Sometimes having just one fan can be enough to get your career rolling… if that fan happens to be a star themselves. Ask Roberta Flack. She had the #1 song 52 years ago today in 1972, with a song that had been rattling around for three years and had gone all but unnoticed – “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Thankfully, the one person who had noticed it happened to be Clint Eastwood.
By then, Flack was in her mid-30s and had put out a handful of albums, to little real avail. One wonders if she wasn’t thinking about giving up and going back to what she’d done before – teaching music. She grew up in a Baptist household in Virginia, raised on gospel music and Sam Cooke, and had shown not only a great voice but a real talent for piano while young. She got a music scholarship to university and became a teacher. Eventually though she began playing and singing in a few clubs and got signed to Atlantic Records. This song had been on her first album, First Take, which came out in ’69…to very little initial notice. The only single off it at the time, “Compared to What”, failed to chart anywhere and the album seemed to go ker-plunk. She had one minor chart hit with her friend and frequent duet partner, Donny Hathaway, with their take on Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend”. Like that one, “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” is a cover, but the original wasn’t well-known. It was written by Irish political folkie Ewan MacColl, who also adapted the popular version of the song “Scarborough Fair” for Simon & Garfunkel. (That song was based on an old traditional folk song but the arrangement and some of the lyrics were modernized by him.) He’d record it, as would Peter, Paul and Mary and Gordon Lightfoot, but it wasn’t ever a hit.
Meanwhile, neither was Flack’s career … until Clint Eastwood was making a movie about a DJ. He directed and starred in Play Misty For Me, and being that the main character in it worked in radio, he needed music for it. He’d heard Flack’s song and decided it was perfect for “the only part of the movie where there’s absolute love,” according to him, a love scene between him and his girlfriend, played by Donna Mills.
She willingly agreed, and Eastwood paid her $2000 for its use (not a bad amount back then for a relatively obscure song.) But she and her record producer, Joel Dorn both wanted to re-record it for him; make it faster and more upbeat like some of the earlier versions by others had been. Eastwood disagreed and kept it just as it was. A very good decision for all involved. It became one of the most popular bits of the hit movie and once in hit the screen, the song itself became very popular. Atlantic wisely put it out as a single, and this time it hit. It got to #14 in Britain, #2 in South Africa and topped the Canadian charts for three weeks. More importantly, at home, it went to #1 for six weeks, and ended up the top-selling single of the year, pushing First Take back onto the charts with it. The album went gold, the first of ten of hers to do that in the U.S. Later it would win the Grammy for Record of the Year…an award which she amazingly enough won the following year as well, for “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”
And that’s how, with luck, one fan can help you make millions of fans. And why sometimes it’s good to do a double-take on a “first take.”
One of the all-time greatest soul records came out on this day in 1972 – Al Green‘s Let’s Stay Together. The Reverend’s fourth album was his first to hit #1 on R&B charts and first to go gold in the U.S., perhaps a more significant achievement than one would think at first, as he was on the fairly small Hi Records label rather than one of the biggies. While his following album (I’m Still In Love with You) would sell even better, most agree this was Green’s shining moment.
The title track became his only #1 single (though he’d hit the top 5 three more times in 1972) and his only top 20 to the north in Canada. Meanwhile, his version of the Bee Gees “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” also on it is another classic by any standard and allmusic as well as Rolling Stone both retroactively gave the record a perfect 5-star rating. The former suggested the title track was “one of the all-time classics, which has the bounce of a dance cut and the passion of a ballad.” While they noted it was the only hit on the record and the main appeal of the LP, they also liked the Bee Gees cover and the “cookin’ testimonial ‘I Never Found A Girl‘” almost as much. Rolling Stone called his voice “something to marvel at.” Indeed. The BBC in 2011 lauded his “effortless grace” on this, his “high-water mark.” And yes, Al is a “reverend” – he’s an ordained minister working in Tennessee who still preaches at times in Memphis, and he won eight Grammys in the ’80s for gospel albums like Trust In God after his mainstream career had dropped off a bit (albeit after a significant run of eight gold singles between ’71 and ’74
Remembering one of the great voices of the movies and AOR radio, who passed away a year ago. James Ingram died of cancer at age 66 this day in 2019.
Ingram won two Grammys for Best R&B performance and was summed up by NPR as having the “signature timbre (which) instantly evokes the classic R&B sound” but unlike many great singers, he came to that rather reluctantly. Born in Akron, Ohio he moved to L.A. to work in music – as a writer and keyboardist. In the ’70s, he got work playing the keys for Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles (whom you’d think would hardly need help in that category!) and writing a handful of songs he was able to sell. That’s where his luck kicked in.
Apparently, as a songwriter, he’d cut rough demo tapes of his compositions. Super-producer Quincy Jones heard one and called him up, asking him to sing on Jones’ upcoming album. Ingram says he essentially hung up. “I was never no singer,” he said. His wife disagreed and James called back. A smart call that was – Jones got Ingram to sing several of the songs on his album, The Dude including “One Hundred Ways”, which was a top 20 hit and Grammy winner. It also helped him make contacts – he and Jones himself collaborated to write “PYT” for Michael Jackson‘s then-upcoming Thriller , and Patti Austin (who also sang on the Quincy Jones record) with whom Ingram would sing on his first solo single, “Come to Me”, the 1982 hit that was his first American #1 hit. He’d have another in 1990 with “I Don’t Have the Heart”, and came close in 1986 with the #2 hit “Somewhere out There”, with Linda Ronstadt. Which would also typify his career well.
While he’d go on to release five studio albums (his first, It’s Your Night, going gold in the States) and added his voice to the “We Are The World” fund-raising single, he seemed to thrive doing duets, and doing movie music. Through the ’80s and ’90s, he’d do songs for a host of movies including An American Tail (where you’d find “Somewhere out There”), City Slickers, Forget Paris, Beverly Hills Cop II, Beethoven’s Second and quite a few more. And he’d record duets with singers ranging from Anita Baker to Dolly Parton to Michael MacDonald.
Upon his death, Quincy Jones said “there are no words to convey how much my heart aches with the news of the passing of my ‘baby brother’” who he descried as having a “magical…soulful, whisky-sounding voice.”
Another one of the ’70s great One Hit Wonders had his shining moment 50 years ago today. Although some would argue Al Wilson wasn’t really a “one” hit wonder, he is primarily remembered for the one song, “Show & Tell”, which hit #1 in the U.S. this day in 1974.
Wilson was a soul singer but also an entertainer who seemed determined to “make it”. He was born in small town Mississippi in 1939, and soon he was singing in a church choir there, but his career really kicked off after his family had moved to California, when he was a teen. Al learned to play drums and began singing some country music, but before long had shifted more towards R&B and soul, where he’d make his mark. He began singing in clubs around L.A. in the early-’60s, joined a couple of relatively unsuccessful R&B groups. He’d even developed a stand-up comedy routine just in case the music didn’t pan out. This was before he met Johnny Rivers around 1966. Rivers signed him to his Soul City label and produced a record for him, which included the minor 1968 hit “the Snake.”
After that his career stalled, before another fortuitous meeting, this time with Jerry Fuller. Fuller had some success as a songwriter, writing “Travelin’ Man”, the Ricky Nelson hit, and then writing several hits for Gary Puckett & Union Gap including “Young Girl.” He’d produced Puckett’s records as well, and soon got Wilson a new record deal, this with a division of Bell Records, Rocky Road. Fuller wrote most of and produced Wilson’s ’73 album Show & Tell, including the title track. He’d actually written that song for Johnny Mathis, who’d recorded a rather subdued version of it that didn’t go anywhere. Wilson made the song more passionate and Fuller brought in a competent band and backing singers to make it, as allmusic note “more ’60s than ’70s… old school finely-tuned full-band soul.” Indeed it was, but unfortunately the musicians seem to not have been noted and credited in the liner notes according to all online sources. However, the album cover might lend a clue – it had Hal Blaine’s vintage yellow Rolls Royce on it (and Wilson thanked him) leading one to surmise there might have been a Wrecking Crew session behind him.
“Show & Tell” spent one week at #1 here before being knocked off the top by Ringo Starr. In an unsually big disparity, Billboard had it listed as the 15th biggest single of the year…whereas their less-successful rival, Cashbox had it as the #1 of the year. Whichever was correct, it topped two million in sales and got him his only gold record. It also made the Canadian top 10 though it fell short of the top 50 in most other places like Britain.
After that, it was a slow journey downhill for Wilson. He signed to the less-than-commercially-brilliant records division of Playboy and though he did have two minor hits with them (including “I’ve Got a Feeling”, a top 10 on R&B charts), when the company folded there were complications regarding his contract and by the time that got resolved, his ship had left the port so to speak. He spent the rest of the century mainly as a lounge singer, and passed away in 2008 from kidney failure.
One of rock and R&B’s best songs was also amongst its most poignant. The great “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding was released as a single this day in 1968. the poignancy came from the fact that it came less than a month after Redding had been killed in a plane crash.
Up until that fateful night in December, 1967 had been a good year for the talented singer from Macon. He’d gone from a moderately well-known R&B performer to mainstream acclaim with his outstanding appearance at Monterey Pop that summer. While there, he took some time off hanging out on a houseboat, where he got the idea for the song which would become his signature piece.
He returned to his recording home base in Memphis, where he worked with Steve Cropper, guitarist for Stax records house band, Booker T & the MGs. Cropper helped finish out the song’s composition and lyrics. “If you listen to the songs I collaborated with Otis, most of them are about him,” he explains. “’I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay”… that’s all him.”
They recorded the bulk of the record on Nov. 22, with a few overdubs (and presumably the sound effects like the waves crashing in) being added on Dec. 7 by Cropper, only three days before Redding’s demise.
While Otis had scored a number of R&B chart biggies over the past three or four years, he’d never had huge success on mainstream radio. “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” in 1965 had been his biggest to that point, getting to #21 in the States. But people at Stax (and its Volt subsidiary he recorded for) sensed that after Monterey Pop, Redding was poised to make the big jump and become a huge mainstream star just as Marvin Gaye and the Temptations had for the Detroit rivals, Motown. “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” with its dreamy, summery imagery and lush pop sounds would be just the vehicle for that.
Indeed it was, quickly rising to #1 on Billboard and the top 10 in the UK and Canada. In the U.S., it was the 4th biggest hit of the year. Tragically however, Otis’ popularity would be a fatal blessing. He was kept busy through the fall with shows and had done a TV appearance in Cleveland Dec. 9. He was performing in Wisconsin the next day. Although weather was bad, the small plane with him and the Bar-kays on it attempted to make the trip and crashed into a lake near Madison, killing Otis and all but one of the other passengers.
Some 4500 turned out for the funeral a week later in Macon, where the city has now honored Redding with a statue. Of him sitting on the dock of a bay.
Redding was the unfortunate first artist to have a #1 single posthumously in the States. Two years later Janis Joplin did the same with “Me and Bobby McGee”, and after that Jim Croce did (also after dying in a plane crash) with “Time In A Bottle”, which went to the top less than a month after his untimely demise. Most famous of all in the category though would be John Lennon, whose suddenly ironic “Starting Over” went to the #1 spot less than a month after his passing.
Carpool karaoke long before James Corden thought of it? Perhaps so, and it provided Grand Funk with one of their biggest hits.
“When we were traveling around the country, I used to start singing that song in the back of the car,” drummer Don Brewer said, “and everybody would kind of join in and sing along with me.” Their manager heard it one time and suggested they record it. The song in question was “Some Kind of Wonderful”, which they put out as a single on this day in 1974.
Grand Funk were hot at that time, having moved on from being an FM album rock specialty to AM radio hit-makers. Earlier in ’74 they’d had a #1 hit with their take on the ’60s hit “Locomotion” and a year before that another with their declaration “We’re An American Band.” Like “Locomotion” , “Some Kind of Wonderful” was a cover of a ’60s song, but unlike the other, this one wasn’t that well known. It had been done by an R&B group called Soul Brother Six in 1967, being written by John Ellison of them. But the song barely scratched its way into the American top 100 for a week, so to most listeners, it was Grand Funk’s own. Brewer explained “we used to listen to WAMM, which was a Black station in Flint…we all grew up on R&B, Gospel and soul music.”
They put their own spin on it, featuring Brewer and Mark Farner both singing lead and some nice keyboards from Craig Frost and put it out as the lead single off their ninth album, All The Girls In the World, Beware! That was perhaps most remembered for its cover, which had the band members faces cut and paste onto male body-builder bodies. Although the album itself stalled at #10 in the U.S. (and #20 in Canada, the lowest peak for any of their ’70s records to that point) it still went gold, as did all of their previous studio albums and one live one. It also gave them one more hit, “Bad Time”, which would be their final substantial one.
“Some Kind of Wonderful” went to #3, but stayed around a long time, making it the sixth-biggest hit of 1975 in the States, where it earned them their second platinum single. In Canada it reached #6, but elsewhere, it was a grand “who gives a funk”, as it failed to chart. Curiously, Huey Lewis and the News recorded a version in the ’90s which hit #44 but was the only version to make British charts at all.
Stax Records were getting stacks of compliments – and dollars – 52 years ago. That’s because the theme from their biggest-selling album hit #1 on Billboard this week in 1971 – Isaac Hayes‘ “Theme From Shaft.”
Hayes by that time was already a popular R&B singer and an important piece of the Memphis Stax music machine, being one of their top producers, a talented pianist (he played on Otis Redding’s Dock of the Bay album among many more) and a songwriter who’d had a hand in writing Sam & Dave’s hits “Soul Man” and “Hold On I’m Coming.” But he was hoping for more. He wanted to be an actor. He ended up getting widespread fame, rather than just in the R&B world, instead.
Shaft was, depending on your take, one of the most notorious “Blaxploitation” films or an exciting, fast-paced crime drama. It was named after the lead character, John Shaft, a Black New York City private eye who was described to Hayes as “relentless…always on the prowl.” He gets hired by a mobster to help find his daughter and in so doing, has to take on a number of Mafioso. Hayes agreed to do music for it if he could play Shaft; instead the movie makers went with an actor called Richard Roundtree, but Hayes still made the music for it.
For the theme, he wanted something to suggest that restless and relentlessness of the star, so he came up with the early-disco funk music that featured Charles Pitt’s guitar and its wah pedal prominently. The music builds for well over a minute before Isaac starts to sing. When he does he goes all out, soulfully telling about John Shaft, “a Black private dick, who’s a sex machine for all the chicks”, with female backup singers (including Thelma Hopkins and Joyce Wilson of Dawn, as in Tony Orlando and …) interjecting their surprise. Hopkins adds the famous “shut yo’ mouth,” cutting off Hayes when he says Shaft is a “bad mother…”. It was risque stuff for the early-’70s, but not so much as to prevent it from finding its way onto mainstream radio. Perhaps no one was more surprised than the singer himself. “When it hit so big, I was in severe disbelief,” he’d later say.
Big it was. The song and the album, a double-album at that, both made it to #1 and went gold in the U.S. The single also topped Canadian charts and hit #4 in the UK. It was later awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy for Best Original Score. AFI ranks it as the 34th greatest movie song of all-time.
Hayes re-recorded it in 2000 for a remake of the movie (by which time Hayes was doing the voice of Chef on South Park), but more surprising are some of the others to have recorded it. Easy listening piano stars Ferrante & Teicher did an instrumental version and Sammy Davis Jr. recorded his take on it. Odder yet, Sesame Street had a parody of it starring Cookie Monster. One might presume the only reason the blue muppet would be told to shut his mouth would be because it was so full of cookies!
We know Detroit – Motown – was the center of the vibrant R&B-crossed-with-pop sound of the ’60s and ’70s, with great artists like Smokey Robinson, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and the Temptations. You might also know Philadelphia was also a mecca for that soul sound, with the likes of the O’Jays, Spinners and Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes. But they weren’t the only cities that were centers of Black music in the Vietnam era. Take for Chicago, for instance. At the time the second largest city in the country, it was no surprise they had an active music scene and was a center for soul and blues music. At the forefront, possibly the longest-running R&B band out there, the Chi-lites.
The Chi-lites were started by a bunch of high school friends in the city back in 1959. Remarkably, they are still active, with one of the originals from the ’50s, Marshall Thompson. They formed as The Chanteurs, but didn’t like that name for long. They wanted to change to The Hi-lites, but found there already was a group with that name so they modified it to give a nod to their hometown. Enter, The Chi-lites.
The harmonic soul singers put out their first single in 1964, and after signing to Brunswick Records, their first LP in 1969. They really got going though on this day in 1971, when their hit “Have You Seen Her?” made the American top 40. It was their first hit; they’d go on to score a chart-topper the next year with “Oh Girl” and notch 7 more top 10s on the R&B charts at least by 1974.
“Have You Seen Her?” was an unusual record in that it was a bit long for a single of that period – 5’08” – and that it began and ended with a spoken word bit. That part was inspired by something Isaac Hayes had done on a 1969 album, and was edited out by some radio stations who felt it slow and making the song too long. The spoken narrative, beginning with “One month ago today, I was happy as a lark…” before detailing how she’d gone away and now he couldn’t be happy no matter where he was or what he did, was spoken by Eugene Record, the group’s leader and also the main writer. He co-wrote this one with his girlfriend, singer Barbara Acklin.
Remarkably they’re still active, with original member Marshall Thompson, and even have a concert slated for next month in California.
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! Thanks once again to all the regular readers and welcome to any new ones. If you’re keeping count, today begins our 18th instalment…if you’re wondering about past topics, I have previous topics indexed here. For any new readers, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is Behind The Curtain. It’s a well-known phrase uttered in The Wizard of Oz, when the gang is warned to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…who was actually in charge. Well, through 17 rounds we’ve looked at a number of great musicians and albums and given credit to those artists. But it takes a lot more to put out a great record. This time around we’ve asked the writers to pick a “behind the scenes” type of person who’s done a lot for music we love. There are record producers, record label bosses and scouts, anonymous session musicians, radio DJs, videographers and so many more that have helped shape the soundtrack to our lives that usually go ignored. This time, we change that.
Today we hear from Christian from Christian’s Music Musings. Having lived on both sides of the Atlantic, Christian’s had a wide range of musical inspirations. Who’ll he find behind the curtain?
I can’t believe Turntable Talk is up to Round 18. This feature certainly has been a great gift and it keeps on giving. Thanks for having me back!
For many of the previous installments it didn’t take me long to figure out how to address the topic. In some cases, I knew right away what I was going to write about. This time, the decision proved to be more challenging, even though the topic to share our thoughts about an individual behind the scenes, who was significant to music, gave us a good deal of flexibility.
After some reflection, I came up with two individuals whose names may not be familiar to most readers, but it’s safe to assume they have heard of what they created: Jim Stewart and his sister Astelle Axton, (shown above) the co-founders of what became Stax Records.
Stewart was a bank clerk and a part-time fiddle player in a Memphis country group called the Canyon Cowboys. In 1957, he decided to launch his own record label Satellite Records. Initially operating in a garage, Stewart started out focusing on country, rockabilly and straight pop.
In 1958, his sister Astelle Axtoninvested $2,500 (about $26,400 today) in her brother’s venture by mortgaging her family home. This enabled Satellite to purchase an Ampex 350 mono console tape recorder.
In 1959, Satellite set up a small recording studio in Brunswick, Tenn. Although Stewart initially recorded country music and some rockabilly, several local R&B musicians found their way to the label and also began recording there.
The first were The Veltones who in the summer of 1959 recorded Fool In Love at Satellite. Following the song’s release, Stewart and Axton decided to move the label back to Memphis into the former Capitol movie theater.
In the summer of 1960, Rufus Thomasand his daughter Carla Thomas became the first artists to record at the new facility. Their record Cause I Love You was nationally distributed by Atlantic Records, laying the foundation for an important yet fateful distribution partnership.
Due to a legal dispute,Satellite Recordschanged its name to Stax in September 1961, using the first two letters from the siblings’ last name – Stewart and Axton. In addition to a recording studio in the movie theater’s former auditorium, the company also set up a record store in the cinema’s old foyer. The store carried records from many different labels and became a popular hangout for local teenagers, which gave the company valuable insights into what music was selling.
Stax also established a house band that backed up the company’s artists during recordings. Eventually, that band consisted of the members who formed Booker T. & the M.G.’s in 1962: Booker T. Jones (organ), Steve Cropper(guitar), Lewie Steinberg (bass) and Al Jackson Jr.(drums). They served as the session band during most recordings until 1970. They also recorded their own music and became best known for their seductive July 1962 instrumental “Green Onions”
In 1962, Stax also signed Otis Redding, who would become its biggest star until his untimely death in 1967. By the mid ’60s, Stax had also signed other major artists, including Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett and Isaac Hayes.
Not only did Stax have a stellar line-up of artists in their roster, but they also were a true model of racial diversity. Booker T. & the M.G.’s and other ethnically integrated bands, along with a racially integrated team of staff and artists was unprecedented amid the civil rights-era racial strife and deep-seated tensions of the late ’50s and ’60s, especially in Memphis and the South.
In 1968, Stax ended their distribution deal with Atlantic Records and in the process lost the rights to all recordings Atlantic had distributed between 1960 and 1967. A new co-owner, Al Bell, stepped up and substantially expanded operations to better compete with the label’s main rival Motown Records. In 1972, Bell got a distribution deal with CBS Records, but CBS lost interest in Stax, which eventually forced the label to close in 1975.
In 1977, Fantasy Records purchased the post-1968 Stax catalog and some of the pre-1968 recordings. In 1978, Stax under Fantasy’s ownership began signing new acts. But by the early ’80s, no new material appeared on Stax, and it became strictly a reissue label. In 2004, the Stax label was reactivated after Fantasy had been acquired by Concord Records. Today, Staxcontinues to be owned by Concord and issues both new recordings and its 1968-1975 catalog. Atlantic Records still owns most of the Stax material from 1959 to 1968.
After Stax went bankrupt in 1976, Jim Stewart kept a low profile and protected his privacy. Perhaps, tellingly, when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, he sent his granddaughter Jennifer to the induction ceremony to accept the award on his behalf. In 2018, Stewart donated his fiddle to the StaxMuseum, for which he made a rare public appearance. Stewart passed away on December 5, 2022 at the age of 92.
As for Estelle Axton, she sold her interest in Stax in 1970 and ended up forming formed Fretone Records. The label, which doesn’t appear to be around any longer, had its biggest success in 1976 with the groovy but slightly weird Disco Duck by Rick Dees. In 1973, Axton also founded the Memphis Songwriters Association aimed to support education and advancement of local songwriters.
Together with her friend and founder of Moon Records, Cordell Jackson, Axton also worked with the Music Industries of Memphis, which subsequently was named the Memphis Music Association, to assist in the development of Memphis music as a global force once again. Axton died in February 2004 at Saint FrancisHospital hospice in Memphis. She was 85 years old. In 2004, Axton and Stewart were inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.
Time for the ol’ man to put his feet up…and maybe listen to a little ’60s soul? Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, and in honor of the day, a song about a father who made an impact on his son. Step-father in fact if you listen to the lyrics carefully; “Color Him Father” by The Winstons. It actually hit the American top 40 this week in 1969.
The Winstons were a bi-racial funk/R&B group out of Washington DC originally who had been a backing band for the Impressions. All seven sang, but sax man Richard Spenser was the lead vocal and in the case of this, their only real hit, the songwriter. If you think he might sound just a wee bit like Otis Redding, perhaps it’s because he had seen Otis plenty …he’d been in Redding’s band as well.
“Color Him Father” was a soulful ode to the big man who “goes to work each day and he stays all day long, he comes each night looking tired and beat”but still has “never a frown”. It tells of how the singer’s real dad “got killed in the war” but this man took his mom and her kids in so the son’s going to “color this man father, color him love.” With its seasonal sentiments, message so poignant in the Vietnam era about young dads being sent overseas never to return, and solid soul sound, no wonder it was a hit. It got to #7 in the U.S., went gold (a rarity for Metromedia Records, a company that was part of a company more concerned with TV than music) and the next year earned The Winstons a Grammy for Best R&B Song. Singer Linda Martell covered it and made it a country hit, also charting that year.
The b-side of the single was the funky “Amen Brother” , which the Wiki page notes prominently that it contains a drum solo from Gregory C. Coleman which is listed as the most sampled drum piece ever (mainly in hip-hop records) but sadly Coleman never got any money from those samples and died nearly penniless.
The Winstons made one more album in 1970 then seemed to quit the business for years before having a comeback release in 2002.
Cheers to all the dads out there trying to be a good role model with a “big wide grin.”
A Sound Day 