Today, let's celebrate the backup singers and background dancers of history!
Next time: We return to the ever-popular theme You Give Love A Bad Name
I was always going to take this theme pretty literally.
In 1965, there was a song that wasn't a hit. Well, there were thousands of songs in 1965 that weren't hits, but, well, read on. This particular song was written by a songwriter called Ed Cobb, a former member of the Four Preps, who'd recently done something reasonably rare for someone not signed to Motown: he got Motown to record one of his songs. That record label had just signed a singer called Brenda Holloway, who in 1962 had done a version of the song on her previous record label. Motown people heard her version of the song and thought that, with a touch of Motown magic, it could be a hit. And the song - "Every Little Bit Hurts" - was indeed a big hit in 1964.
So Ed Cobb recorded this new song with an up-and-coming singer called Gloria Jones in L.A., in 1965, and between his catchy song and her strong set of pipes, they must have had high hopes. It ended up a b-side. Ah well. Just keeping pumping them out and eventually one will work, he must have thought. The next year, he wrote a song for the Standells called 'Dirty Water' that's now praised as a garage rock nugget.
And so eventually Gloria Jones gravitated towards Motown, herself, doing some sessions as a backing vocalist. And, despite her lack of success as a lead vocalist, she became an in-demand backing vocalist, singing on albums like Neil Young's debut solo album or on Joe Cocker's 'Woman To Woman', which later got sampled by 2Pac and Dr. Dre for 'California Love'. In this era she also started writing songs for Motown; she was nominated for a Grammy in 1971 for a song she wrote for Gladys Knight And The Pips called 'If I Were Your Woman'. A 1974 Gloria Jones song for Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye called 'My Mistake (Was To Love You)' was a hit.
Like a fair few black American backing singers of the era, in the 1970s she found herself in England (e.g., Venetta Fields who'd been an Ikette ended up doing backing vocals on the Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street and singing on tour with Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon). Jones ended up in the UK singing with a band called T.Rex, a year or two after their commercial prime.
In the meantime, unbeknownst to her, that song she recorded in 1965 had become a 'Northern Soul classic', meaning that a subculture of people in the North of England who were obsessed with upbeat, poptastic songs a bit like Motown had taken a shine to it. DJs played it at Northern Soul nightclubs, and copies of the single with that 1965 song on it became very expensive. So she recorded another version of the song in England in 1975, thinking there might be a demand for it. Still not a hit. Ah well.
And T.Rex lead singer Marc Bolan took a shine to her and her talents, pivoting away from glam rock to a more soulful sound (as Marc Bolan's frenemy David Bowie had done on the album Young Americans), with Jones singing backing vocals on T.Rex's 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977 albums. Bolan and Jones became not only musical collaborators but lovers too; they had a son together, Rolan Bolan. She was also driving the car the day he died. She survived the crash.
Anyway, another English Marc was deeply influenced by the glam in glam rock, and by Motown and Northern Soul - his 1981 album also features a cover of The Supremes' 'Where Did Our Love Go'. But because this was 1981, it was also a world of synthesisers and drum machines. And he decided to cover that old song from 1965, and the sparse synthesisers on his version gave it an eerie, haunted quality where it had previously been one of those insistent, tense but upbeat 1960 soul bangers. This time it was an enormous worldwide hit, going to #1 in the UK, Australia, Canada, and Germany, and going top 10 pretty much everywhere else. Six to twelve months later, Ed Cobb, who wrote the song, would have gotten a very handsome royalty cheque in the mail to compensate him for the use of his song. And those royalty cheques would have kept coming for the rest of his life (he passed away in 1999).
I am, of course, talking about the song you probably know as Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love'. Here's Gloria Jones in 1965 doing it, here's her 1975 version, and here's the 12" version of Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love' where it eventually mutates into 'Where Did Our Love Go'.
Anyway, I play in a Motown covers band sometimes, and we played the other weekend; we found out today that the venue got a surly email from a punter afterwards complaining that we weren't playing enough Motown^2. I mean, said the email, we played a Soft Cell song followed by a Beatles song ('Money (That's What I Want)')!^1 Which infuriated them so much that they left!
^1 A song written by Motown founder Berry Gordy, which most see as the first Motown single.
^2 I mean, it's a fair cop - in a set of twenty-five songs, we did play three songs that weren't originally released on Motown ('Tainted Love', 'Rescue Me' by Fontella Bass^3, and 'Band of Gold' by Freda Payne^4) and twenty-two that were. I can see how some might see that as not enough Motown.
^3 Where Ms Bass is backed by the Motown backing band, the Funk Brothers, recording secretly behind Gordy's back (the song came out on Chess)
^4 A song written by Holland/Dozier/Holland after they left Motown to start their own label; Holland/Dozier/Holland wrote a mind-boggling number of mid-60s Motown hits, from 'Where Did Our Love Go?' to 'Reach Out (I'll Be There)' to 'How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You'. Holland/Dozier/Holland also got the Funk Brothers to play on 'Band Of Gold' behind Gordy's back.
There's some fascinating, depressing reading about the role of 16th century Jesuit conversos/converso Jesuits. But the very fact that there were converso Jesuits might be news to people familiar with 16th century antisemitic sentiments or with post-1593 iterations of the Society, where Jewish ancestry was either a direct and insurmountable bar to participation in the order or perilously close to disqualifying regardless of the individual's accomplishments and qualities. But until 1593, despite resistance within the Society and some pretty mixed messages from Ignatius of Loyola himself, there was no formal bar to a candidate of Jewish descent becoming a full-fledged Jesuit, and many did. Only later were these men so totally sidelined.
(For some of the aforementioned mixed messages -- Loyola signed off on anti-Jewish and only slightly less anti-Jewish policies crafted by Popes Paul III and IV. But he was also apparently in the habit of doing stuff like this:
One day when many of us were dining together, [Ignatius] speaking of himself about a certain topic, said that he would take it as a special grace from our Lord to come from Jewish lineage; and adding a reason, he said: “Why? Imagine that a man could be a kinsman by blood [secundum carnem] of Christ our Lord and of our Lady the glorious Virgin Mary!” He spoke those words with so much emotion that tears welled into his eyes. This is something that deeply impressed everyone.
In terms of marginalized Early Modern bodies and minds, there was also a tantalizingly brief sliver of time where it seemed possible that there might be a women's branch of the Society of Jesus, equivalent to the nuns of the other major religious orders. But it was not to be, per Ignatius: “although a pious and holy desire, it would be inconvenient and alien to the institute.” (from Pedro de Ribadeneyra's Vita Ignatii Loiolae -- incidentally, Pedro de Ribadeneyra was also a converso.)
If you're interested in later appearances by the sneaky pop culture Jesuit's even sneakier counterpart -- treacherous enough for a Jesuit, but charming enough for a woman! -- you might be interested in the curious figure of the female Jesuit.
The home was another enticing target. As novelists warned, the Jesuitess would work her way into the sanctity of the Protestant home with even more adroitness than her male counterpart. One of the most compelling fictional portrayals of the Jesuitess was contained in Frances Trollope’s Father Eustace: A Tale of the Jesuits (1847). Like many anti-Jesuit novels, the plot centers on a campaign to convert a young Protestant heiress to Catholicism, and thereby win her immense family fortune for the Society. The Jesuit Father Eustace is given the task of bringing the heiress, Juliana de Morley, into the fold. He is aided by a Jesuitess called Sister Agatha who, disguised as Mrs. Vavasor, charms the de Morley family with her elegant dress and smooth conversation. Like all Jesuits, Vavasor has a genius for finding the best means of winning over the local gentry. The key, in this case, is to address them “with taste and feeling on the subject of horse-flesh.” In her determination and will, Vavasor outshines Father Eustace. He cannot stop himself falling in love with Juliana de Morley; she betrays no such sentimental weakness. As Trollope describes her, she is the perfect combination of Jesuit ruthlessness and female insight. She has, as Trollope writes, “not only the power of reading the human heart, she possessed also that of turning over its leaves at her pleasure.”
Some more background: https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-medical-condition-invented-by-listerine-1682070561