This is Feel It’s 200th post. It’s taken nearly four years to get to this stage. Slow and steady, that’s me. Dependable.
I thought this milestone should be marked by something special.
I think this record is a bit special and I hope you do too.
I first became aware of this 45 a few years ago when I stumbled across a low rate mp3 of it somewhere on the internet. It became evident that this is not a common 45 and so ever since I have been patiently waiting to secure a copy of it at a price I can reasonably afford. And so it was, not long before Christmas, the magical words “you have won this item” appeared in my inbox in relation to the 45 I present here now. It was the most money I have ever spent on a single piece of plastic, but it’s worth every penny in my book. (I must point out that we are not talking serious money here, I still drop out of any bidding situation before it even approaches three figures - well so far anyway!)
Persistent Internet based research has failed to uncover much of a back story on Josephine Taylor. All I can tell you is she hails from Evanston, Illinois. In the mid-sixties she had a run of three releases on the Mar-V-Lus label (I particularly like “Good Lovng”). But, as far as I can tell, her only other releases were this Palos appearance and her much revered 1969 Twinight outing
Is It Worth A Chance/I’ve Made Up My Mind. These can be found on the Numero Group’s
Twinight's Lunar Rotation. Numero’s notes to that CD hint that Josephine was primarily a gospel based songstress and quotes Syl Johnson as saying that her father was a preacher. That would explain a lot – a committed gospel singer just occasionally being tempted into the studio, maybe initially as a backing singer, and then persuaded to cut a few secular recordings. I think the sound of the church is all over
Depend On Me.
The only other reference I found of note, and only potentially to her, was a list of artists that had been listed as making live appearances in the Chicago area around 2004-2005. A Josephine Taylor was included, and I would like to think there is a fair chance that is “our” Josephine Taylor, still actively singing, maybe making a gospel appearance.
My internet research was somewhat more fruitful regarding the Palos label and the credited writer. It even enabled me to be to identify with fair certainty the actual studio this record was recorded in.
The Palos label was activated around 1963. An early label design included Palos Records address, or at least the location – that being Palos Park, Illinois. (Wiki describes Palos Park as being an affulent township in Cook County, Illinois). Hence Palos. The label, among others, was run by producer Sunny Sawyer.
I haven’t been able to find a full discography of Palos Records (I don’t have access to such soul/R&B bibles as “R&B Indies” which I am sure would be of help) so dating this Josephine Taylor release is difficult. To me it feels like it should date to around 1966, but I think it must be later than that. The track length, at 3 minutes plus, would also tend to place it later The yellow Palos label design seemed to debut with release number 1200 which was Fenton Robinson’s “Somebody Loan Me A Dime” which was released in 1967 as far as I can tell. With Josephine Taylor being Palos 1208 that may make it as late as 1968, or even early 1969.
I also stumbled across
a lengthy piece on the first known recording sessions of The Jackson Five which proved pertinent. In this piece
Depend On Me’s writer Jerry Mundo, a Chicago based writer/arranger/guitarist, describes the Chicago based, Sunny Sawyer owned Apex (or more precisely Morrsion Sound) Studio where The Jackson Fives’ first single -
Big Boy on Steeltown – was recorded in late 1967. Quoting from this piece Mundo, who worked there frequently, had this to say of the studio:
"Acoustically it was a live room, instead of a big dead-sounding studio. It didn't suck up a lot of sound, so most of the things we did came off bright and very definite." The studio was stocked with high-quality Austrian microphones and an Ampex MR-70 four-track tape recorder, a costly top-of-the-line machine. "Unfortunately," Mundo says, "only three tracks were working, so we'd have to mix down and ping-pong. It was tedious, but it was better than having one track or two tracks."
The piece goes on to say:
By 1967 Sawyer had bought Morrison out. Early on he did some work as a vanity press—south-side gospel artists would pay to record, then take home 500 copies to sell or distribute at church. A good engineer with a good ear who'd worked at Universal, the top studio in the city, Sawyer also released rock 'n' roll, R & B, and blues records by artists like Mighty Joe Young, Fenton Robinson, and Josephine Taylor on his own labels, Palos, New Breed, and Betty—the last named after his wife, who along with another woman operated the machinery at the pressing plant while he ran the studio. Business was decent, but neighbors complained about booming bass leaking into their laundromat and grocery store. "Sometimes, knocking out the jams, you get up there in the dBs," Mundo says. "To get your hot sound, you're gonna have some bleed out the door." According to Mundo, business owners in the neighborhood—which was then predominantly white—were also intimidated by the steady stream of black bluesmen coming in for late-night sessions. By 1969 Sawyer's landlord had terminated the lease, forcing him to relocate to 72nd and Racine.
So this would appear to be the studio in which Josephine Taylor’s Palos outing was recorded – the same studio that played host to The Jackson Five as they lay down their debut release.
Depend On Me, written by Jerry Mundo, was I think also recorded by him and I’m guessing that was him playing guitar on this Josephine Taylor cut. Jerry Mundo is still active and even has his own website.
So there you have it, I managed to piece together a fair amount of information on this record – from the label, to the writer and even the studio it was most probably recorded in. I would just love to more about the object of my initial research – Josephine Taylor - a great singer who could surely have been a much bigger name in soul music circles.
Josephine Taylor – Depend On Me (mp3) 1968?
