Update:

Here the download for last night's Midnight Soulstice with special guest Soulsister Number One, Marva Whitney!! Listen to Marva talk about her roots, her days with James Brown, the Forte era and her latest album "I am what I am". We also discussed her unreleased King Records album "I Sing Soul" and played some of the tracks of this record on public radio for the very first time.

http://wrir.org/x/modules...oryid=9355

Playlist:

- Marva Whitney: Things got to get better (live) (King)
- Marva Whitney: Your love was good for me (Federal)
- Marva Whitney & James Brown: Think (live) (King)
- Marva Whitney: My funny Valentine (King / unreleased)
- Marva Whitney & James Brown: Sunny (King)
- Marva Whitney: People (King / unreleased)
- Marva Whitney: Respect (King / unreleased)
- Marva Whitney: Unwind yourself (King)
- Marva Whitney: Tit for tat (Ain't no takin' back) (King)
- Marva Whitney: It's my thing (live) (Unreleased version)
- Marva Whitney & James Brown: You got to have a job (live) (King)
- Marva Whitney: This girl's in Love (King)
- Marva Whitney: Giving up on Love (T-Neck)
- Marva Whitney & Osaka Monaurail: I am what I am (P.1 & 2) (Shout)
- Marva Whitney: Daddy don't know about Sugar Bear (Excello)
- Marva Whitney: Ball of Fire (King)
- M-W-T Express: Nothing I'd rather be (than your weakness) (Forte)
- Marva Whitney: Saving my love for my baby (Shout)
- Marva Whitney & Osaka Monaurail: What do I have to do to prove my love to you (Shout)



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And another one for the books ... next Friday, March 20th, James Brown's Soulsister # 1 Marva Whitney will be guesting on our radio show Midnight Soulstice. We'll spend two full hours with her, chatting about the James Brown and Forte days and listening to music. I believe that most if y'all here are familiar with Marva Whitney, but in case not, here a quick rundown, courtesy of of my dear friend Charles Waring of Blues & Soul, MOJO and Record Collector magazines.

When it comes to feisty femme funk or sassy sock-it-to-em soul, mighty Marva Whitney has no equal. Blessed with a lithe yet powerful church-raised voice, she first made her mark with the James Brown Revue in the late-1960s. Such was her impact during that time that she earned the titles Marvellous Marva and Miss Excitement for her dynamic stage performances. James Brown even went so far as to proclaim her Soul Sister #1. Many of the records she cut while she was the Godfather Of Soul's protégé are now extremely rare and eagerly sought after by Rare Groove disciples, who regard Marva as the funkiest of all James Brown's female singers.
By the mid-60s she had became lead singer for a local R&B group called Tommy and The Derbys. At the end of April 1967, James Brown visited Kansas again to play at the Memorial Hall. After the gig ended and the hall had cleared, Brown's bandleader, Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis, brought Marva onto the stage and went through some songs with her. He was evidently impressed by her audition and strongly urged The Godfather to hire the 23-year-old singer. By May, Marva was riding on the Brown tour bus. She also signed to the funk meister's record company, the Cincinnati-based King label, and in early summer began cutting tracks. James Brown was actually absent from her first studio session, which yielded the debut single, Your Love Was Good To Me. In June 1967, Marva joined Brown and his entourage at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theatre.
Brown decided to take Marva in a radically different direction and masterminded her recording of a tune called Unwind Yourself. Marva toured incessantly with James Brown throughout 1968. In March, she ventured as far as Africa's Ivory Coast before embarking on a tour of the Far East in June, where after stops in Korea and Japan, a smaller version of Brown's group was allowed to play for US servicemen in war-torn Vietnam. Further singles in 1968 by Marva (including I'm Tired I'm Tired I'm Tired and What Do I Have To Do To Prove My Love To You) heightened her profile. Later she was rewarded with her first R&B hit, It's My Thing, co-written by Marva with James Brown. The record spent seven weeks in Billboard's US R&B Hot 100, peaking at #19 in the summer of 1969. Further funk 45s, Things Got To Get Better and I Made A Mistake Because It's Only You, also made their presence felt on the US R&B Top 40.
Marva had already recorded an album of jazz standards for King with the Dee Felice Trio at the beginning of the year. Entitled I Sing Soul and assigned a record company catalogue number, the LP never came out, though test pressings were made. But by the end of 1969, Marva decided it was time to leave the James Brown camp. Her final engagement with Mr. Dynamite was at The Apollo Theatre just before Christmas in December 1969.
King issued a second LP, Live & Lowdown At The Apollo, in early 1970, by which time Marva was at home in Kansas waiting to make her next move. She wasn't inactive for long and cut a tremendous funk 45 called Giving It Up on Love. In November 1970, she married Ellis Taylor, who began his own independent label called Forte based in Kansas. After a year's respite from the music business, Marva began recording for Forte and between the years 1972-74 released a clutch of strong but poorly promoted 45s.
In 1988, Marva's career was revitalised by the release of James Brown's Funky People, a CD showcasing the work of Marva and other members of The Godfather of Soul's Revue. The success of that album resulted in several successful European tours as a member of the JBs Allstars alongside Bobby Byrd, Vicki Anderson, Lyn Collins, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis. Marva's music also provided some of hip-hop's hardest working samples during that time.
In 2004, Marva's career gained new impetus when she joined forces with DJ Pari and the Soulpower organization. Recent high voltage performances in England, Germany, France, Sweden, Holland and Finland, attest that Marva is enjoying a new lease of life on the road. More importantly they confirmed that Marva Whitney is still the voice of funk. In 2006, DJ Pari teamed Marva up with Nippon's Osaka Monaurail, toured Japan and recorded her comeback-album I am what I am.

Now this is the real deal right here. As we always have some surprises on our radio show Midnight Soulstice, we will play a few tracks of Marva's shelved 1967 album I sing Soul, which she recorded with James Brown for King Records. The record was never pressed and released, only a handful of acetates exist (Alan Leeds owns one of them). For the first time ever, you'll get to hear some of those long lost tracks, which are so rare that many fans believed that I Sing Soul didn't exist and was just a myth.

So don't forget to tune in next Friday, March 20th, from 11 pm - 1 am Eastern, live on www.wrir.org

And here some essential Marva Whitney clips:

Marva Whitney - It's my thing


Marva Whitney - Things got to get better


Marva Whitney - Your love was good for me


And here a picture of Marva Whitney in Tokyo, Japan, in 2006, with her band Osaka Monaurail, DJ Daisuke Kuroda, DJ Perry Luis and myself.


[Edited 3/20/09 12:49pm]
[Edited 3/21/09 14:08pm]

Original album artwork for the unreleased I Sing Soul album ..

MrSoulpower said:

How did she obtain the master to that?

IAintTheOne said:

She didn't.

MrSoulpower said:

oh because you had stated that it was "Shelved" so I thought she obtained it... orrrrr. ok I see now

Naw. We had a copy of it, and we approached Universal about a release. They had trouble locating the masters, because even though the album had a catalog number assigned to it, Universal shelved the tunes separately and assigned the tracks individual catalog numbers. But they were able to locate them, and we are in negotiations to release the album. But the dealings have been going on for three years already .. but I still think that it'll happen.
[Edited 3/14/09 15:18pm]

MrSoulpower said:

thats some deep shit man My question is why did JB shelve it tho

IAintTheOne said:

Cuz Marva's first King single Your love was good for me (a track from I sing Soul) flopped. He decided to change the sound and give Marva more of a Funk outfit. The result was Unwind yourself and later the album It's my Thing.

MrSoulpower said:

Kind of a smart move. But I dont think he did it to benefit Marva JB did it to benefit JB

IAintTheOne said:

Of course. I sing Soul was Marva's album. It was her style. Mr. Brown didn't think it would sell, so he made Marva sing his style. and the result was the voice we know as Marva Whitney.

But we'll talk about all of that on the radio show.

MrSoulpower said:

WTF? It seems Universal needs a new data base design. Anywho, the video of Ms. Whitney singing "It's your Thing" is priceless... love the sista's in the background.

"It's My Thang" is great but I'm surprised that The Isley Brothers didn't sue James. Damn, I'm surprised that they didn't sue him for the outrageous and blatant pilfering of "Keep On Doin'" for "The Grunt"...

Mong said:

I was thinking the same thing! I gonna assume some type of financial compensation was given. Hell, the Isley took Michael Bolton butt to court so.... You know Bolton tired to buy the Isley music catalogue after they won their suit against him for plagiarizing "Love Is A Wonderful Thing". Jerk.
[Edited 3/14/09 21:52pm]

Mong said:

Only time will tell why Ron, Rudy and Kelly didn't sue James...or if they did and their case got settled...

Timmy84 said:

Or James doing "Shout and Shimmy" after the Isleys "Shout!" tunes. Maybe they was real cool with each other back in the day ...

TD3 said:

Well, it's actually understandable. Even though the record was issued a catalogue number, it was never released, and when the tracks where shelved, it was done separately, and the songs got issued separate numbers. It took the right man at Universal to figure this out, and until he did, the masters were believed to be lost. But the music wasn't, and that's a good thing.

LittleBLUECorvette said:

I think it's more that nobody messed with James back in the day ... and artists didn't really sue each other like it's common today. When Hip Hop first started sampling, nobody got sued ... that didn't happen until later, and that's when sampling disappeared from Hip Hop.

One of the lesser known Marva Whitney tunes .. Giving up on love. She recorded this track in 1971 for T-Neck Records, the label run by the Isley Brothers. The 45 of this track is extremely hard to find and includes This is my quest on the b-side, on of Marva's most impressive ballads.

Marva Whitney & Osaka Monaurail, live in Japan in 2006 -

Now this is trippy! There's this Japanese James Brown fan who has recreated the James Brown show and now has included a female vocalist called Woddy who imitates Marva. They even re-tailored some of Marva's original stage outfits and imitated some film footage. Highly entertaining!!














The imitation goes as far as to recreate original video footage.

Marva in Boston in 1968, right after MLK's assassination:



Imitation:

Original:


Fake:

MrSoulpower said:

Oh stop the fuckin' world and let me off LOL

IAintTheOne said:

That's some funny shit, ain't it ...

MrSoulpower said:

yeah and a lil disturbing too ya hip?

Show airs tonight! From 11 pm - 1 am EST! Don't miss this!

And check out the official Marva Whitney site at www.myspace.com/marvawhitney

Going on air in 12 minutes - at the top of the hour!

MrSoulpower said:

Another excellent show, MrSoulpower. Ms. Whitney show knows how to work it..... you'll have to read my upcoming book. I gotta kick of out of her hearing explain the differences between that "church" beat, and the funk beat.. I'm not sure if some know how significance lets drop it on the 1 is to music (funk). I have a question though? My brother and a couple of my friends had heard the "I Sing Soul" album... we thought it was an urban legend until tonight. Is the copy you played from your on private collection? If so, how did you come by it? Are you gonna give Ms. Whitney a copy? I hope my question aren't too forward? Oh, who played the keys and acoustic bass on "I Sing Soul" album. Thank again.

Trina/TD3
[Edited 3/21/09 0:39am]

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it.
Yeah, Marva hustles her book, and rightly so. Charles Waring of Blues and Soul Magazine (UK) wrote it for her (in the "I" form), and I have to say it's excellent. Fred Wesley wrote a brilliant book (Hit me, Fred), and Marva's book is equally good. She let me read it about three years ago, the first draft, and I enjoyed every bit of it. By now, it's even modified. I was hoping though that Marva would reveal some more stories on our show last night, but she's afraid that people won't buy the book if she said everything on air.

Yeah, I Sing Soul is from my collection. I can't really say where I have it from, though. But my partner from Tokyo and I are working on a official release and we already got clearance from Universal, as I wrote before. It's a fantastic album, it includes some James Brown instrumentals and we'll throw in some unreleased bonus tracks from that period.

Oh, and I made Marva a copy of I Sing Soul some years ago. I think she just wanted to sound more dramatic when she said "please hook me up" on the show. Or maybe she forgot.

The group behind Marva is the Dee Felice Trio, a Jazz group Brown was working with at that time. He recorded a great album with them as well - Gettin' down to it, on which Sunny was released, plus versions of There was a time and, ironically, Strangers in the Night. Dee Felice (the pianist) also released his own work on King Records.



I'll post the link to the download for last night's show later today or tomorrow.
[Edited 3/21/09 7:01am]

Thanks for the info. I kinda owe my brother a dinner he a said, That has to be the "Dee Felice Trio".- I had argued other wise, oh well. I look forward to reading Ms. Whitney's account of her years with Mr. Brown enquiring minds wanna know what went down with J.B. first band. Thanks for assisting Ms. Whitney and getting her back where she belongs, making music. As far as "I Sing Soul", I thought as much, you'd have to kills us if you told us.


[Edited 3/21/09 19:52pm]

Trina - you have my deepest sympathies for owing your brother a dinner over a Marva Whitney bet.