Three Sides of Undeniable Soul Power!

• Listen to these songs on youtube: Johnnie Taylor, Derek Martin, The Parliments
• Listen to these 45s in a Spotify playlist here with other 45s from the blog (though note, spotify doesn’t have all / many of the songs featured on the site so some playlists may be incomplete or feature slightly different versions than the original 45s I’m referring to here.
• Download the songs by clicking the titles above

Welcome back for another Musical Episode!  I’ve been wanting to post these records for a while now but have been tied up and am just now, in a post-election haze, sitting down to get my thoughts together and realizing it’s a good time to get the out there..  

Today’s 45′s all bear differing titles but have their roots in the same 1967 record by The Parliments  “(I Wanna) Testify.”  Johnnie Taylor, though he changed the title slightly gives credit to the Parliments’ record.  Derek Martin on the other hand liberally quotes from the song but his producers and song writers fail to tip the hat to the song’s origin and one listen will reveal their shared history.

“(I Wanna) Testify” was recorded in Detroit in 1967 for the Revilot label which was owned by LeBaron Taylor and Don Davis. George Clinton, before The Mothership, Bernie Worrell synths, Bootsy’s bass or the Funkadelic experience, had The Parliments.  Their early singles, including the other side of today’s record, are great even if they were more of a product of their time than the forward looking weirdness of Osmium.  The backing group for today’s 45 is actually fellow Revilot artists The Holidays who backed up Clinton on this record since the rest of the group couldn’t make the trip up from New Jersey.  

Revilot and The Parliments had a hit with “(I Wanna) Testify” and George Clinton wanted to hit the road so he put together a backing band he called Funkadelic.  At around the same time Revilot was going bankrupt (hit records could do that to you!) and were bought out by Atlantic.  Clinton, was unable to use the Parliments name as a result so he left his vocal group and the ensuing contract dispute in the dust, and focused attention on Funkadelic, until he relaunched Parliment in 1970, even revisiting today’s song and adding some funk in 1974.

The Johnnie Taylor version stays true to the Parliments version and was in sync with the emerging atmosphere of Stax at the time fusing Gospel, funky soul and messages of social change into a hit single.  This is when Isaac Hayes was releasing Hot Buttered Soul and beginning his transformation into Black Moses. This is also the year after their departure from Atlantic records when Al Bell was working overtime to rebuild the Stax discography.  You’ll notice the record was produced by Don Davis, former co-owner of Revilot and a semi-controversial figure in the Stax history.  He was brought in by Davis and known for moving a lot of production off site, doing string and session overdubs in Detroit. Taylor had emerged at the end of the decade as one the biggest names at Stax with a succession of hits for the label until its untimely demise in 1975.

Derek Martin’s record interestingly also ties the other two together, like The Parliments it was recorded in Detroit and originally released on a smaller label, Tuba label in 1967 and was later picked up and released by Stax/Volt but before their departure from Atlantic who also issued it on their ATCO imprint.  The copy I have is a French pressing from 1968.  Martin has a few other great 45′s most notably Daddy Rollin Stone and You Better Go  but he didn’t have the longevity or visibility of Taylor or Clinton.

I hope you enjoy these three records, I haven’t tired of any of them and try to give one of them regular play at our weekly soul DJ night out here in Western MA. 

Peace and Love to everyone and I hope to be back with some more posts soon.

-George / Snack Attack

=================================================
This site is for educational and entertainment purposes. I cover all costs and don’t make any money in any way, the goal is to celebrate and discuss music. If you listen to the streams Mixcloud and Spotify pay royalties to the rights holders but as you may know many people were never in control of their publishing or had it outright stolen from them. If you’re ever in a position to support artists by buying directly from them, please do it!

Please support the artists, live music and independent record sellers when possible!