THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,360) Maxine Brown — “You Do Something to Me”
This ‘65 B-side is a stunning ballad by Maxine Brown (see #1,047) about how she just can’t get an unworthy man out of her mind.
Michael Jack Kirby tells the story of Maxine Brown:
Sweet soul songstress Maxine Ella Brown established herself quite easily through a right place-right time set of events, only to discover how challenging it would be to maintain anything close to the level of what she achieved in 1961, her first full year in music’s major leagues. Though “All in My Mind” and “Funny,” both of which she had a hand in writing, made for a high-profile introduction to music fans, subsequent single releases were usually composed by more seasoned songwriters but were oddly more of a hard sell. The end result was a full decade of performing for sizeable audiences in different (not always top-billed) situations while occasionally showing up on the national charts. . . . [B]y the age of nine she and her mother had moved to Queens, New York (a better way of putting it would be they fled from her father, who was abusive past the point of tolerance) . . . . Maxine was 17 when her mother died in 1957 at just 34 years of age. She had already begun singing gospel music with three close friends and as The Angelaires they performed at area churches and backed well-known gospel singer and minister Professor Charles Taylor. At 18 Maxine moved to Manhattan and, with little experience, managed to talk her way into a job as a medical stenographer at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn . . . . She joined a Manhattan-based gospel group with the too-obvious name The Manhattans . . . [who] later . . . went secular and with only two male singers and Maxine, [becoming] The Treys. Leader Fred Johnson suggested a lyric, “Maybe it’s all in my mind,” which Maxine expanded into a full song; after some time had passed, she made a demonstration recording and Fred sent it around, hoping someone might make a “real” recording of it. In the fall of 1960, Tony Bruno, who’d started the Nomar label with financial help from mob members, heard the demo and released it as-is. WABC in N.Y. jumped on Maxine’s not-so-unpolished demo and competing stations quickly followed suit. By early 1961, “All in My Mind” . . . was going strong nationally, reached the top 20 on the pop charts and got as high as number two R&B . . . . The surprise hit forced Maxine to decide between the security of a job most women her age would die for and a career in the frequently-fickle music business. She had to take her shot; she chose the latter. . . . “Funny” . . . made her two-for-two in the hit department when it climbed into the pop top 30 in April 1961 and R&B top ten in May. After a third Nomar single, “Heaven in Your Arms,” strangely failed to generate any interest, she sensibly accepted an offer from ABC-Paramount . . . releasing eight singles there over the next year and a half. . . . [but] nothing made much impact. . . . . Florence Greenberg and Luther Dixon of New York’s Scepter Records had been fans of the “Funny” girl and, in the wake of Dionne Warwick’s early ’63 “Don’t Make Me Over” breakthrough, figured they could work a similar spell with Maxine. She signed with the company and appeared on its Wand subsidiary, hitting the charts right off with “Ask Me,” a well-produced vocal tour-de-force. Yet where sales and airplay were concerned, she seemed to hit a barrier not unlike the one that plagued her at ABC. The situation improved in the fall of 1964 when an opportunity to do vocals on a track The Shirelleshad struggled with presented itself; “Oh No Not My Baby[]” . . . by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. . . . returned her to the top 40 after more than three years and sent her back to number two R&B . . . . Carole lent her personal touch on another Goffin-King track, “It’s Gonna Be Alright,” a mid-chart effort in early ’65. . . . Flo G. matched Maxine with Wand star Chuck Jackson on . . . “Something You Got[]” . . . . land[ing] in the R&B top ten, which jump-started a three-year partnership between Chuck and Maxine. . . . 1967 found Miss Brown at the end of her association with Scepter/Wand; when Marvin Gaye’s most popular duet partner Tammi Terrell collapsed onstage in October, Maxine filled in for her during a week’s engagement with Gaye at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. Several sessions that year under Otis Redding‘s direction at the FAME studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama seemed to be leading her towards a contract with Stax/Volt and some southern-infused material, but with Redding’s tragic death in December, those recordings were shelved. . . . In 1969, Maxine gave one of her strongest emotional performances on “We’ll Cry Together,” a top 20 R&B hit . . . [T]he midtempo “I Can Get Along Without You” was her chart swan song in April 1970. . . . After leaving Avco, she decided to . . . tak[e] acting and dance lessons. She later replaced “Light My Fire” singer Rhetta Hughes in the Broadway musical Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope, directed by Vinnette Carroll, the first black woman in Broadway history to achieve such a distinction. Eventually Maxine left the business for a less hectic lifestyle that didn’t remain that way for long. Fans in England discovered her brilliance as a vocalist and that interest spread to other parts of the world. Maxine Brown resumed performing and just kept on going.
In an interview with Mike Fenton, Brown answers the question “How did the move to Wand come about?”:
One day I’m at 1650 Broadway and there was a big restaurant downstairs, corner of 54th Street, and I went in there and there was Florence Greenberg and all her staff and artists at Scepter having a big party – The Shirelles, Chuck Jackson, Dionne Warwick. Florence, she had one of these very high-pitched voices, and she made a big fuss of me and invited me to join them! And then it was, “Why don’t you leave that no-good company and come to a real record company?” So I told her, “If you want me, go and get me!” The very next day she went to ABC and bought out my contract and everything they had in the can there. So that’s how she was able to release all those songs that you hear from ABC that became very big on the Northern soul scene in England.
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I recall she had a couple charted songs and this one is great. Certainly an overlooked talent.
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