Before Johnnie Taylor was the soul sage of "Who's Making Love" or the pop-disco smoothie of "Disco Lady," he was a gospel star--the lead singer of the Highway...... more
Before Johnnie Taylor was the soul sage of "Who's Making Love" or the pop-disco smoothie of "Disco Lady," he was a gospel star--the lead singer of the Highway Q.C.'s, and later of the Soul Stirrers, where he followed Sam Cooke. He eventually shook off Cooke's vocal mannerisms and left gospel for the soul and disco world, but the church always stayed in his voice--and in the wry moralism that underscored even his most libidinous songs. When he sang "I've Been Born Again", it was nominally about the woman who'd made him monogamous, but his prayerful phrasing argued otherwise. Taylor died in early 2000, and
Lifetime is a smartly constructed survey of his entire recording career, including dozens of big hits and a healthy helping of alternate takes and rarities (admittedly, though, the last two decades of the years in the title are represented by all of four tracks). His first big break in secular pop came when the unrelated Little Johnny Taylor had a hit with "Part Time Love" but couldn't promote it effectively; Johnnie with an "ie" stepped in and remade himself as a bluesy shouter, backed up by the Stax house band in Memphis. By the end of the 1960s, he'd hooked up with producer/songwriter Don Davis, who was his creative foil for the commercial peak of his career and introduced his voice to the Detroit sound for a string of little morality plays that zoomed to the upper reaches of the R&B charts. (Admirers of XTC's "Standing In For Joe" should enjoy Taylor's "Standing In For Jody".) The culmination of this period, and of his hit-making career, was "Disco Lady," a 1975 collaboration with P-Funk sidemen, but
Lifetime's final disc even makes Taylor's long decline sound as sharp as the rest of his canon. --Douglas Wolk
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