You know which early pop music artist I’m a secret fan of?  Jackie Wilson.

Other R&B artists came before him, but Jackie was truly the first dynamic “soul man” we ever had.  He was “Mr. Excitement.”  He was one of the most impassioned R&B legends who ever lived.  He was one of the all-time great live performers.  And he had the tunes to back his image up.  “Reet Petite,” “That’s Why (I Love You So),” and “Lonely Teardrops” are among the best 50’s songs to discover when going back to that decade.

Even with the revelations since his peak that he was, in true showbiz fashion, a jerk (he had countless affairs, had several children out of wedlock, once jumped out of a building to avoid arrest, and abused drugs), I still think Jackie got a raw deal.  He never had a number one hit, many of his classic songs (like “We Have Love” and the aforementioned “That’s Why (I Love You So)” are unfairly ignored, two of his numerous children died before they reached the age of 25, and mismanagement of his finances led to his bankruptcy, leaving him $300,000 in debt to the IRS at the time of his death.  And that doesn’t involve how he died.

Wilson has one of the most devastating endings of any pop star ever: On September 29, 1975, Wilson was performing at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, NJ (just outside Philadelphia) when he suddenly collapsed during a performance of “Lonely Teardrops” as part of Dick Clark’s Good Ol’ Rock and Roll Revue.  As a result of the massive heart attack he suffered, Wilson became comatose and remained in a semi-comatose state for the final eight years of his life before his death in 1984.

So with all that said, I have to ask everyone involved with this next entry: at a time when Wilson was comatose, what was the point of this cover?

“(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher” – Rita Coolidge

#2 peak (September 10, 1977)
#8 year-end, 27 weeks on chart (26 in 1977)

Making a cover of a previous song is always a risky idea.  Making a cover of one of the greatest pop singers of all time’s magnum opus makes that task infinitely tougher.  And Rita Coolidge and company didn’t cut it with this entry.

Rita Coolidge was a singer and pianist from Tennessee who had an interesting career in the music industry.  Oddly enough, although she does have two hits, her most notable footnote in music history involves the piano outro to “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos.  Although drummer Jim Gordon was credited as the writer of this section, Coolidge was his girlfriend at the time, and several allege she had written the piece.  She subsequently married Kris Kristofferson, which means I get to use my bad Eminem lyric of the day.

At the age of 32, Rita finally achieved her breakthrough with her album Anytime, Anywhere, which includes both her hits.  Her second hit, “We’re All Alone,” is fine, I guess.  But her first and biggest hit had no reason to exist.

The first reason is obvious:  It’s a cover of “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” by Jackie Wilson.  “Higher And Higher” was one of those songs I was forced to listen to countless times as a kid, and largely just listened to without an opinion.  Then I relistened to it and realized, “Oh, yeah.  This is amazing.”  It’s one of those songs where every single element is perfect, and it probably couldn’t have been improved upon.  Jackie Wilson, as he almost always did, knocks it out of the park with his vocal performance, with his falsetto “heeee-hooooo!” vocals in the chorus and his impassioned declarations of love over sadness.  The Funk Brothers’s instrumentation is powerful and commanding, with its clear and succinctly played guitars and powerful Chicago soul horns. So I can’t think of a better way to update this song… than to slow down the tempo, turn down the passion, and turn it into a mishmosh of genres.

To start off, we have a bad omen right at the beginning.  The song title is wrong.  It’s called “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher,” not “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher.”  The least you could do was make the song title correct, but they didn’t do that.  Furthermore, for a love song, why are you putting the song in the past tense, rather than the present tense?  Does this mean you two broke up or something?

To be fair to Rita, her vocal performance isn’t bad.  She hits her notes, and her voice has a sweet quality to it.  But there is a difference between a good singer and a great singer.  Jackie could dang holler.  Losing that quality sucks out the power of the original, and leaves me thinking that Rita tried to bite off more than she could chew.  Some people just can’t do impassioned R&B songs.  You are who you are.

But the biggest problem with the song isn’t Rita herself.  Oh no.  That goes to David Enderle’s production unit, which just turns this cover of a great soul song into a mess.  The first and most obvious problem is the tempo.  Just listen to how sluggish this beat is.  The original movesmoved by at a great, fast pace, while the cover just drags along at an elephantine pace, as if it’s wearing boots covered completely in mud.

Then with the instrumentation.  Most people who criticize this song go after the song as yet another example of 70’s soft rock mush.  I don’t see it that way.  While there are soft rock qualities for sure, my biggest problem with the music, and the song as a whole, is that I don’t know what on Earth they were going for when they recorded this song.  Rita Collidge’s vocals are soft rock incarnate, yet there’s a mild funk groove from the bassline, a disco guitar pattern, a drum pattern that may or may not be a variation of a disco beat, a female choir providing backing vocals, and an organ for some reason… what is all of this saying?  What was the point of these non-congruent elements?  Who was this song made to appeal to?  The funk and disco elements would have turned off much of the older and more sedate audience this was intended to appeal to, the song is too slow to dance to (I mean, could you imagine Studio 54 or Club 747 blaring this in between KC & The Sunshine Band and Donna Summer?), and the organ was meant to appeal to… I don’t know, churchgoers and baseball fans?  I don’t get it.  And then the obvious problem remains: that this is a cover of that Jackie Wilson song, with nothing left but the lyrics and the chord progression, being played in another key.

Oh right, and this conversation was had in the studio:

Guy #1:  “Hey!  How are we ending this cover song?”

Producer:  “Key change.  I gotta get home.  The Waltons is on and I can’t miss it.”

Yep.  This is yet another 1977 song with a key change before the finale.  Excuse me, I got that wrong.  There are TWO key changes.

The key changes are the final nail in the coffin for this cover, as they highlight yet another problem with why this cover should not have happened.  In the original, there was already enough drama involved, and Jackie and the production team knew that.  Jackie’s impassioned vocal performance and the horn blasts were climax enough.  With the key changes, unnecessary drama is added to conclude a song to hide the fact that there was nothing dramatic about it.

This was another song that as soon as I decided I was doing 1977 as my next oldies year, I knew this song was going to be on the list.  This was a song that failed to respect the legacy of Jackie Wilson and his accomplishments as a singer in its execution, and this song became one of the biggest hits of the year anyway.  In fact, it was a bigger chart success than the original, with the cover reaching #2 (Thank you, The Emotions, for keeping this song off the top slot), besting the original’s #6 peak.  Thankfully, the Jackie Wilson version has become by far the biggest version in hindsight, with a scorching 220 million-3 million lead in Spotify plays as of 2021.  But that unfortunately doesn’t take away the fact that Rita Coolidge’s cover, regardless of intention, was an insult to the soul legend and completely missed the appeal of why that version was so powerful.  Moving on.

UP NEXT: A rock star has a dramatic fall from grace at #5.

SOURCES

“Jackie Wilson.” History Of Rock 2022. Web. 20 June 2022 http://history-of-rock.com/jackie_wilson.htm.

Abrams, Al. “Incredible Story of Jackie Wilson’s Lost Son.” Michigan Rock And Roll Legends 2022. Web. 20 June 2022 https://michiganrockandrolllegends.com/dr-js-blog/226-best-cds-of-2013-two-views.

“Jackie Wilson Posts $3,000 Bond In Default Case.” Jet 19 November 1964. Web. 20 June 2022 https://books.google.com/books?id=1MADAAAAMBAJ&q=jackie+wilson+jet+1959&pg=PA58#v=snippet&q=jackie%20wilson%20jet%201959&f=false.

“Murder And Grief: Jackie Wilson’s 3 Children Died YOUNG, What Went Wrong?” Old School Music 23 November 2015. Web. 20 June 2022 https://www.iloveoldschoolmusic.com/murder-grief-jackie-wilsons-3-children-died-young-what-went-wrong/2/.

Brown, Bob. “Jackie Wilson’s Lonely Teardrops.” 20/20 1988. Posted to YouTube by Al Kasha, 1 March 2012. Web. 20 June 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC6jQhH0YlQ&list=FL7sgr1KkJVNE_dIzfCRuskQ&index=4.

“Layla’s 40th: The Where’s Eric! Interview With Bobby Whitlock.” Where’s Eric! 26 April 2011. Web. 20 June 2022 http://www.whereseric.com/eric-clapton-news/303-layla’s-40th-where’s-eric-interview-bobby-whitlock.

IMAGE SOURCES

Image of Jackie Wilson from uDiscover Music

Single cover from Discogs

The terrible Eminem lyric about Kris Kristofferson image is from iFunny

“(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher” single cover from Powerpop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Image of Rita Coolidge from Musicoholics