'I Who Have Nothing', front cover of the Portuguese EP, 1969Linda Jones was born in Newark, New Jersey, on January 14, 1944, and she first sang in public in her hometown at the age of six. She cut her teeth in church, regularly treading the gospel path as part of The Jones Singers, a group comprised of her whole family.Through this background Linda developed and nurtured her most predominant vocal technique: the melisma, the art of spreading a word or syllable over several rapid notes up and down the scale.
The music of our parents. Download, listen, enjoy! Johnnie Taylor,Eddie Floyd,William Bell,Pervis Staples,Carla Thomas,Mavis Staples,Cleotha Staples - Soul-A-Lujah (2:31).
In later years she took to singing spirituals every morning to exercise her voice.Linda's childhood was plagued by a severe history of diabetes, and this condition only worsened during her adulthood. Small wonder her artistry reflected the desperate determination to triumph over pain and loneliness.As her prowess developed, she moved towards the secular field, and soon began to accumulate trinkets and trophies from winning a host of talent shows and amateur nights. A Billboard advert for the 'Hypnotized' single, 1967Over two sessions in New York City, on June 21 and August 4, 1967, Linda cut a total of nine songs. Kerr masterminded the sessions while famed keyboardist provided arrangements. Players like guitarist and drummer added their musical magic and the Poindexter Brothers did all the background vocals.' What Have I Done (To Make You Mad)' was issued in October '67, with ' Make Me Surrender' as its flip, and became another top 10 R&B hit but only struggled to #61 on the Pop listings. A third single, ' Give My Love a Try' backed with a version of The Soul Sisters' ' I Can't Stand It' was released in January 1968 and enjoyed moderate sales, struggling to #34 R&B and a dismal #93 on Pop.
On the strenght of its title track, the ' Hypnotized' album actually made it to the R&B Top 30.Culled from a session recorded earlier during that year, Sammy Turner's ' My Heart Needs a Break' was issued as a single sometimes during Spring '68 backed with ' The Things I've Been Through'. It peaked at #50 in the R&B charts, becoming Linda's final charted entry during her two-year tenure with Loma.On the same session Linda also recorded ' What Can I Do (Without You)', another Turner co-penned tune arranged by Robert Banks (also known for his work at the time with Thelma Jones), and a version of The Beatles' ' Yesterday', which were released as a single in 1968.Linda's last single for Loma consisted of two tracks recorded in August 1968 at Broadway Studios in Manhattan. Side A surprisingly offered Poindexter Brothers' ' It Won't Take Much (To Bring Me Back)' while a stunning version of ' I Who Have Nothing' - previously recorded by the likes of Ben E. King, Dee Dee Warwick and Shirley Bassey - was relegated to the flip side.Unfortunately Loma folded early in 1969.
During the same year Warner Brothers released a single with the two songs Linda recorded in March at her last session for the label: ' I Just Can't Live My Life (Without You Babe)', written by George Kerr, backed with ' My Heart (Will Understand)' by Eddie Jones.During the same year, a different version of ' Fugitive From Luv', another song recorded for Loma back in August 1967, was released by Cotique as a split-single which offered Bessie Banks' ' Go Now' on the other side. Linda Jones, promotional picture, circa 1967In mid 1969 George Kerr signed Linda to Neptune, a label owned by Philadelphia's Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff which was the forerunner to the Philadelphia International RecordsĀ hit factory. The first Neptune single, ' I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow / That's When I'll Stop Loving You' revealed a more aggressive, even hysterical-sounding vocal.Never a singer noted for restraint, Linda's style became increasingly volatile and fraught with desperation and urgency as her career progressed.
Making fewer concessions to the demands of the Top 40 programming, Linda's attack was wildly exuberant, her desperation bearly overwhelming, her phrasing with melismas, shrieks and gasps. Her second and last Neptune release, ' Ooh Baby You Move Me / Can You Blame Me?'
, continued the progression.While ' Hypnotized' found Linda taking a relatively subtle approach to her music, her subsequent sides captured her at full strength, and though soul purists (especially Northern Soul collectors in the U.K.) treasured her records, she never had another major hit.In 1971, by the time she had changed her base from New York to New Jersey to sign with All Platinum's Turbo subsidiary, Linda was in a bad way. Her medical condition was deteriorating as her illness began gaining the upper hand.Aware of her problems, All Platinum's owners Joe and Sylvia Robinson put her on the staff payroll and gave her liberal studio freedom, thus helping to ensure her a reasonable, regular diet to combat the illness. Linda took to going to the studio almost every other day as music was a mean of forgetting the pain she was often in.Despite the dismal sound reproduction of the three Turbo album releases (' A Portrait of Linda Jones', issued early in 1972, and ' Your Precious Love' and ' Let It Be Me', both released the same year after her untimely passing), Linda's frantic overwrought vocals sharply reflected her torment.As Russell Gersten wrote in Rolling Stone, ' Singing became a life and death matter for Linda at her last few recording sessions. Whatever little poise and restraint she at one time had, disappeared.' Gersten also wrote that listening the singer's final sides made him imagine ' someone down on her knees pounding the floor, suddendly jumping up to screech something, struggling to make sense of a desperately unhappy life.' Linda Jones as pictured on the cover of 'Your Precious Love', circa early '70sEarly in 1972, Turbo's single ' Your Precious Love' brought Linda back to both the R&B and Pop charts, Many consider this to be the ultimate rendering of the old hit by Jerry Butler and The Impressions.British critic Ian Hoare regards it as ' the quintessential Deep Soul record', even beating out Lorraine Ellison's masterful ' Stay With Me'. He accurately describes it as a ' spine-chilling piece of histrionic desolation'.
After the song's spoken introduction, which has an intense sermon-like quality, Linda explodes into a one-woman vocal hurricane, the like of which is not to be heard elsewhere.The single entered the charts in February 1972 and began climbing, peaking at just #74 on the Hot 100 and a more respectable #15 in the R&B list. Linda's diary was full of work and she was actively promoting the single just weeks before she died.After a matinee performance at the Apollo Theatre in New York in March, Linda went to her mother's house in Newark to eat dinner and take a nap before playing her evening show, but when her mother tried to wake her, she discovered Linda had slipped into a diabetic coma. She was rushed to the hospital but she didn't regained consciousness and died on March 14.Because of her remarkable ability to transmute her own pain and suffering into Soul singing of a most astonishing and uncompromising quality, it could be argued that Linda Jones was to Soul what Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Judy Garland were to other forms of music. ' I Who Have Nothing' contains the following tracks:01. I Who Have Nothing (3:03)02. It Won't Take Much (To Bring Me Back) (2:18)03. What Can I Do (Without You) (2:58)04.
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Yesterday (2:28)All tracks were remastered in May 2015 and are available in FLAC lossless formatĀ or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files. Both formats offer complete printable PDF artwork.Please have a look at the comments for the download links.The ' I Who Have Nothing' EP was released in Portugal by Warner Bros. Sometimes in 1969. It combines four tracks that were released the previous year on by Loma; here's some details about them:' is a song based on ' Uno dei tanti' ( One of Many), with music by Carlo Donida and lyrics by Giulio 'Mogol' Rapetti, released by in 1961; the English lyrics for the song were written by, who also produced the 1963 version using the backing track from Joe Sentieri's record. The song was later recorded by the likes of, and.! Strangely enough the label gives a writing credit to a certain James Bryant, uhm.' It Won't Take Much (To Bring Me Back)' is one of the songs penned for Linda by the Poindexter Brothers, Richard and Robert, along with Charles Harper, while ' What Can I Do (Without You)' was written by, a singer who was popular at the end of the '50s.
Both these tunes were A-sides when released as singles in 1968.The EP ends with an unavoidable cover of The Beatles' ', which - according to the Guinness World Records - is the most recorded song in the world. Welcome to Stereo Candies!As an avid music lover I've been purchasing and enjoying records for the most part of my life. In the recent years I've quite appreciated many music blogs, they've been a great source of information about a lot of artists that for some reason I had never got into, or music that I simply didn't know existed.I thought that it was time to give my own contribution, so here I am. I decided to focus mostly on music that has not been re-released in CD format and on artists/labels that are not widely represented on the web, or whose releases are sold-out and quite hard to find nowadays, without sticking to any particular music style.All recordings presented here have been carefully transferred, cleaned and remastered with digital techniques for better enjoyment. When possible, I also try to add useful information, pictures, videos and so on.Download links are available in the comments section of each post.If you download anything from this blog, please consider leaving a comment, your feedback is important.Please let me know about any broken link and deleted or unavailable files: I'll do my best to quickly reupload them, thank you!The Stereo Candies video channel is available at.