Mick Hartley

Another goodie from the Sixties Texas show The !!!! Beat, last featured here. This time it's Johnny Taylor:

Those backing dancers look like they had maybe, ooh two minutes to rehearse. Still, Johnny's in fine voice.

This is from 1966, after he'd left gospel group The Soul Stirrers (where he replaced Sam Cooke), but a couple of years before his big hit "Who's Making Love"….which kind of established him as a singer for the adult black market, rather than one aiming for the crossover appeal of comtemporaries like Otis Redding. Certainly it's hard to imagine Otis (had he still been alive) attempting something with the witty cynicism of a song like the 1973 "It's Cheaper to Keep Her".