Lost Notes Returns with the True Story of ‘Tainted Love’ transcript
Novena Carmel
Hey Michael.
Michael Barnes
Yes, Novena?
Novena Carmel
Do you know what time it is?
Michael Barnes
I believe it’s time for Lost Notes from KCRW.
Novena Carmel
That’s right. And I’ve got the time machine set to September of 1981. Buckle up!
Michael Barnes
Boy, it’s awfully foggy in here…are we in England?
Novena Carmel
Yes indeed! And all these young folks on the dancefloor are twirling to the country’s latest #1.
Michael Barnes
Twirling and clapping along…This song must have been brand-new at the time. It wouldn’t even come out as a single in the U.S. for a couple more months.
Novena Carmel
And it took even longer for it to become a hit. That didn’t happen ‘til the following summer!
Michael Barnes
“Tainted Love” had a long rise to the top. But we’re just talking about the version by Soft Cell. The actual story of the song goes back a lot further.
Novena Carmel
So much further! A lot of folks still don’t know that “Tainted Love” was actually a cover. The original version actually came out in 1965 … and it was written and recorded right here in Los Angeles, California.
Michael Barnes
That’s the voice of Miss Gloria Jones. If folks know her at all, it’s because she recorded the original version of “Tainted Love.” But her life story is truly amazing. She played a part in so much great music, but I don’t think she’s ever really gotten the credit she deserves.
Novena Carmel
I agree – so let’s shed some much deserved light on her story! I’m Novena Carmel…
Michael Barnes
…and I’m Michael Barnes.
Novena Carmel
And in this episode of Lost Notes, we’re gonna set you straight on Gloria Jones and “Tainted Love.”
Novena Carmel
Gloria Jones is barely a teenager in LA when she starts hanging out with a kid named Andrae Crouch, whose dad runs the Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ in Pacoima.
Michael Barnes
It’s kinda wild what he does, while he’s still in junior high! Putting together a church choir, reaching out and networking with other church kids in the LA area…and putting all the “big church kid” energy together into a group called the COGIC Singers.
Novena Carmela
By 1964, word of Andrae’s talent is spreading far and wide.. His name even gets to the current king of gospel, The Reverend James Cleveland, who… introduces him to Simpson Records, which agrees to put out two singles by the COGIC Singers that same year.
Michael Barnes
Their second single is called “It Will Never Lose Its Power.” And on that tune, Gloria gets her first chance to take flight.
Michael Barnes
It’s crazy how much talent they had in that band. Along with Andrea Crouch & Gloria Jones, the organ player of the COGICs is none other than Billy Preston. And even though he’s also a teenager he’s already played with legends like Mahalia Jackson, Little Richard, and Sam Cooke.
Novena Carmel
Gloria herself was around the same age – just a teen – when this was recorded. And you can hear that church-trained voice: all of her power as a soloist and that ability to blend in. It’s just incredible. So of course it’s not a huge surprise when Motown comes calling.
Michael Barnes
Especially since so many R&B and Soul singers at Motown came out of the church, including Mary Wilson of the Supremes, Martha Reeves, & Tami Terrell. And so, no surprise Hal Davis saw “girl group” potential in the young women in the COGICs, but, in some ways all of the success Motown already had with girl groups worked against them. But when Hal Davis couldn’t find a place for all of the COGICs, he did connect Gloria with a songwriter by the name of Ed Cobb, and she works with him instead.
Novena Carmel
Funny thing is, Ed is already working with one of Gloria’s bandmates from the COGICs called Billy Preston. So Ed and Billy get her on this instrumental track they’ve been cooking up called “Heartbeat.” And it’s like a door gets unlocked.
Michael Barnes
With “Heartbeat,” Gloria has a little moment in the Sun. It hits the charts in October of ‘65 and she finds herself performing on all the hip teen shows of the day, she’s on Shindig, Shivaree, Where The Action Is, Hollywood A Go Go…
SAM RIDDLE: Hello, music lovers! From up here, I can see everything that’s happening. You won’t believe what’s happening for the next hour as Hollywood-a-Go-Go starts a little Heartbeat action, Part One, with Gloria Jones! Whee!
DICK CLARK: Come on now, let’s tear it up. This is where it’s at. This is “Where The Action Is” with Gloria Jones.
Novena Carmel
Not only that, she performs on Shindig twice within a few weeks: once by herself, and then with Billy Preston on organ and Darlene Love and the Blossoms doing backing vocals. And it seems like she’s got some real momentum.
Michael Barnes
Back then, you’d often have artists record other people's songs, soon after that original version had been released. So, Dusty Springfield releases her own version of "Heartbeat" a few months after Gloria’s… and that kind of thing is almost impossible to imagine happening today.
Novena Carmel
Right, that’s like if Cleo Sol, for example, came out with a song, and then Taylor Swift was like, "Oh, that's good. Let me record her song and release it two weeks later, and pass it off like my version is the original." It just doesn’t quite go down like that nowadays. But that’s part of the landscape of how music was made in the '60s. And quite often, you’d have a Black artist recording the original version, and then a white artist coming along with a cover that became more popular.
Michael Barnes
But wait a minute…Gloria actually released two singles in 1965. “Heartbeat” comes out in September, but just a few months before, from the same recording session, she put out her first single: a song called “My Bad Boy’s Comin’ Home.” And the B-side of that single … the B-side! … is “Tainted Love.”
Novena Carmel
How is that possible?! I can’t believe that Tainted Love was the B side!
Michael Barnes
I know right! The thing is, it’s possible that R&B stations never even got “Tainted Love,” since the A-side was meant for the pop charts. But also, apparently, Ed Cobb didn’t even like the song that much. He thought the beat was too strong!
Novena Carmel
And Gloria had her own problems with the song too. Before now, she was just a teenager who was singing for church folk. And she doesn’t know what a tainted love was, and maybe doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t feel like that’s something proper for a young lady to be singing about.
Michael Barnes
Whatever the reason, “Tainted Love” goes nowhere. But after “Heartbeat” gave her a bit of success, Gloria puts out a full-length album in 1966 called Come Go with Me … which includes “Heartbeat,” but not “Tainted Love.”
Novena Carmel
Ug, That really seems like a mistake.
Michael Barnes
And that album also doesn’t find an audience.
Novena Carmel
Man. Too frustrating. And maybe she comes out of this feeling like the moment isn’t right. Because she pivots to doing theatre work around L.A. for a few years after that.
Michael Barnes
Indeed…She was in the cast for "Catch My Soul," which was like a 1960s version of "Othello." She's also in the LA production of "Hair," which probably raises her visibility to a number of rock groups, because after that, she starts working as a backup singer for multiple folks, including Harpers Bizarre and Ry Cooder, and also on an early solo track by Neil Young.
Novena Carmel
Yeah you can hear some of Gloria Jones oooooos and aaahhhs in there. And, around this time, Gloria also meets Pam Sawyer, who was a staff writer for Motown. Pam had co-written “Love Child” and another song called “I’m Livin’ in Shame” for the Supremes. And instead of Gloria becoming a recording artist for Motown, she becomes a writer under a totally different name - LaVerne Ware.
Michael Barnes
And at Motown, Pam and Gloria write songs for virtually everybody: The Jackson Five, Eddie Kendricks, Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross, The Four Tops, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas … a lot of songs for a lot of people.
Novena Carmel
And for Gladys Knight and the Pips, they co-write "If I Were Your Woman," which becomes the biggest hit they’re associated with, and a song that was nominated for a Grammy too. And it's just a classic of this period of Motown, and of soul music in general.
It’s interesting to me that Gloria was recording her own music during this period, but also writing for all these other people under a different name, so she has this double identity thing going on. I wonder how that took away from propelling her into success, her artistic recognition being split in two. Like, if she had been recognized as the singer of this song, but also the writer of all these other songs under the same name, would that have put more fire into what she was doing as an artist altogether?
Michael Barnes
You think about these different situations that we bring up around, "Why didn't this become a bigger hit?" And a lot of it connects to that period of time. You don't really get the idolization of singer-songwriters until the late 1960s, and even then, it’s primarily in rock music. And with those rock and pop hits of the period, usually you had someone writing the song, and somebody else performing it. So Carole King would write songs for the Monkees, but the Monkees would be singing in the studio. The songwriters knew their job was to keep pumping out songs. Performers, though, didn’t write many of them.
Novena Carmel
So maybe if Gloria had come up a little bit later, the singer-songwriter thing could have been a part of what she was up to. But the fact that she didn't make it as a performing artist is maybe what kinda pushes her to become a backup singer, a songwriter for others, and eventually a producer.
Michael Barnes
I think that’s all part of it. But the funny thing is, in 1973, she ends up actually releasing a solo album on Motown. And it feels like another big chance for her to shine as an artist in her own right. But then, once again, something else comes along…
Gloria originally met Marc Bolan from T. Rex in 1969 after one of her performances in “Hair,” But they didn’t really connect again until the summer of 1972. By then, she was working as a backing vocalist for Joe Cocker, and Marc was getting more interested in adding soulful elements to his own music. So, he steals Gloria away from Joe…takes her along for his upcoming tour. And she becomes a really integral part of T. Rex, between her singing and her instrumental contributions on piano and Clavinet. And a real musical and romantic partnership starts to blossom between them.
Novena Carmel
And this is right about when she was gonna launch her album with Motown.
Michael Barnes
Right as she’s about to launch this album for Motown. So literally as they’re releasing the first single, she tells them, she’s taking off for the UK, and isn’t going to stick around to promote it. So of course Motown is like, “Why should we even bother?”
Novena Carmel
Which, yeah. I get. It makes sense from a business perspective and they have lots of artists on the roster who aren’t leaving town. But then, “Tainted Love” suddenly springs back to life, out of nowhere. It’s been almost a decade since that single was released. And now it’s found a whole new audience in England, where Gloria happens to be living (with Marc Bolan? To be near Marc Bolan?). And this thing called Northern Soul is really blowing up.
I remember first hearing about the term Northern Soul, and I assumed it was related to where the music was made. Like, Southern soul was made in Memphis and Muscle Shoals. And my guess was Northern Soul referred to music made in places like Michigan, Detroit. But, in fact, Black American music was given the term Northern Soul when it was played by white DJs in northern England.
Michael Barnes
Yeah, I used to think the same thing, and looking back, it’s really hard to predict a thing like Northern Soul. The North of England was not a very happy or a happening place. There were a lot of young people living in these very grim, working-class conditions. And so when the weekend came, they wanted to go out and go off.
Novena Carmel
Literally from the night time ‘til the dawn! So the Northern Soul term really came to represent all these deep cuts by Black American artists that they were playing at these all-nighters. And, of course, over time, certain clubs and certain DJs became really strongly affiliated with the movement.
Michael Barnes
And those DJs, were obsessed with finding the most obscure, the most unloved, the most slept-on tracks. That was a huge part of Northern Soul – the idea that you could be the one to find that treasure and be the only who had it.
Novena Carmel
Right. So, a record like “Tainted Love,” a song that was completely obscure, performed by a singer nobody knew, from that classic mid-’60s period … all that record had to do was show up.
Michael Barnes
And how it showed up almost seems like destiny…As the story goes, an English DJ named Richard Searling came to the US on a record-hunting trip in 1973. He’d just finished digging through a warehouse of discarded and discontinued soul 45s. But as he was leaving, he found this one record on the floor. No sleeve, just a beat-up old record all by itself. Tossed it into the pile, and that record turned out to be “Tainted Love” … and the kids went nuts.
Novena Carmel
So what are we listening to now, Michael?
Michael Barnes
We’re listening to a recording someone made in the crowd at Wigan Casino in 1974, a place that became one of the epicenters of Northern Soul. You hear immediately how much dancers love this song. Just all those claps! You know, in the Soft Cell version, I always thought that that was why people clap, because you can hear the claps at particular times. But in the original version, there's no clapping. So this is something that the dancers added out of the feeling that they got from the song.
Novena Carmel
So you have one experience of the original song feeding another, which then fed the next version … and it just keeps building from there.
Michael Barnes
Yeah. And, of course, the song’s revival immediately inspires other artists to cover it … none of them very successfully. But you can already hear those claps in this 1975 version by The Jezebelles.
Novena Carmel
So, Miss Gloria Jones is in England. And her original recording of “Tainted Love” is blowing up, in the same country she now lives in. And of course, here come the inevitable cover versions. And I’m sure she was not making money on any of this, because she didn’t write it, and she wasn’t getting artist royalties either from an old 1965 record contract. So she figured it might make sense to re-record her own version of “Tainted Love.” (why?)
Michael Barnes
This is from her album “Vixen,” from 1976, which was produced by Marc Bolan, who also plays on the album. But what’s strange is that she doesn’t release “Tainted Love” as a single. She releases four singles for “Vixen” in the U.K. – including a version of T.Rex’s “Get It On” – but not “Tainted Love.”
Novena Carmel
You know what, Michael, I don’t think she needed to release it as a single. She already had a great original version of it, and I think this was just her opportunity to remind folks who sang the original, while also sharing some of the new stuff she was up to.
Michael Barnes
Perhaps, but the album doesn’t make much of an impression at all. And the same was true of the music she was making with Marc in T. Rex at the time. But what is really clear is that the two of them were really enjoying their musical partnership.
Novena Carmel
So now it’s 1977. And it sounds like Marc and Gloria have found their groove. They have a son, Rolan Bolan, who’s almost two.
Michael Barnes
Um-hmm. And it seems like Marc has found a happy middle ground between these new styles and his old sound. And he's being embraced by punk rock, which is now a thing in the UK; The Damned are even opening up for him. He seems very excited about how everything is going. But 1977 is also the year when tragedy strikes.
IAIN RAMAGE: The 6:00 News, this is Iain Ramage. We’ve just heard that controversial rock star Marc Bolan has been killed in a car crash. His Mini, being driven by girlfriend Gloria Jones, has careered off the road into a tree in South London. Gloria is detained in hospital with serious injuries.
Michael Barnes
Gloria and Marc have this car accident less than a mile from their home. Bolan is killed instantly. Gloria is in the hospital with multiple injuries: a broken jaw, and her vocal cords are injured. And, although they'd been in this partnership for a few years, their son Rolan Bolan is two at this point, Marc is still married to somebody else.
Novena Carmel
So, unfortunately when he dies, Gloria inherits nothing, her son inherits nothing, and they're essentially destitute. So they have to go back to Los Angeles. But I’ve also heard that David Bowie came to their rescue. He was a fan and a friend of Marc’s, and the story goes that he helped out Gloria and Rolan a bit during this time. Which was really good of Bowie, and makes me like him even more… But it was still such a horrible tragedy.
Michael Barnes
But Gloria Jones is resilient, and she gets back to work fairly quickly.
In 1978, she releases an album dedicated to Marc’s memory called “Windstorm.” And there are moments where she recalls the strength & power she was known for as a singer. But there are other times when you can really feel the tragedy of it all weighing on her.
Michael Barnes
When “Windstorm” fails to chart, she goes behind the curtain again.
In 1979, she writes a hit for the disco-funk band Gonzales, "Haven't Stopped Dancing," which is a huge hit. She also does some unreleased sessions for Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, just before August Darnell reinvented himself as Kid Creole. And that brings us up to 1981, when Soft Cell covers "Tainted Love."
Novena Carmel
Gloria puts out one more album in 1982, just as Soft Cell is breaking records on the American charts. And this time, she returns to working with Ed Cobb, the songwriter who gave her “Tainted Love” in the first place. The album is called “Reunited,” and although most of it is new, they also include the original 1965 version of “Tainted Love” … just in case.
Michael Barnes
She also reunited in 1984 with the COGIC Singers and released an album of new material. And that’s pretty much where the new music ends. But since then, she and her son Rolan have opened up a school in Sierra Leone, Africa: the Marc Bolan School of Music and Film. In 2015, she also started her own reissue label, the Light of Love Wax Co., putting out a reissue of “Tainted Love” on 45, and also an amazing track that had been previously unreleased, lost to time for years: “Gone With The Wind Is My Love.”
You know, with Gloria’s journey, in some ways there are similarities to the story of Betty Davis, who recorded this incredible music in the 1970s and had this connection to Miles Davis. And people who were “in the know” recognized the influence she had, as well as her own artistry. But it took decades for people to catch up and actually hear how amazing those Betty Davis records were.
Novena Carmel
There is some of that with Gloria Jones, where we only see in hindsight these moments where it could have gone this way or that way for her. But it’s worthwhile to acknowledge the bigger picture of her story: someone who it’s easy to classify as a one-hit wonder who never really even had the hit … but when you dig a little deeper, you see this career that she sustained over a long period of time. Even if she didn’t achieve the kind of success that Soft Cell seemingly did or that we might think people are searching for.
Michael Barnes
Or maybe that even she was searching for. But it’s a career that has so many amazing moments.
Novena Carmel
It is. And there's multiple ways to look at it. You can look at it like, "Oh, it's a shame, people don't know who the original singer of ‘Tainted Love’ is.” But that doesn’t take away from her being a hugely important part of an epic song. And, at the end of the day, someone who had an incredible career.
Michael Barnes
Mm-hmm. And I tell you this: Wherever "Tainted Love" is played, whatever version it is, that thing slays dancefloors.
Novena Carmel
Slays, honey!
Michael Barnes
Just absolutely slays dancefloors.
Novena Carmel
And that's something to be proud of.
Michael Barnes
And so much of that is connected to the truly amazing artist that is Gloria Jones.
Novena Carmel
That sounds like success to me.
Lost Notes is a KCRW Original Production. It’s made by Michael Barnes, Ashlea Brown, Novena Carmel, and Myke Dodge Weiskopf. You can read up on this and other episodes at KCRW.com/lostnotes. Special thanks to Gina Delvac, Jennifer Ferro, Ray Guarna, Nathalie Hill, Anne Litt,
Arnie Seipel, and Anthony Valadez.