Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 285 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
For most of us here in the U.S., daylight saving time has ended and we go into “fall back” mode. Time-related tunes span all the genres we cover here, from doo-wop, R&B, jazz, blues, and pop, to reggae and rap. I covered quite a few of them two years ago. Here are more of my favorites.
I grew up to the sounds of guys and girls singing doo-wop on my neighborhood street corners and played on local Black radio stations. The Jive Five’s “What Time Is It” is one of those classics.
The Vocal Group Hall of Fame tells their story:
Best known for the number one R&B hit “My True Story,” the Jive Five were one of the few vocal groups to survive the transition from the ’50s to the’60s. In the process, they helped move the music itself forward, providing a key link between doo wop and ’60s soul.
Formed in Brooklyn, NY, the group originally consisted of Eugene Pitt (lead), Jerome Hanna (tenor), Richard Harris (tenor), Billy Prophet (baritone), and Norman Johnson (bass). The Jive Five’s first hit, “My True Story,” was their biggest, peaking at number one on the R&B charts and number three on the pop charts in the summer of 1961. None of the band’s subsequent singles — including the minor R&B hit, 1962’s “These Golden Rings” — were as popular, but the group managed to keep performing and recording. Under the direction of Eugene Pitt and Norman Johnson, the Jive Five refashioned themselves as a soul band in 1964, forming a new lineup with Casey Spencer (tenor), Webster Harris (tenor), and Beatrice Best (baritone). This new incarnation of the band signed to United Artists Records. The group only had one hit on UA, 1965’s “I’m a Happy Man.”
I was also a fan of soul singer Justine “Baby” Washington:
Justine Washington (born November 13, 1940), usually credited as Baby Washington, but credited on some early records as Jeanette(Baby) Washington, is an American soul music vocalist, who had 16 rhythm and blues chart entries in 15 years, most of them during the 1960s. With more than60 singles released between 1956 and 1978, no less than 20 of them found their way onto one national popularity chart or another. [...]
Washington was born in Bamberg, South Carolina. She studied piano as a youngster; the desire to break into showbiz developed after her family moved to Harlem. She began her career in 1956 while still in her teens as a member of The Hearts, a female R&B group best known for "Lonely Nights" (1956), a Top 10 hit on the R&B charts. Because she was the youngest of the Hearts, the nickname "Baby" took hold...and stuck to her like glue for life, despite one or two attempts at dropping it. At that time, she also sang with The Jaynetts (later of "Sally, Go 'Round The Roses" fame) and can be heard performing the lead on one of the group's earliest singles, "I Wanted To Be Free”.
Solo Baby Washington singles appeared on J&S in 1958 including the up-tempo "Congratulations Honey" and a ballad, "Ah-Ha." Certain things about "Baby" would soon be more clear: Ballads were her strong suit and she was quite capable of writing good romantic songs, often dealing with feelings of heartbreak and despair. Later that year she signed to Donald Shaw's Neptune Records as a solo performer, and established herself as a soul singer with two hits in 1959: "The Time" (U.S. R&B #22) and "The Bells" (U.S. R&B # 20).
Here’s her recording of “The Time”:
Still in the soul singer vein, many listeners familiar with the British rockers The Rolling Stones are unaware of the history of their hit “Time Is on My Side”:
Not every listener who knows the song will realise that neither Irma’s interpretation, nor the Stones’, was the original — although Thomas’ was the first with all the words we’ve come to know. The song was written (under the pseudonym Norman Meade) by the great Philadelphia-born writer-producer Jerry Ragovoy, whose stellar career you can read about in this dedicated uDiscover Music story. Perhaps improbably, the first ‘Time Is On My Side’ was cut a short time earlier by a jazz trombonist. This was Danish-American Kai Winding, during his association with Verve Records, when the rather different prototype was produced by studio notable Creed Taylor and engineered by Phil Ramone.
It was released as a Verve single on 3 October 1963 and had clearly discernible backing vocals by Dionne Warwick, along with her sister Dee Dee and their aunt Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney. Winding’s recording came out a matter of weeks before Dionne released the single that became her first US top ten hit, ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart.’ This early version was a template for those that we came to know, containing only the title phrase and the equally memorable “You’ll come running back to me,” with Winding’s trumpet taking the rest of the lead.
Give a listen to this version by Kai Winding:
And here is Irma Thomas’ signature version:
The Financial Times discusses more about Thomas’ beginnings:
Grammy-winning singer Irma Thomas had her first hit in 1959, and over the course of a six-decade career has earned the title, “Soul Queen of New Orleans.”
Born in 1941 in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, Thomas was raised in New Orleans, singing in school and in church choirs, where she developed a love for gospel music that she carries still today. She grew up early: by age 19, she had been married twice and had three children. While working as a waitress she caught the ear of bandleader Tommy Ridgeley, who helped her secure a record contract.
In 1959, Thomas’s first single, “(You Can Have My Husband, But Please) Don’t Mess with My Man” caught fire and shot to #22 on Billboard’s R & B chart. She had a string of hit singles in the early 1960s, including “It’s Raining,” “Ruler of My Heart,” “Wish Someone Would Care,” “Breakaway,” and “Time is On My Side.” (“The latter was first recorded by Kai Winding, but Thomas’s version, note for note, was made famous by The Rolling Stones). Through much of this period, she collaborated closely with producer and composer Allen Toussaint; the two had a special bond which continued until his death in 2015.
Pianist, songwriter, singer, and civil rights activist Nina Simone isn’t singing about clocks going back in her cover of Bob Dylan’s 1964 classic “The Times They Are A-Changin’.
Blues artist Keb’ Mo’ puts his distinctive style to the tune:
Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock’s cover was released as part of “The Imagine Project” in 2010, with vocals from Ireland’s Lisa Hannigan:
Check out Secondhand Songs for a long, long list of covers of this song by other artists.
One of my favorite female duets on time took place between Cyndi Lauper and Patti LaBelle. Abbey Bender and Celeste McCauley wrote about their long-standing friendship:
You likely know that Patti LaBelle and Cyndi Lauper are both iconic divas who can belt it out like nobody’s business, but it might surprise you to learn that the two veteran performers share a special bond.
In an interview for the cover of Woman’s World's print magazine last year, LaBelle revealed that she and Lauper go way back, saying, “I'm her son's godmother. She's been my friend for many, many years.” [...]
LaBelle and Lauper have been besties for four decades, and they first performed together on The Patti LaBelle Show TV special in 1985, singing two of their most beloved songs, “Lady Marmalade” and “Time After Time”
Here is their 1985 duet:
Lauper has written about how honored she was to have Miles Davis cover her song. Phil Cho wrote about it In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fii:
In 1985, the “king of cool” Miles Davis released You’re Under Arrest, a collection of covers and original material dealing with politics, racism, pollution and war. The album, the closet thing to a pop record he’d ever made, came with a provocative cover featuring the jazz trumpeter holding a nightstick alongside an altered, but likely more accurate, version of the Miranda Warning: “You’re under arrest you have the right to make one phone call, or remain silent so you better shut up.” Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the message is startlingly relevant almost 40 years later.
In a Spin interview that same year, Miles spoke out on his ongoing confrontations with the police:
“Being black and living in a beachfront house in Malibu, the police have already stopped me three times. This happens all the time. They’re always saying they thought I was drunk, that I was weaving all over the place. This happens especially at night on the Pacific Coast Highway.”
[...]
Keep all this in mind as you watch the following video… One of our favorites, Miles delivers a heartbreaking performance of his You’re Under Arrest cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” in front of a roaring, sweating, and crying audience “Live Under the Sky” in Tokyo.
I’m closing today with hip-hop and soul diva Mary J. Blige:
In a 1993 article in Stereo Review, Ron Givens wrote, "Mary J. Blige has been called the inventor of New Jill Swing." When the vocalist came to the public's attention the previous year, she was a magnet for the kind of superlatives music critics love to create. In an interview for the Source, Adario Strange described his subject as a "delicate ghetto-princess songstress," "the flower of the ghetto," and "the real momma of hip-hop R&B." In his Washington Post review of Blige's second album, Geoffrey Himes called her "the premier soul diva of the hip-hop generation." But more than anything else, the music media has crowned her the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.
Part of the fuel for Blige's rocket to hip-hop stardom was her "street cred." Her youth in one of New York's poorer neighborhoods--the Schlobohm Projects in Yonkers, where she was born on January 11, 1971--provided her with the "credentials" demanded by audiences who also grew up on city streets. ... The family, including Blige's older sister and two younger brothers, subsisted on her mother Cora's earnings as a nurse after her father left the family in the mid-1970s. "My mother made me strong," Blige told Strange. "Watching my mother struggle to raise us and feed us made me want to be a stronger woman."
Blige's environment also provided the sound and encouragement that first shaped her musical identity. A professional jazz musician, her father left his mark on Blige's ability to harmonize during the brief time he was present. Block parties in the Bronx taught her the rhythms and sampling styles created by the early hip-hop deejays. At home, her mother played a steady stream of R&B, soul, and funk, including Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, and Gladys Knight. Blige sang regularly with her mother and sisters in the choir at the House of Prayer Pentecostal Church, honing vocal skills and imbibing gospel. ... By the time Blige was a teenager, she had solo spots in the choir and she made the rounds of local talent shows. Before she dropped out of school in the eleventh grade, around 1987, she also participated in shows there.
Her 1999 song “Time” paints a portrait appropriate for these uneasy times we live in today:
I hope you’ll join me in the comments section below for lots more music. Please post your time related tunes, and don’t forget to set your clocks back!
