I featured June
Conquest's first single – Almost Persuaded, released in 1965
– earlier this year, so she was on my radar. As a result when I was
flicking through that surprise box of 45s in Sandwich, MA on the last
day of our holiday and I saw the flash of the striking Windy C label
and her name on it my heartbeat sped up a bit.
June's known recording
career spanned seven years, but in all that time she only had five
singles released. I believe she hailed from the Chicago area, so her
initial release on Fame is a bit of a puzzle. So too her second on
Jet Set , which had a Washington DC address on the label, although I
have read that at least one of the tracks was recorded in Houston.
All over the map!
The record featured
here was her third single and finds her in Chicago on Curtis
Mayfield's Windy C label. Windy C was basically set up to feature The
Five Stairsteps (a group I am a great fan of and I have just about
all of their Windy C releases), June's 45 was the only one not by
that group on the label. I wonder why it was decided to release on
Windy C rather than another of Curtis' label – Mayfield – which
was also active at the time? Maybe it was thought that the style of
June's songs fitted more closely to those of the The Five Stairsteps.
Whatever the reasons a few months after this 45 was released
Cameo-Parkway, which distributed Windy C went out of business and
that was the end of Windy C. This untimely event may well have
hindered the development of June's recording career. A solo release
on Curtom in early '68 – Curtom's first release by the way and one
of only three as a locally distributed label – and a duet with
Donny Hathaway four wholw years later were her only other releases.
Very little is known of
June. The assumption is that Conquest, at least, is not her real name. Who
knows? maybe she is hiding in plain sight – rather like another
soul singer from the Sixties, Debbie Taylor, who had “disappeared”
in the Seventies leaving a few top notch recordings behind. Many
people who loved Debbie's records had wondered what had happened to her.
In fact she had continued to be sporadically active in the recording
arena and had also been performing live on local circuits as a soul
and jazz singer under her real name Maddie “Maydie” Myles, only
announcing her previous incarnation as Debbie Taylor in 2011. So, in
a similar vein, could June Conquest be out there somewhere performing
today?
This is another 45 with
two strong sides so I'm sharing both of them.
2 comments:
A couple of crackers there, Debbie Taylor, Don't Nobody Mess With My Baby and Don't Let it End two treasured singles in this house.
I hope you and the family have a good Christmas Darcy
Hello!
Glad you discovered June Conquest.
I tried searching for her.
Google News Archive used to bring up a 1967 newspaper article about her.
She's from the Washington DC area and never lived in Chicago but recorded with Curtis Mayfield there.
Her real name is Marlene or Merlene Beasley and 1 of a dozen children.
According to the article her favorite singer was Columbia era Aretha Franklin.
"Take Care" was a hit in Chicago and Washington DC and there's actually TWO vintage airchecks from Chicago Soul DJs playing the song in 1967!
The writer of "Take Care" was The Impressions' road bassist Leonard Brown.
It's very possible he played on this recording and is credited with playing on "We're A Winner" by The Impressions.
He died in 1968 in a car accident along with the rest of The Impressions backing band.
Back to June Conquest...she probably knew Donny Hathaway from DC hence the duets from 1969.
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