THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,973) Joe Simon — “Come On and Get It”
This “[f]unky Soul dancer” (Galactic-Ramble, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q14rmz1cD0c) is “[v]ery funky and uptempo for [Joe] Simon [see #95]. I can dig it”. (TyroneDavisBiggDay, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaWiszA87rA) So can I! “[I]t’s just about as funky as it gets . . . the band just cooks – yeah, baby! . . . [J]ust pure soul.” (Red Kelly, https://redkelly.blogspot.com/2006/09/joe-simon-come-on-and-get-it-sound.html)
Bob Wilson tells us about “Come On”:
I am the co-writer of this cut with Joe Simon and Allen Orange. I was an Artist, Session Musician, Arranger and Songwriter for Sound Stage 7 records. I played Organ on this cut. It was recorded at Fame Studios in Florence, Alabama. The track was arranged by myself, Rick Hall and the talented Aaron Varnell. Aaron did the horn arrangement and played tenor sax on the cut. We had to wait to use the studio for them to finish an all-night session for Wilson Pickett. . . . Joe was hot on the vocal, with a funky soul-scream and a pleading: “Come on-Come on, Come on-Come on. . . . Allen Orange and I wanted to cut Joe in a more Funk type sound, but the label wanted to develop him as a more “middle of the road/Pop” artist. . . . [T]his was one of my favorites.
https://redkelly.blogspot.com/2006/09/joe-simon-come-on-and-get-it-sound.html
Bill Dahl tells us about Joe Simon:
His plaintive baritone equally conversant with R&B and country phrasing, Joe Simon married the two genres with startling success during the late ’60s, adapting Nashville material to the soul sound and repeatedly coming up a winner. Simon began recording in the Bay Area, but a switch in recording sites (first to Muscle Shoals for Vee-Jay and then to Nashville after signing with disc jockey John Richbourg’s Sound Stage 7 label in 1966) heightened his national appeal. With easy access to prime country-oriented material, Simon soon found his true calling, scoring major hits with “Nine Pound Steel,” “(You Keep Me) Hangin’ On,” and the [’69] number one R&B smash “The Chokin’ Kind[]” [with today’s featured song the B-side (and also the B-side the prior year to “No Sad Songs”)] . . . . Still dabbling in country covers after switching to the Spring imprint in 1970, Simon was even more successful when assigned to Philadelphia wizards Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who produced the moody “Drowning in the Sea of Love” the next year. Simon tried his hand at disco in 1975 with the sizzling “Get Down, Get Down (Get on the Floor)” and “Music in My Bones,” two of the most palatable artifacts of the era. Simon eventually retired from active performing to devote his life to the church; in the 1990s, he recorded a gospel album . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/joe-simon-mn0000805208#biography
Red Kelly adds:
Joe Simon was born in Louisiana, but grew up in Oakland. As a teenager, he sang with The Golden West Gospel Singers, a group that would later change its name to The Golden Tones and record for the west-coast based Hush label in 1959. Joe had a few releases on the label himself in the early sixties, before being picked up by Vee-Jay in 1964. He had some moderate success . . . before [revered DJ] John R [John Richbourg]* met him and suggested to Vee-Jay that they take him down to Muscle Shoals to record. The resulting “Let’s Do it Over” was a smash hit in the Summer of 1965, spending 17 weeks on the charts. When Vee-Jay went bankrupt later that year, John R. wasted no time in signing Simon to Sound Stage 7. Joe’s lush voice was the perfect vehicle for the “country soul” that John R had in mind, and his records charted consistently for the label. . . . “The Chokin’ Kind” . . . covered earlier that year by Waylon Jennings, went straight to #1 R&B and won Simon a Grammy, becoming forever his “signature song”. [It was] the perfect marriage of Country and Soul . . . . Simon, although remaining virtually a stranger to the “pop” charts, would become a huge star in the black community . . . .
https://redkelly.blogspot.com/2006/09/joe-simon-come-on-and-get-it-sound.html
* Red Kelly writes about John Richbourg:
[I]t’s hard to overestimate the influence of Nashville radio station WLAC. . . . By the mid-fifties, the station’s format had become an eclectic mix of Blues, Gospel and Rhythm & Blues that was tailored to their mostly black audience. With over 30 states within . . . range . . . it was estimated that WLAC was listened to by over 65% of the African-American people in this country. Although the dee-jays on the station were white, their laid-back “southern drawl” had many people convinced otherwise. They, of course, did nothing to dispel that notion. The greatest of these dee-jays was one John Richbourg, known on the radio as simply ‘John R’. His late night broadcasts . . . developed an almost fanatical following, as people tuned in to hear what was new and happenin’ on the R&B scene. He “broke” many a new record on his show . . . . James Brown has said that John R. was the man who “started his career” by getting behind the Famous Flames’ “Please, Please, Please” at a time when nobody else would play it. He would go on to do the same for Otis Redding [see #1,333, 1,385], “staying on” “These Arms of Mine” for months until his listeners “got it”. . . . For a whole new generation of white kids . . . John R. was their barometer, their window into the taboo world of “negro music”. . . . Everyone from B.B. King and James Brown to Rufus Thomas [see #1,759] praised him as a giant whose pioneering work in the early days of R&B changed the face of music in this country. . . . [He] ha[s] been described as a “white cat with a black soul”.
https://redkelly.blogspot.com/2006/09/joe-simon-come-on-and-get-it-sound.html
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