THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
Future superstar Stax songwriter Homer Banks sings an Isaac Hayes/David Porter classic. Incredibly, it wasn’t a hit in the U.S., but became a Northern Soul classic (reaching #55 in the UK) and received superb horn-driven cover treatment by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. And then, Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet did it Tex-Mex soul style. Here is 60 minutes of a song I love!
1,727) Homer Banks: “60 Minutes of Your Love“
“There are mere records and then there are RECORDS…Tunes that reach epic proportions of energy and verve. This is one of the latter, a song so hot that it can melt the brain if not a stylus!” (Derek See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKttVu26YZw) Indeed.
Jason Ankeny tells us of Homer’s odyssey:
Composer and producer Homer Banks was one of the unsung heroes behind the rise of Stax Records; though a fine soul singer in his own right, he never recorded for the label, instead teaming with Bettye Crutcher and Raymond Jackson as We Three, the songwriting troika responsible for a number of the company’s classic singles. Born . . . in Memphis, Banks co-founded the gospel group the Soul Consolidators before joining the office staff of the local Satellite Studios, later re-christened Stax. He dwelled in relative anonymity during his early years with the company, although co-workers Isaac Hayes and David Porter proved instrumental in landing him a session with the Genie label, resulting in the 1965 release of Banks’ debut single “Sweetie Pie.” The much-imitated and oft-covered “A Lot of Love” followed on the newly-revived Minit imprint in 1966, and over the next two years Banks issued four more singles for the label — “60 Minutes of Your Love,” “Lady of Stone,” “Round the Clock Lover Man” and “(Who You Gonna Run To) Me or Your Mama?” — all to little notice outside of the Memphis area. As his singing career floundered, he increasingly focused on writing, teaming with Crutcher and Jackson . . . to author hits for Stax artists Johnnie Taylor [see #191, 390, 979] (“Who’s Making Love”), the Staple Singers [see #680, 1,452] (“Be What You Are,” “If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me)”, and Isaac Hayes (“[If Loving You Is Wrong] I Don’t Want to Be Right”). . . . Banks also wrote the Sam and Dave classic “I Can’t Stand Up (For Falling Down) . . . his other hits include “Touch a Hand (Make a Friend)” and “Woman to Woman.”
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/homer-banks-mn0000223549#biography
Stax Records adds:
Returning to Memphis in 1964, he tried his hand at solo stardom, working with David Porter and Isaac Hayes at Genie Records, a short-lived venture led by the two soon-to-be hitmakers while they were on a break from the fledgling Stax Record Company. Banks’ association with Porter and Hayes’ dissension from their home label served as a source of tension between Banks and Stax co-founder Jim Stewart, who dismissed his viability as an artist. Nevertheless, Stewart’s sister and business partner, Estelle Axton, encouraged Banks to practice his songwriting while working at her Satellite Record Shop, adjacent to the Stax recording studio. Deanie Parker, Johnny Keyes, Packy Axton, and Allen Jones all co-wrote tunes with Banks. Naturally, though, he’d team up with his longtime friend, Raymond Jackson, who’d also recently come home from military service, to begin a fruitful and longstanding partnership at the label, beginning with “Next Time,” a song they co-wrote for Johnnie Taylor in 1968. In the same year, Banks and Jackson would team with Bettye Crutcher to write what would become Stax’s biggest selling single at that time, “Who’s Making Love,” also performed by Johnnie Taylor. The song reached number one on R&B charts and top five in pop . . . [eventually] reach[ing] two million copies sold. Other notable compositions by Jackson, Banks, and Crutcher include Johnnie Taylor’s “Take Care of Your Homework, and “I Could Never Be President,” as well as Jeanne & The Darlings’ “It’s Time to Pay (For the Fun We’ve Had)” in 1969. . . . Carl Hampton’s arrival at Stax Records coincided with the de facto dissolution of the partnership between Crutcher, Jackson, and Banks. Hampton took to working alongside Jackson and Banks. Hampton helped the two veteran songwriters to craft “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right” with the intent of placing the song with The Emotions, although the song’s message of infidelity would be deemed too racy for the group. . . . [I]t wouldn’t see a release until 1972, when Luther Ingram recorded the song. . . . spen[ding] four weeks at the top of the Billboard R&B chart while netting Ingram a spot at number three on the U.S. pop music chart.
https://staxrecords.com/songwriter/carl-hampton-and-homer-banks/
Here is an “audition record”:
1,728) Simon Dupree and the Big Sound — “60 Minutes of Your Love”/“A Lot of Love”
SDBS’s (see #51, 96) “early soul-oriented sides are killers, exciting, totally convincing pieces of British-made R&B that, in the case of . . . “60 Minutes of Your Love/A Lot of Love,” should have placed them head-to-head with the likes of Steve Winwood and the Spencer Davis Group.” (Bruce Eder, https://www.allmusic.com/album/part-of-my-past-mw0000465383) it is so sweet.
Bruce Eder writes:
“Simon Dupree” was vocalist Derek Shulman, one of a trio of brothers (Ray and Phil being the other two) from Portsmouth, England, who started out in music as R&B fanatics and first formed a group in 1964. . . . [T]heir repertoire was focused . . . on the songs of [soul artists like] Wilson Pickett, Don Covay, and Otis Redding. . . . Simon Dupree & the Big Sound came about in the course of their search for a flashy name. . . . [which] worked locally, because the group prospered on the club scene, its earnings reaching £300 a night . . . . [T]hey were signed to EMI’s Parlophone label . . . and cut a pair of powerful R&B-style songs in 1966, “I See the Light” [see #96] and “It Is Finished.” Success on the club scene didn’t necessarily result in serious record sales, however, and the group’s debut, as well as its follow-up records, “Reservations” . . . and “Day Time, Night Time” [see #51] . . . didn’t make much of an impression. Their debut album, Without Reservations, containing the first fragmentary examples of the group’s original songwriting, was released in August of 1967, just in time to be overlooked as cheerfully irrelevant . . . . Then, in October of 1967, the group’s management and record label decided to try moving Simon Dupree & the Big Sound in the direction of psychedelia. . . . The result was “Kites,” a song recorded in the early fall of 1967 . . . . The bandmembers were unhappy with the new song and the sound they were being asked to create, but they tried to make the best of it . . . . The melody was Asian-sounding, and the presence of actress Jackie Chan reciting some poetry over the music didn’t detract from the single’s “Eastern” sound. “Kites” wasn’t R&B, but it was the right song at the right time, and it made the British Top Ten, a major commercial breakthrough for the group. Unfortunately, the band was never able to follow it up, and after several abortive attempts at another psychedelic-style single . . . called it quits in 1969. . . . In 1970, the Shulman’s were back at the core of a new group, having made the leap past psychedelia and far from R&B in the progressive rock group Gentle Giant.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/simon-dupree-the-big-sound-mn0000036893#biography
1,729) Sir Douglas Quintet — “Sixty Minutes of Your Love”
This “knockout cover of [the] lost Hayes/Porter gem suggests the quintet wouldn’t have had any trouble getting work in Memphis”. (Christopher Gray, https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2002-12-13/115009/)
Ah, Doug Sahm (and the Sir Douglas Quintet (see #383, 1,061)) — he had soul. As Adrian Mack muses: “Sahm’s good vibes weren’t just some artifact of his ’60s roots . . . . Sahm was internally groovy. It was fundamental to his nature. It’s partly why we love him so much”. (https://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2011/03/24/TheGroover/)
Of Sahm, Gary tells us that:
Sahm was a child prodigy — a pop-music Mozart who began performing at age six and released his first record when he was 11. He was on stage with Hank Williams, Sr., in Austin, Texas, on December 19, 1952. It was Williams’s last performance — he died in the back seat of a car on New Year’s Eve. The story goes that Sahm was offered a chance to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry, but that his mother said no — she wanted him to finish junior high school. As a teenager, Sahm joined a band that performed blues music, mostly at black R&B clubs in San Antonio. He also got to know a number of Mexican-American musicians. In 1964, Sahm assembled a band and persuaded record producer Huey P. Meaux (a/k/a/ “The Crazy Cajun”) to record them. Meaux named the band the “Sir Douglas Quintet,” hoping to capitalize on the popularity of British invasion bands. . . . The Sir Douglas Quintet dressed the part of a British invasion band when they appeared on Shindig and Hullabaloo, but no one with half a brain would have been fooled. For one thing, two of the band’s members were Mexican-Americans. For another, Sahm had an unmistakable Texas accent. Not only that, the Sir Douglas Quintet sounded nothing like a British band. . . .
https://2or3lines.blogspot.com/2012/03/sir-douglas-quintet-at-crossroads-1969.html?m=1
What did the Sir Douglas Quintet sound like? Michael Paquette tells us:
[Sahm] began his career as a country singer as a young boy . . . . He crafted his musical skills and style in the barrios, dance halls, juke joints, and parking lots across the Lone Star State. He formed his first band, the Knights, in high school when he realized he’d rather play music than football. He assembled the Sir Douglas Quintet with his childhood friend Augie Meyers . . . in 1964. Their musical style was heavily influenced by the sound of bluesmen Jimmy Reed, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and Lightnin Hopkins. . . . [A]n emerging blues and TexMex sound [was coming from Fort Worth and San Antonio] that was also influenced by the Texas swing of Bob Wills, the guitar blues of T-Bone Walker, and the Mexican-American rockers like Don Santiago Jiménez of San Antonio . . . . With its rolling Chicano rhythms and pumping Farfisa organ SDQ influenced numerous new wave acts including Elvis Costello who patterned both his band and his vocals after the SDQ. . . . [Sahm’s] fusion of Texas C & W, Western Swing, Texas Blues, South Texas German polkas, and Tex Mex music lives on in artists who remain devoted to his sound.
https://rockremnants.com/2021/10/23/song-of-the-week-at-the-crossroads-sir-douglas-quintet/
Steve Huey adds that:
Arguably the greatest and most influential Tex-Mex group ever, the [SDQ] epitomized Texas’ reputation as a fertile roots music melting pot and established the career of Tex-Mex cult legend Doug Sahm. The [band] mixed country, blues, jazz, R&B, Mexican conjunto/norteño music, Cajun dances, British Invasion rock & roll, garage rock, and even psychedelia into a heady stew that could only have come from Texas. Although they went largely underappreciated during their existence (mostly in the ’60s), their influence was far-reaching and continues to be felt in Texas . . . and beyond . . . . According to legend, the [SDQ] was the brainchild of Houston producer Huey P. Meaux, who at the height of the British Invasion took a stack of Beatles records into a hotel room and studied them while getting drunk on wine. He found that the beats often resembled those of Cajun dance songs and hit upon the idea of a group that could blend the two sounds well enough to fool Beatles fans into giving a local band a chance. . . . Meaux told Sahm his idea and Sahm quickly formed a band . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-sir-douglas-quintet-mn0000018708
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