THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
2,028) Chuck Jackson & Maxine Brown — “We Find Him Guilty”
Chuck Jackson (see #405, 1,174) and Maxine Brown (see #1,047, 1,360) team up for one of soul’s great “jury of love” songs, up there with O.V. Wright’s “Eight Men, Four Women” (see #1,028). “Guilty” is an early Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson composition (along with Joshie Armstead).
“you’re a heartbrеaker and a troublemaker And there’s no mistake you’re a fake”
“Guilty” is off Jackson’s and Brown’s Saying Something album of duets. Mark Deming tells us:
In 1966, Chuck Jackson was Wand Records’ leading soul star, and Maxine Brown was a promising vocalist who had scored a handful of minor hits for the label before making the Top 40 with “It’s Gonna Be Alright.” Figuring that two hitmakers are better than one, Wand got the bright idea of putting Jackson & Brown together for an album of duets, and 1966’s Saying Something demonstrated they made as fine a combination as bacon and eggs. Most of the cuts . . . found the two vocalists trading lines as if the songs were romantic dialogue, and they were certainly up to the task, as Jackson’s powerful baritone meshed beautifully with Brown’s clear, dramatic tenor on a set of 12 fine songs . . . . Along with some well-chosen covers from Chris Kenner and Ivory Joe Hunter, Saying Something also featured some early copyrights from Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, and “Don’t Go” and “Never Had It So Good” show they already had the goods that would make them songwriting royalty. And Stan Green’s production is polished New York soul at its most effective; Jackson & Brown were at the top of their game when they recorded Saying Something, and they sound superb together on this LP.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/saying-something-mw0000890036
Richard Williams writes of Chuck Jackson:
Chuck Jackson was a matinee idol among his generation of soul singers in the early 1960s, displaying the looks and the bearing to match the elegance of his singing. He shared . . . an understated masculinity that would be lost in the subsequent decade . . . . Jackson . . . infused the songs he recorded with deep emotions made all the more powerful by the restraint of his delivery.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/23/chuck-jackson-obituary
Richard Williams tells us that “[s]teeped in gospel music from an early age, [Jackson] made his first radio broadcast at six years old and was a choir leader by the age of 11.” (https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/23/chuck-jackson-obituary) Pittsburgh Music History adds that:
At 14 he began sneaking into jazz clubs to watch drummer Art Blakey and pianist Horace Silver. They always kicked him out, but he said in an interview that it was worth it. “Thank God I did it, Because today I incorporate jazz and pop into my rhythm-and-blues performance. It’s a wonderful mix; I picked it up from sneaking in and listening.”
Williams continues the story of Jackson’s early years:
[Jackson] served in the US Navy before moving in 1957 to Pittsburgh, where he sang The Lord’s Prayer to Joe Aberbach, a local music promoter. Aberbach had little use for gospel music, but secured Jackson a place in the Del-Vikings, a mixed-race vocal group whose national hits included “Come Go With Me” (1957) and whose baritone singer was leaving. While on tour with the group a few months later, Jackson met the singer Jackie Wilson, already an established star, who encouraged him to follow his own example and strike out as a solo artist. Jackson toured as Wilson’s support act, performing for the first time at the Apollo theatre in Harlem, and made his first recordings for small labels such as Clock and Beltone before being signed in 1961 by the producer and songwriter Luther Dixon to Florence Greenberg’s Scepter/Wand company . . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/feb/23/chuck-jackson-obituary
Pittsburgh Music History takes it up:
Working with talented Brill Building writers and arrangers Jackson had 21 hits records on the Scepter/Wand label through most of the sixties. His first single on Wand, “I Don’t Want to Cry”, that he co-wrote with Luther Dixen was arranged by Carol King. It reached number 5 on the R&B charts and broke into the Top 40 in 1961. Scepter/Wand paired Jackson with the budding song writing team of Hal David and Burt Bacharach who wrote his next hit single “I Wake Up Crying” which peaked at No. 13 on the R&B Charts. Jackson, Bacharach, and David hit pay dirt with the next single “Any Day Now’. which hit number 2 R&B and No. 23 on the Top 40 in 1962. Scepter paired Jackson in duets with Doris Taylor and Maxine Brown. Jackson and Taylor scored a number 5 R&B hit with the energetic song “Beg Me” in 1964. Working together Maxine Brown and Jackson recorded the classic tunes “Baby Take Me” and the 1965 number 10 R&B hit “Something You Got”. . . .
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 . . . . “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 Shirelles had 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. . . . Eventually Maxine left the business . . . [until f]ans in England discovered her brilliance as a vocalist . . . . Maxine Brown resumed performing and just kept on going.
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
Please consider helping to support my website/blog by contributing $6 a month for access to the Off the Charts Spotify Playlist. Using a term familiar to denizens of Capitol Hill, you pay to play! (“relating to or denoting an unethical or illicit arrangement in which payment is made by those who want certain privileges or advantages in such arenas as business, politics, sports, and entertainment” — dictionary.com).
The playlist includes all the “greatest songs of the 1960’s that no one has ever heard” that are available on Spotify — now over 1,500 songs. The playlist will expand each time I feature an available song.
All new subscribers will receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock magnet. New subscribers who sign up for a year will also receive a Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock t-shirt or baseball cap. See pictures on the Pay to Play page.
When subscribing, please send me an e-mail (GMFtma1@gmail.com) or a comment on this site letting me know an e-mail address/phone number/Facebook address, etc. to which I can send instructions on accessing the playlist and a physical address to which I can sent a magnet/t-shirt/baseball cap. If choosing a t-shirt, please let me know the gender and size you prefer.
Just click on the first blue block for a month to month subscription or the second blue block for a yearly subscription.
Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! / Off the Charts: 60s Rock Revelations😊 