"Traditional" is also wrong, though. The writer's name is known: John Newton (1725-1807). (Yes, he really was a slave ship captain who later became an abolitionist, but the story about how he freed his captives and then wrote the song is, sadly, rubbish.)
Amazing Grace was totally unknown in Australia when the Judy Collins single came out. When the Royal Dragoon Guards version came out everyone here thought it was a cover of Judy Collins recent hit.
Nope. That was Chuck Negron on that track. By the way, did you know that "An Old Fashioned Love Song" was written by Paul Williams especially for the Carpenters? It was, and Richard rejected it so Paul took it to Three Dog Night.
I love TDN. I don't care what the music snobs say ("They didn't write their own material...") Actually, some of the group's band members wrote songs, which appeared on the LPs (not the singles). Those same snobs who will attack TDN will easily overlook Linda Rondstadt (whose hit singles were primarily covers - save 1-2) or Joan Jett, whose hit singles were also mostly covers, particularly her biggest hits.
The Flying Burrito Brothers' cover of Wild Horses got a truckload of airplay on CHUM-FM up here years before I ever heard the Stones' own version. I was very surprised to discover it was a Jagger / Richards song.
Honey Cone consisted of lead singer Edna Wright, who is the sister of Darlene Love, Shelley Clark, and Carolyn Willis, who after the group broke up, recorded "Get Closer" with Seals and Crofts, as the featured backing vocalist on that single, reaching #6 on the Billboard chart.
Honey Cone were together from 1969-1973, charting 7 songs on the hot 100, with 3 making the top 20 for Holland Dozier Holland's Hot Wax label, which was a sister label of Invictus. "Want Ads" being their only #1, "Stick Up" charted at #11, and "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, Part 1" clocked in at #15.
I did not know that. Not a huge fan of The Honey Cone. Always found them and these songs slightly annoying, like The Jackson Five. Screechy and strident and kinda formulaic.
Their earlier songs were mostly written by Holland Dozier Holland under the pseudonym of Ronald Dunbar and Edith Wayne, but then their biggest hits were penned by Greg Perry and General Johnson. They did record some fare that was a little different. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Shelley Clark was also a former member of the Ikettes, replacing P.P Arnold, when she left for a solo career.
...The reference to putting an ad in " the Evening News ! " makes one remember when there WERE evening papers!
Brown Sugar I always conflate this song and Honky Tonk Woman in my head. If I had to choose, I'd say I like this one a little bit more. For me, it's not in the same league as the Stones stuff from a few years earlier, and they have some stuff released around the same time I like more. But it's still pretty good. For some reason, the vibe on this one is particularly dirty (ie, cool), and the sax really adds a lot to that vibe as well. But now the 800 pound elephant in the room: the lyrics. I'll admit that I literally understand almost nothing of what Jagger is saying. 'Mumble mumble something something cotton fields, sold in a market down in New Orleans, some old stranger she was doin' all right, dancing like a boomer just around midnight". So my assumption always was that it was about some black woman he had the hots for. Yeah, I did assume it was about a black woman and not drugs, mainly cause I had never heard that 'brown sugar' is a term for heroin (is literally everything a slang term for heroin? Sometimes it feels that way!)(Hey man, I need some corn pops. You holding?). Below: model Marsha Hunt is rumored to have been the woman who inspired the song A song about falling for a woman of another race would have been controversial enough in the early 70s (see also Brother Louie), but now that I really understand everything he's saying -- ew. In 1995, Jagger said, "God knows what I'm on about in that song... I would never write that song now. I would probably censor myself." He apparently did not write the words to the song until he got into the studio, then took about 30 minutes to finish them off. So it doesn't sound like he spent a lot of time considering the consequences of what he was doing. Well, be that as it may, the Stones were in the midst of one of their greatest career stretches. Sugar came from Sticky Fingers, the album with the guy's crotch on the cover and the real life zipper. I've always felt that the moment the group started hanging around with the likes of Andy Warhol (who designed the Sticky Fingers cover) was the time they moved from Sixties Stones to Seventies Stones -- just around the corner were Studio 54, Miss You and Some Girls. Was Bianca on the scene yet? The album was also the first appearance of the Stones' tongue and lips logo, another sure sign that the seventies had arrived. The Stones goof around with their new album cover Sugar itself dates back to the late sixties; Jagger wrote it in a field in Australia (he was making a movie there) while he was recovering from a hand injury. The song and the album remained unreleased for more than a year while the boys duked it out with Allen Klein, by that point their ex-manager, who had cleverly acquired the rights to the Stones' sixties song catalog, much to the group's annoyance. When told they owed Decca one more single before being allowed their freedom, they cheerfully provided them with a song which had a nicely profane title guaranteeing that it would not be released. Gotta love those cheeky chaps! (Needless to say, Decca demurred and instead released a two-year-old track, Street Fighting Man). Anyways, Sticky Fingers is considered one of the high points of their career, and it's one of the Stones' albums I personally like best. It features not only Sugar but also the lovely Wild Horses, the lacerating B**ch, and the infamous Sister Morphine among others. Another track I really love from that album is Sway, which showed just how much of an asset the other Mick (Taylor) was to their sound: what fantastic guitar work here, especially in the fade out! Here's a clip of that one: When the Stones were on the top of their game, they were as good as classic rock got.
Since we already covered this single in the Billboard R&B thread, i'll simply repost what I wrote there: This song is an H-D-H powerhouse! I dug it the minute I ever heard it, which was at my sister and brother-in-law's house in Texas on a vacation that summer. Although Freda Payne and Etta James preceded them, they were part of the new powerful voices of Black women asserting their voices in a still male-dominated music (and sociopolitical) world. This song, and the album from which it came, "Soul Tapestry", is the best thing that came out of the H-D-H-'s Hot Wax label in Detroit.
The actual spelling of the latter pseudonym was Edythe Wayne, but . . . it may well be tied to their then-ongoing legal battle with Motown (as the use of that songwriting alias combo certainly was) that their production company, on (Buddah-distributed) Hot Wax product, was listed as Stagecoach Productions, Inc. Greg Perry (one 'g' at the end) is not to be confused with Gregg Perry (two 'g's') who in the late 1970's and early '80's would work with Dolly Parton. General Johnson was lead singer of Chairmen Of The Board who gave Capitol-distributed Invictus their first big hit, "Give Me Just A Little More Time." Meanwhile, I have those three major Honey Cone singles. All CBS Pitman pressings. Later pressings of "Want Ads," and all pressings of "Stick-Up" and "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, Part I," have a label design which seemed inspired by another Buddah-distributed label, Sussex (whose only #1 we'll get to at the proper time). @Grant's thread on R&B #1's has the pertinent label designs for y'all to see.
And to the question as to whether Bianca became part of the de facto Stones orbit by the point of "Brown Sugar" and Sticky Fingers: She married Mr. Jagger in later 1971.
I think the ladies in Honey Cone are very talented singers, but they needed stronger material. Want Ads is cute, in the most unflattering way.
‘Want Ads’ is the first in a string of the last several #1s that I have never heard. It’s not a bad song, kinda catchy but at #1 it seems overrated. I never paid much attention to the lyrics of ‘Brown Sugar’ although even at a young age I thought it had to do with liking a girl of color. Pretty shocking to actually know what it’s about. Jagger is lucky so many people couldn’t understand him.
"Want Ads" was one of those songs for me, that when it appeared in the "History of Rock and Roll Time Sweep", I could not identify it. When I tried to research the question (using the limited research resources [books only] that I had at my disposal in the early '80s), I also got nowhere -- I did identify some possible artists/songs, but it turned out all my guesses were wrong. It wasn't until Joel Whitburn's books appeared (with a list of all the Billboard #1s!!!), that I figured out the name of the song and the artist. The fact that it was an artist that was not otherwise very famous was probably the main reason I could not identify it. I initially thought perhaps it was a post-Diana Ross Supremes track. For this and several other songs I could not identify because I didn't know them (others being Shocking Blue's "Venus", TDN's "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)", Henry Mancini's "(Love Theme from) Romeo and Juliet), I remember carefully reading through books like Norm N. Nite's "Rock On' and carefully noting every place it was mentioned that a song went to #1 or "went to the top of the charts" [which doesn't necessarily mean #1] -- and I also realized that not all #1s were mentioned there). I'm not sure if Honey Cone or "Want Ads" was mentioned in those books (but it's been 35 years since I looked, and I am not claiming to have a photographic memory!). I have become somewhat familiar with "Want Ads" over the years. I think it is an OK song, but with no personal memories of it, it means virtually nothing to me (unlike the next few #1s).
Yes, Scherrie Payne (Who was also an Invictus artist at the time) has said in interviews that the whole Wayne/Dunbar thing was totally to get around Motown's lawsuit, due to them being legally contracted to Jobete. Scherrie said that over the years people have thought that Wayne/Dunbar were ficticious, but they were in fact, real people.... they just didn't write those songs. The whole legal battle with HDH and Gordy is LONG and incredibly involved... too bad they just couldn't settle.
