THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,372) Carla Thomas — “He’s Beating Your Time”
Carla’s (see #432) ‘69 A-side is a soulful warning to wayward men from her ‘69 album Memphis Queen: “If you want to keep me, you better learn how to treat me”, “You’re making a big mistake, thinking nobody can take your place”. Be afraid, be very afraid!
The Concord label talks about Memphis Queen:
The [album] represent[ed an] effort[] to expand [her] appeal . . . into the pop arena. Stax Records executive Al Bell felt that the sexy singer, then in her mid-twenties, could become another Diana Ross and recruited Detroit producer Don Davis [who co-wrote “Beating Your Time”] to come up with a cross between the Motown and Memphis sounds. Thomas’s honey-toned pipes and lilting turns of phrase proved ideally suited to the project, titled Memphis Queen . . . .
https://concord.com/concord-albums/carla-thomas-love-means-memphis-queen/
As does Soulmakossa:
Reviewing Carla Thomas’ penultimate album ‘Memphis Queen’ is something of a fix… Detroit guitarist/producer Don Davis had pretty much taken over come 1969 and added a – in my opinion usually tasty – chunk of Detroit/Chicago-styled gloss to the Southern Soul coming from Stax in Memphis. Carla Thomas, for one, didn’t like the new working method. It’s unclear whether she disliked the aformentioned gloss, what IS known is that she resented having to overdub her vocals to ready-made musical backing tracks, usually recorded in Detroit or Muscle Shoals. She was used to singing and improvising with Booker T. & the M.G.’s, live, in the studio. According to Rob Bowman’s essential tome on Stax, Carla in fact dubbed Don Davis’ new approach as something decidedly ‘NOT Stax’. This record here, however, isn’t terrible at all. It does miss the ‘open mic’, raw energy of her previous records, but in return, it offers twelve richly orchestrated, beautifully executed soul gems that retain the essence of Southern Soul.
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/carla-thomas/memphis-queen/
Rob Bowman tells us of Carla and Stax:
In the glorious decade and a half of sound that was Stax in the ’60s and early ’70s, Carla Thomas was the Queen of Memphis Soul. [S]he recorded a duet with her father Rufus Thomas, giving the fledgling Satellite label its first taste of success with the regional hit “Cause I Love You.” [S]he cut her first solo single, the teen ballad “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)[,” which] gave Satellite its first national hit, breaking the Top Ten mark on both the R&B and pop charts. Shortly thereafter Satellite became Stax, and Carla proceeded to claw her way onto the national charts another 22 times with such immortal slices of soul as her answer song to Sam Cooke, “I’ll Bring It on Home to You,” as well as “Let Me Be Good to You,” “B-A-B-Y,” “Tramp” (with Otis Redding), and “I Like What You’re Doing to Me.” Carla released six solo albums and, with Redding, one duet album on Stax between 1961 and 1971.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/carla-thomas-mn0000170454/biography; https://www.allmusic.com/album/memphis-queen-mw0000315235
Oh, and when asked by NPR’s Peter Sagal what defined soul music, Carla responded “Well, soul is this expressive thing. You know, it comes from the spirit. And you can’t sing soul music unless you have a spiritual feeling for the music, you know.” Sagal came back with: “Right, so it’s sort of like gospel music, but instead of Jesus, you’re singing about sex. That’s just my theory.” To which Carla pondered “Or hey, the lack of it or whatever.” (https://www.npr.org/2013/12/20/255731431/queen-of-memphis-soul-carla-thomas-plays-not-my-job)
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