Johnnie Taylor - Starting All Over Again (Official Visualizer)
Find Johnnie Taylor’s Taylored In Silk wherever you buy or stream music:
Taylored in Silk, Johnnie Taylor’s seventh album, marked a turning point in the veteran vocalist’s career, bringing out the mellow side of his effortlessly elastic singing style. Three of the 1973 disc’s selections became Top Ten hits: the lilting “I Believe in You (You Believe in Me)” (a #1 R&B charter), “We’re Getting Careless with Our Love,” and the jazzy “Cheaper to Keep Her.”
During a recording career that spanned nearly half a century, Johnnie Taylor (1934-1999) covered more genres of African-American music than any other major artist. His earliest sides, in 1953, were with the 5 Echoes, a Chicago doo-wop group. In 1955 he joined the Highway Q.C.’s, a Chicago gospel quartet in which both Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls had previously sung lead. Then, in 1957, he joined the Soul Stirrers, filling a role in the famous gospel quartet previously occupied by Sam Cooke. Taylor then recorded blues and soul music with limited commercial success for Cooke’s SAR and Derby labels from 1961 to ’64. He signed with Stax Records in 1966 and over the next nine years scored a dozen Top Ten R&B hits. His biggest seller came at Columbia Records in 1976 with “Disco Lady,’ which topped both the pop and R&B charts and became the first-ever single in record industry history to be certified platinum.
No matter what manner of material he wrapped his elastic low-tenor pipes around, Taylor was a song stylist of remarkable consistency and breathtaking authority. He considered himself a “salesman” of songs. “A song is a song,” he explained. “If you sing ‘Jesus’ or if you say ‘baby,’ it’s basically melodically the same. I think anything that makes people happy is good, anything that takes people’s minds off their problems.”
ABOUT STAX RECORDS
Stax Records, now owned by Concord, was founded by Jim Stewart in 1957 in Memphis, Tennessee. It rose from a small, family-operated company to become one of the most influential soul music record labels in the world, helping create “The Memphis Sound” and launching the careers of icons such as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the Staple Singers, Sam & Dave, Rufus and Carla Thomas, The Bar-Kays, and dozens of other artists who helped change popular culture forever. In all, Stax placed 167 hit songs in the Top 100 in Pop and 243 hits in the Top 100 in R&B.
Stax Records works closely with the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the Stax Music Academy, and The Soulsville Charter School, all operated by the Soulsville Foundation and all located on a vibrant campus at the original site of Stax Records in Memphis, TN. The Soulsville Foundation perpetuates the soul of Stax Records by preserving its rich cultural legacy, educating youth to be prepared for life success, and inspiring future artists to achieve their dreams.
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