Jenkins’ next record. It was Galkin who set up the Stax session, and Galkin who insisted, albeit reluctantly, that label president Jim Stewart record Otis Redding, and Galkin who shared shared in one-third of the publishing throughout Redding’s career.
Stax released "These Arms Of Mine" from the session on its new Volt subsidiary in October of 1962. It did not make the charts, however, until the following March, and then only after heavy airplay from John R., who had been cut in on Jim Stewart’s share of the royalties from this record only. The single finally broke nationally, peaking at #20 on the Billboard R&B chart. On the pop side, it stalled at #85.
It wasn’t until June of 1963 that Otis recorded his next session at Stax, which resulted in the single "That’s What My Heart Needs" b/w "Mary’s Little Lamb." The ballad A-side reached #27 R&B but missed the pop charts. In September, Otis went back into the studio and cut the self-penned ballad "Pain In My Heart." Unfortunately, Billboard had temporarily ceased to publish its R&B chart. On the pop side, however, "Pain" became Redding’s biggest hit to-date, peaking at #61. In November of 1963, Redding went to New York to play the Apollo Theatre with Ben E. King, the Coasters, the Falcons and Rufus Thomas.
The Apollo date marked a watershed. From then on, it all began to happen for Otis Redding. The tours were extensive, the sessions were more frequent, and the hits got bigger. Redding’s musical output for 1964 included the classic singles "Come To Me," "Security," and "Chained and Bound." When Billboard reinstated its R&B chart in January of 1965, Otis almost immediately went top ten with the slammin’ "Mr. Pitiful."
The summer of 1965 saw the biggest hit of Otis Redding’s lifetime. Co-written with Jerry Butler in a hotel room in Buffalo, New York, "I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)" climbed to #21 pop and #2 R&B. Redding’s follow-up single, "Respect," hit #35 pop and #4 R&B and became Aretha Franklin’s signature song two years later. At the same time, Otis developed an acute business acumen and made sure his financial affairs were in order. And he carried himself with a natural dignity and sense of direction almost unprecedented in the world of rhythm and blues. (Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records called Redding a "natural prince.")
And his music continued to developed. He soaked up influences like the Beatles and Bob Dylan, just as earlier he had "studied" Sam Cooke, particularly the Live at the Copa album. Redding’s early compositions had been somewhat self-pitying, even if they were a far cry from the Little Richard soundalikes that had launched his career. As he grew more confident of his own identity as a performer, Redding’s vocals became more assertive. The horn lines that he dictated to the session musicians at Stax began to dominate the Stax sound. His music took on a voice and a color all its own.
Redding also continued to write. He wrote on busses, he wrote in motel rooms, and he wrote in the back seats of cars. His cheap little red guitar was never far from his side, and he almost always carried a portable tape recorder with him. His Stax sessions were an event, an occasion that Otis almost willed to happen, stripping off his shirt, furiously directing the horns, his body glistening in the sweltering studio. When Steve Cropper (of Booker T. & The MGs) played him the Rolling Stones’ record of "Satisfaction," Redding didn’t know the song or the group but he knew that he wanted to cover it. His 1966 version of the song was so convincingly his own, many people thought the Stones had covered Redding!
Nineteen-Sixty-Six was another banner year for the Big O. His hits from that year were true classics of Memphis Soul: "I Can’t Turn You Loose," "My Lover’s Prayer," "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)," and Redding’s magnificently irreverent deconstruction of the Tin Pan Alley chestnut, "Try A Little Tenderness." Also that year, Otis produced a young singer named Arthur Conley, whose version of Redding’s "Sweet Soul Music" reached #2 on both the R&B and pop charts.
Redding began 1967 touring with the Stax-Volt Revue in Europe. When he returned in March, the Macon Telegraph and News reported one of its first extensive stories on the city’s most celebrated son since Little Richard and James Brown. Redding settled in at the 300-acre ranch he had purchased in Round Oak and rechristened the Big O Ranch. In June, he played the Monterey Pop Festival in California. He took the stage at around 1:00 a.m. and followed the Jefferson Airplane. To say that Redding was a hit would be a gross understatement. "The love crowd," Robert Christgau wrote, "was screaming its head off."
Shortly after Monterey, rock critic Jon Landau wrote, "Otis Redding’s performances constitute, as a whole, the highest level of expression rock ‘n’ roll has yet attained. Otis Redding is rock ‘n’ roll." Christgau chimed in that Redding was "without question the love crowd’s favorite soul singer, far ahead of James Brown or Wilson Pickett." According to Redding’s widow, Zelma, "Monterey Pop left Otis with such a great feeling about his career. He realized he was taking it to a whole other phase which he had never been able to reach before. All of a sudden he was getting into the whites, who had never been into Otis Redding until 1967."
After Monterey, Redding played the Fillmore for the second time in the summer of 1967. He had been listening to the Beatles’ groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper album and created a song that he felt was an extension of the Beatles’ music. It was so different from anything Redding had created before, it made his family, friends and management nervous! (More on that later.)
In October, a poll by Melody Maker magazine named Redding the #1 male vocalist in the world, which Elvis Presley had won for the previous ten years. He was booked to play the Fillmore at Christmas for a reported $15,000. Even an operation to remove throat polyps, which kept Redding off the road for two months, failed to slow his momentum.
One of the last tracks Redding ever cut, in early December of 1967, was the song the Beatles had inspired him to create. It was called "(Sittin’ On The) Dock of the Bay," and was so unusual for Otis that Stax label chief Jim Stewart didn’t want to release it. But Otis held his ground and insisted that "Dock of the Bay" would be his first #1 record.
On Saturday, December 9th, Redding flew to Cleveland in his new twin-engine Beechcraft to appear on the syndicated TV show, "Upbeat." The next day, the weather was so bad that the airport had grounded all commercial flights. But Otis was bound and determined to make it to his next gig in Madison, Wisconsin.
At 3:28 p.m. on December 10, 1967, Redding’s Beechcraft crashed into Lake Monona just outside of Madison. Redding, 26, was killed, as were all but one member of his back-up band, the Bar-Kays. A few months later, "(Sittin’ On The) Dock of the Bay" became a #1 hit on both the R&B and pop charts, and Otis Redding was assured a place in American music history.
SOURCE: Peter Guralnick, Sweet Soul
Music
RECOMMENDED CD: Otis! (Rhino; 4-CD boxed
set)
I recall the first time I ever saw a picture of these guys. I gawked incredulously at the photograph of two lanky caucasians and exclaimed, "They’re white? No! I must be looking at the negative." I was only twelve and did not realize that soul has nothing to do with skin color. And if ever two white guys had soul, it was the Righteous Brothers!
They were (and still are) Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield. Medley was born in Santa Ana, California, on September 19, 1940, while Hatfield came into the world in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, on August 10, 1940. He later moved to Anaheim, California.
Their musical roots lay in two groups: the Paramours, which featured Medley, and the Variations, which included Hatfield. A mutual friend, John Wimber, was working in Las Vegas and wanted to form a group that would keep him home in California. He approached Medley and the guitar player of the Paramours, and Hatfield the the drummer of the Variations. Together they formed a new version of the Paramours.
Medley wrote songs, and the group included his "Little Latin Lupe Lu" in their live act. It was so popular at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California, that a local record company asked Medley and Hatfield if they wanted to record it. After brisk sales, the single got to the music director at Los Angeles radio station KRLA, who used the song in the background of a commercial for a record hop. A hit single was born.
Medley and Hatfield got their name after being called "righteous brothers" by a group of African-American marines who had seen them perform at the Black Derby in Santa Ana. After "Little Latin Lupe Lu" broke nationally, peaking at #50, they signed with the Moonglow label and had two additional hits: "Koko Joe" and "My Babe." In 1964, they appeared at the Cow Palace in San Francisco with ten other acts, including the Ronettes. Phil Spector, the girl group’s producer, was conducting the band for the entire show, and was quite impressed with the Righteous Brothers—so much so that he bought the remaining two-and-a-half years of their contract with Moonglow and signed them to his Philles label, a/k/a the "Wall of Sound."
Spector asked the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil to create a song for the Righteous Brothers. After hearing "Little Latin Lupe Lu," Mann and Weil decided to write the guys a ballad. Inspired by their favorite song at the time, "Baby I Need Your Lovin’" by the Four Tops (q.v.), they wrote a song with the dummy lyrics, "You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’." But Phil Spector liked the words and decided to keep them. The song was completed at Spector’s house, where he and Weil wrote the bridge.
"You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’" came out on Philles in November of 1964. Spector tricked radio DJs into playing it by listing the running time as 3:05, rather than the actual 3:42. At that time, it was rare for a single to run longer than three minutes, and the shorter songs stood a better chance of garnering airplay. The ruse worked. "Lovin’ Feelin’" entered the Billboard Hot 100 on December 12, 1964, and began its two-week stint at #1 on February 6, 1965. It also reached #3 on the R&B surveys, and charted pop again in 1969 and 1980 with remakes by Dionne Warwick and Daryl Hall & John Oates—but I won’t mention that again if you won’t.
Under Phil Spector’s tutelage, the Righteous Brothers enjoyed three additional top ten pop hits—"Just Once In My Life" (#9), "Unchained Melody" (#4), and "Ebb Tide" (#5). Interestingly, most of their recordings for Spector actually were solo performances by either Medley or Hatfield.
When MGM offered to pay one million dollars for the Righteous Brothers’ contract in 1966, Spector sold it, and turned his attention to Tina Turner. Signed to an MGM subsidiary, Verve, Medley and Hatfield had to come up with new material. Medley called Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who had begun to write a song called "Soul and Inspiration" but had given up on it. As a favor to Bill, they finished the song, which Medley produced as a dead-on Phil Spector soundalike. On April 9, 1966, "(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration" became the Righteous Brothers’ second #1 single. With three weeks at the top spot, it also was their biggest hit.
The duo subsequently made the top thirty with "He" and "Go Ahead And Cry," both in 1966. By 1968, however, their record sales had plummeted and the Righteous Brothers went their separate ways. Bill Medley pursued a solo career on MGM, and made the Billboard top fifty with "Brown Eyed Woman" and "Peace Brother Peace," both in 1968. Hatfield remained on Verve, and spent four weeks on the Hot 100 in 1969, when his remake of the Platters’ "Only You" peaked at #95. He subsequently formed a new Righteous Brothers act with Jimmy Walker of the Knickerbockers ("Lies," 1966) but to no avail.
In 1974, Medley and Hatfield reunited and signed with Haven. Their debut single for the label, "Rock And Roll Heaven," zoomed up the pop charts to #3 that summer. They followed with "Give It To The People" (#20), and "Dream On" (#32). They soon parted company again, but reunited for the second time in 1981 for the 20th anniversary of Dick Clark’s "American Bandstand," and yet again in 1983 for the duo’s own 20th anniversary.
In 1987, Bill Medley enjoyed a #1 pop hit with "(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life," a duet with Jennifer Warnes from the movie Dirty Dancing. Three years later, the Righteous Brothers’ 25-year-old recording of "Unchained Melody" enjoyed newfound popularity when it was used in a pivotal scene from the hit movie Ghost. The single was issued on Curb and entered the Hot 100 on October 6, 1990. It peaked at #19 and was the first Righteous Brothers single to chart in sixteen years.
After that, Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield got back together. Their live shows were huge draws, and they became perennial favorites at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Bobby Hatfield died on November 5, 2003. He was 63.
SOURCES: Joel Whitburn, Billboard’s Top Pop Singles,
1955-1993; Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book of #1 Hits; CD liner
notes, Phil Spector: Back To Mono, 1958-1969 (Abkco)
RECOMMENDED
CD: The Righteous Brothers Anthology (Rhino)
One of the great forgotten sisters of Chicago soul, Jackie Ross was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on January 30, 1946, the daughter of a husband-and-wife team of preachers. By age three, she was singing gospel songs on her parents’ radio show. When she was eight, after her father had died, Jackie and her mother moved to Chicago.
Jackie’s mother was a good friend of Sam Cooke (q.v.), who on one of his trips to Chicago discovered Jackie’s singing abilities. In 1962, he recorded her "Hard Times" for his Sar label. Ross continued to sing gospel in the Chicago area but also worked to establish herself in the R&B market. Her break came at the Trianon Ballroom, where Syl Johnson’s band was playing. Jackie won a singing contest, whose prize was a paid weekend of singing professionally. That led to her signing with Johnson’s band and to Jackie’s subsequent discovery by disc jockey Bill "Doc" Lee.
Leonard Chess, the president of Chess Records, owned the radio station on which Lee played gospel records. Lee took Ross to Chess to audition, which led to her hooking up with staff writers Carl Smith and William "Flash" McKinley. They had just written a song called "Selfish One," which they felt would be perfect for Jackie.
The single was her biggest hit, peaking at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the late summer of 1964. It also reached #4 on the Cash Box R&B survey. (Billboard published no R&B chart that year.) The instrumental fanfare was so exciting that two years later, the Ric-Tic label copied it note for note on Edwin Starr’s "Stop Her On Sight (S.O.S.)."
After several subsequent, and mostly mediocre, singles, Ross came out with the excellent "Take Me For A Little While" in July of 1965. With its rolling, plaintive plea, the song was a perfect vehicle for the singer. It was, however, also a cover of a just-released single by Evie Sands, a blue-eyed soul singer from New York. Because Ross’ version was on the powerhouse Chess label, it knocked off Sands’ record just as it was beginning to break into the R&B market. Ross was unaware of the cover war until Evie Sands’ manager approached Ross in New York and asked, "How could you?" To this day, it upsets Jackie Ross to think that she stole someone else’s hit.
Because of her disappointment with Chess over the meager royalty payments she got for "Selfish One," Ross left the label not long after "Tale Me For A Little While." She made later recordings with Brunswick (1967-68), Jerry Butler’s Fountain Productions (1969-71), and her manager, Jimmy Vanleer (1971-72), but all were unproductive as far as hits were concerned. Her Chess sessions comprise the glory days of Jackie Ross.
SOURCE: Robert Pruter, Chicago Soul
MITCH RYDER & THE DETROIT WHEELS
If the Righteous Brothers (q.v.) were the kings of blue-eyed soul, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels were the princes.
Ryder was born William Levise, Jr., in Detroit on February 26, 1945. He performed as Billy Lee in a high school band called Tempest before turning heads in a black Detroit soul club called the Village. At 17, he was skilled enough to record an R&B single ("That’s The Way It’s Going To Be"/"Fool For You") for the Detroit gospel label Carrie in 1962 and to start making gigs fronting the Peps, a black vocal trio.
Levise was appearing with the Peps at the Village early in 1964 when he ran across a group that included Jim McCarty, Earl Elliot, and John Badanjek. Together with rhythm guitarist Joe Kubert, they joined forces as Billy Lee & The Rivieras and by mid-summer had attracted a fanatical local following that caught the ear of Motor City DJ Bob Prince.
Prince began booking Lee & The Rivieras as an opening act at a club/casino north of Detroit, but their live performances were so potent that the unrecorded group was soon headlining over major Motown artists. Prince then arranged for the Rivieras to record a tape in Badanjek’s basement, and that demo brought Four Seasons producer Bob Crewe to a Detroit performance where the Rivieras opened for the Dave Clark Five. They torched the hometown audience for ninety minutes, Crewe was hooked, and in February 1965, the five Detroit teenagers relocated to New York City and bided their time for a few months playing Greenwich Village clubs for survival money.
The name was the first to go (a conflict with the Rivieras who recorded "California Sun"), hence the legendary story of Lee/Levise flipping through the Manhattan phone directory and coming across the name Mitch Ryder. The Rivieras became the Detroit Wheels and album cover photos of the band on top of oil cans or surrounded by discarded tires punched the automotive image home. What followed was a wild two-year ride trough the star-making machinery of the record industry that brought them fame but no fortune and tore the group apart in the process.
Not that the first Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels single, "I Need Help", exactly set the charts on fire. That waited until late 1965, when "Jenny Take A Ride!" climbed to #10 as the Wheels welded Chuck Willis’ "C.C. Rider" to Little Richard’s "Jenny, Jenny", and cannily tossed in an advertisement for their live show along the way (the backing vocals changed to "See Mitch Ryder" during the second verse). "Little Latin Lupe Lu" cemented their commercial appeal when it reached #17 and set the general outline of the band’s most popular sound--an R&B standard or two revved up, Wheels-style, with Mitch’s peerless soul shouting ripping away over the top.
That approach bordered on becoming a formula, particularly after "Break Out", the first attempt at a bigger, brassier sound, only made it to #62 and the ballad "Takin’ All I Can Get" barely cracked the Billboard Hot 100. Late in 1966, the "Devil With A Blue Dress On" & "Good Golly Miss Molly" medleys exploded over the airwaves and indelibly stamped the high energy Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels sound on anyone within an earshot as they hit #4 on the charts.
Which was a shame, really, because the albums kept showing other dimensions of Ryder’s skills as an interpretive singer. Certainly, tracks like "Shakin’ With Linda", "Shake A Tail Feather", "Just A Little Bit", and "Sticks And Stones," fit The Wheels mold to a T. But "I Like It Like That" spotlighted Ryder’s ability to tone down for the kind of slow-drag, New Orleans R&B that emphasized his smooth delivery and immaculate phrasing. And he showed real signs as a midnight rambler songwriter on "I Had It Made" (musically, a thinly veiled re-write of James Brown’s "Out Of Sight") and the intriguing "Baby Jane", which sounded like a bizarre but happening cross of the Sir Douglas Quintet and the Velvet Underground.
Early in 1967, the proto-typical, riff-rockin’ "Sock It To Me-Baby!" became Ryder’s final top ten single, despite being banned on several stations for being too sexually suggestive. The brassy "Too Many Fish In The Sea & Three Little Fishes" reverted to the medley formula, but it was the final chart entry (at #24) for Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels because Crewe’s long running Svengali notions of (ahem) putting The Wheels in motion back to Detroit and working with Ryder as a solo artist were finally bearing fruit. After a final single (the first credited to Mitch alone), pairing the syncopated "Joy" with the hard-riffing "I’d Rather Go To Jail", Crewe packed Ryder off to Las Vegas with a big band in tow.
Crewe had big plans--wretchedly excessive plans as the What Now My Love album, released in mid-1967, may be the most godawful piece of overblown dreck ever associated with a major artist. Divorced from the powerdrive of The Wheels, swamped by saccharine strings and pompous pretense (poetry by Rod McKuen and music by Jaques Brel on a Mitch Ryder album?!?), the fact that Ryder somehow got the title track up to #30 might rank as the most amazing feat of his career.
It was the final straw. Ryder bailed out of his contract with Crewe, who promptly milked the last bit of mileage he could by slapping horn tracks over the R&B tunes The Wheels had covered and putting out the Mitch Ryder Sings The Hits album.
Instead of immediately returning to Detroit, Ryder took a down-home detour to Memphis to record the Detroit-Memphis Experiment album with Stax luminaries Booker T. & The MGs and the Memphis Horns for Dot. Liner notes containing phrases like "After being raped by the music machine that represents that heaven-on-earth, New York b/w Los Angeles" and "Mitch Ryder is the sole creation of William Levise, Jr.", left little doubt about his feelings over the Crewe experience.
It was the only time Ryder recorded with a bona-fide soul band. "Liberty" shows it was a two-way exchange. Ryder’s Detroit bred rock ’n’ roll energy goosed the musicians just as their innate funkiness moved Ryder’s singing in new directions. But fine, fine music didn’t spell commercial success, and Ryder returned home to a reunion with The Wheels drummer John Badanjek in the short-lived supergroup Detroit, which lasted just long enough to record one monster of a heavy-duty rock ’n’ roll album in 1971.
"Long Neck Goose" updated the classic Wheels sound as Ryder digs into the tune with a ferocious glee; but the climatic moment was "Rock’N Roll," kicked off by a mountainous guitar riff while Badanjek bounced a cow-bell off your skull at regular intervals. It was so powerful a performance that Lou Reed was quoted as saying that was how the song was supposed to sound, and proved it by recruiting guitarist Steve Hunter for his Rock N Roll Animal phase after Detroit disintegrated.
An embittered Ryder left the active performing scene then, heading to Denver and working a day job for five years and honing his songwriting skills at night. After returning to Detroit, he formed a band and released the confessional, autobiographical How I Spent My Vacation and then Naked But Not Dead on his own Seeds and Stems label. That helped trigger a resurgence of European interest in Ryder. As a result, he released several additional albums--Live Talkies, Got Change For A Million, and Smart Ass--in the early ‘80s on the German Line label.
He came back to a major American label for the John Cougar Mellencamp-produced Never Kick A Sleeping Dog in 1983, highlighted by a world-weary, gritty version of Prince’s "When You Were Mine" that cut the original and all others to shreds. Single tracks--"Bow Wow Wow Wow" for Was (Not Was) and a satirical take on Oliver North called "Good Golly Ask Ollie"--were his only subsequent domestic releases.
SOURCE: CD liner notes (see
below)
RECOMMENDED CD: Rev Up! The Best of Mitch Ryder
& The Detroit Wheels (Rhino)