I was musing a couple of blogs about the 1967 Johnnie Taylor Stax album “Wanted: One Soul Singer,” thinking about some of the great music therein : “I Got To Love Somebody’s Baby,” a brilliant Hayes-Porter song delivered with bluesy intensity by Johnnie, “Blues In The Night,” “Toe Hold” and “I Had A Dream.” Stax had its share of great soul men – William Bell, Rufus Thomas and (on loan from Atlantic) Sam Moore and Dave Prater and each had his own style and sound and Johnnie Taylor was no exception. Musically nurtured in gospel music, the Arkansas-born vocalist had a heavy pedigree in that world having sung with the Highway QCs and the highly-renowned Soul Stirrers, whose ranks included Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls. Cooke was indeed much of a mentor for Johnnie, signing him to his own SAR label in 1961 and giving Johnnie his first stab at secular recording.

His SAR recordings show Johnnie’s developing style as a soul man but it was when he landed at Stax in 1965 (following Cooke’s tragic passing and the demise of the SAR/Derby stable) that Johnnie began to find his ‘sea legs’ as a bona fide R&B man with a smooth blues-flavored delivery. In fact, Johnnie’s first two charted singles, the afore-mentioned “I Had A Dream” and “I Got To Love Somebody’s Baby” were markedly different in their strong leaning towards a more bluesy approach to music, akin to folks like Bobby Blue Bland in particular.

While he made records that I personally loved during those two years (1966-68) when he was ‘blue’ label Stax man, it was only when Stax went ‘mainstream’ through its association with Gulf & Western and Johnnie began working with Detroit-based producer Don Davis (the main producer for The Dramatics) that his chart fortunes began to change. “Who’s Making Love,” a pithy tale of infidelity, began a giant massive hit in late ’68, a million-selling R&B chart and top 5 pop smash. Johnnie was on his way to regular chartdom (“Jody Got Your Girl And Gone,” “Love Bones,“ “I Could Never Be President,” “I Am Somebody”) and an established audience, earning the nickname “The Soul Philosopher,” whose origins lay in his perceived approach to life, love, relationships and fidelity (witness the mere title of his hit records).

I didn’t get to see J.T. in person until many years after his Stax heyday but listening to a recent Stax reissue (“Live At The Summit” recorded in Los Angeles in 1972 at the time of the great Wattstax shows), it’s obvious Johnnie knew how to get the crowd going even if it was, as the liner notes for this CD indicate full of “fur-lined players and ice cold hustlers.”

Johnnie was a Stax staple until he switched to Columbia Records in 1976 gaining another massive mainstream hit with the highly suggestive “Disco Lady.” His four-year spell with the label was not considered his most creative and after a one-off with L.A. based Beverly Glen, Johnnie called Jackson, Mississippi-based Malaco Records his recording home from 1984 until his passing in May 2000 at the young age of 62. A Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Awardee, he was a singularly great musical storyteller and obviously the winning applicant for that 1967 ad…”Wanted: One Soul Singer” should have had a subtitle: “No Other Applicants Need Apply”…

David Nathan
Aka the British Ambassador Of Soul
Owner, www.soulmusic.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.