The recent Stax/Concord reissue of “The Queen Alone,” the fourth album by the daughter of RufusThomas was an unwitting reminder that, while its’ closest ‘60s musical ‘rival’ Motown Records had a veritable stable of female recording artists (try Mary Wells, Tammi Terrell, Kim Weston and Brenda Holloway, not to mention the plethora of girl groups from The Supremes to The Velvelettes), Stax only had one best-selling soul sister. Carla Thomas ruled the roost when it came to female singers at Stax: while others, notably Mable John and Judy Clay (on loan from Atlantic), both recently blogged here, elicited some degree of airplay and sales, Carla was indeed the queen alone.

The album’s title was a play on words: Carla had teamed with the label’s premier male hitmaker Otis Redding in 1966 to record “King & Queen” and as a result had experienced a new level of mainstream popularity. The now-classic LP, released in the spring of ’67, was a major best-seller in the R&B market while far surpassing any pop attention that her previous albums (“Gee Whiz,” actually released on Atlantic after the title track was issued by that label in 1961; and her pair of 1966 LPs, “Carla” and “Comfort Me”) had gained. “The Queen Alone” hit the streets in July of ’67 just three months after the Otis-Carla LP made its own chart entry.

Other than “Something Good (Is Going To Happen To You),” a sexy groove piece penned and produced by Isaac Hayes and David Porter (achieving momentum at the time with the likes of Sam & Dave) which made a dent on the R&B charts in early ’67 and “I’ll Always Have Faith In You,” a gorgeous ballad co-penned by Eddie Floyd, the LP was no chart-filled blockbuster. It was an interesting set that in many ways demonstrated the creative dilemma that Carla – and Stax – faced with her recording career.

Her self-penned “Gee Whiz” had been a massive hit, jumpstarting her career while she was still in college; a series of subsequent singles had gotten nowhere near the same response, the closest being an ‘answer’ song to Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me,” entitled – surprise, surprise, “I’ll Bring It On Home To You”! That Carla’s sweet-sounding voice was more ‘suited’ to pop-oriented material was clear but Stax was a tough R&B label whose offerings were initially well-received by black, mostly Southern music buyers.

That said, Carla made some truly soulful cuts in the mid-‘60s – check “I’ve Got No Time To Lose” and “Stop! Look What You’re Doing,” two emotive recordings filled with passion and plenty o’soul but largely ignored and sadly overlooked by record buyers in ’64 and ’65 respectively. In search of hit singles, Stax execs thus retreated from giving Carla material that showed her ability to express herself with an intensity expected from singers like Ruby Johnson, playing up instead her soft’n’sexy sound – hence “Let Me Be Good To You,” her 1966 Top 20 R&B hit and its follow-up, the gold single “B-A-B-Y,” ultimately her second biggest pop hit when released in the fall of ’66.

“The Queen Alone” is a study in contrasts, ranging from the Bacharach-penned “Any Day Now” through a cover of a Dusty Springfield British hit, “All I See Is You” with some moments of exquisite soul power delivered via Deanie Parker’s “Give Me Enough (To Keep Me Going)” and Homer Banks’ co-penned “Lie To Keep From Crying.” Sadly, the LP didn’t take Carla to a new level of success, chartwise, and other than a momentary blip with the 1969 overtly-sexual (but by today’s standards almost saccharine) “I Like What You’re Doing To Me,” her recording career never achieved the status befitting her role as the ‘First Lady Of Stax.’

Worth noting, as writer and reissue producer Rob Bowman points out in his essay for the reissue of “The Queen Alone” that the bonus material on this new release is certainly of high enough quality that one wonders why it never came out when first recorded…

David Nathan
A/k/a “The British Ambassador Of Soul”
Owner, www.soulmusic.com

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