hypersongs

Gloria Jones

A Cincinnati-born singer, songwriter and keyboardist, known as the Queen of Northern Soul, who recorded "Tainted Love" in 1964, wrote for Motown, and played with T. Rex from 1973.

Gospel, Cobb and Motown

Gloria Richetta Jones was born in Cincinnati on October 19, 1945, and the family moved to Los Angeles when she was seven or eight. At fourteen she co-formed the COGIC Singers with Frankie Kahrl and Billy Preston, a gospel group whose members also included Andrae and Sandra Crouch, who made the LP It's a Blessing (1964). In the mid-1960s Motown's West Coast chief Hal Davis hired her as a background singer alongside Brenda and Patrice Holloway, and in late 1964, through Davis, she signed a production deal with Ed Cobb.

Her first single for Cobb's Champion label paired "My Bad Boy's Comin' Home" with "Tainted Love". "Heartbeat" (Uptown 712, 1965) was in the Billboard Bubbling Under list in 1966, and her debut LP Come Go with Me (Uptown, 1966) was produced by Cobb, with arrangements by Lincoln Mayorga and a running time of 20:55; "Tainted Love" is not on it. In the late 1960s she was in the stage shows Catch My Soul and Revolution at the Mark Taper Forum, in the Los Angeles cast of Hair, and toured as a backup singer for Joe Cocker; she sang on Ry Cooder's debut in 1970. Through Pam Sawyer she came to Motown as a writer, using the pseudonym LaVerne Ware on some co-writes.

Writer, T. Rex and Northern soul

Her Motown credits, mostly with Sawyer, include "Just Seven Numbers (Can Straighten Out My Life)" for the Four Tops, "My Mistake (Was to Love You)" for Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye, and "If I Were Your Woman" for Gladys Knight and the Pips (1971, Grammy-nominated), and "Piece of Clay" for Gaye, unreleased until 1995. Her Motown LP Share My Love (1973) was produced by Tom Thacker with David T. Walker on guitar, Willie Weeks on bass and Earl Palmer on drums, and she wrote or co-wrote eight of nine tracks; it was not promoted because she left to join T. Rex, where she sang backing vocals and played keyboards from 1973 to 1977. PopMatters gave the 2009 reissue 9 out of 10. Vixen (EMI, 1976, recorded at AIR Oxford Circus) includes a remake of "Tainted Love".

Her later records include Windstorm (1978 or 1979), Reunited (1981 or 1982, with Cobb) and The Cogic's (1984, Nashboro). In 2010 she founded the Marc Bolan School of Music and Film in Makeni, Sierra Leone with her son Rolan. She appears as herself in Jobriath A.D. (2012) and 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), and in July 2024 gave an interview for KCRW's Lost Notes. The nickname Queen of Northern Soul comes from her following in the north of England.

Songs

  • Tainted Love 1964

    Ed Cobb's song, recorded by Jones in 1964 as a B-side and rediscovered by Northern soul DJs in 1973 before Soft Cell took it to number one.

Sources

  1. Gloria Jones, Wikipedia
  2. Gloria Jones, Motown
  3. The Queen of Northern Soul: Gloria Jones, uDiscover
  4. Gloria Jones: Share My Love, PopMatters (2009-11-05)