Shirley Brown's 1974 classic deep soul song "Woman To Woman" (#1 R&B #22 Hot 100) was probably my baptism into the world of
deep soul. The song spawned a series of 'answer' songs over several
years. Barbara Mason had a hit with "From His Woman To You" (#3 R&B #28 Hot 100) later the same year.
In 1977 Shirley responded with "You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man"
and Mason followed with " I Am Your Woman, She Is Your Wife" in 1978.
I'm pretty sure there were others, that don't immediately spring to mind.
I found a pretty grainy video of Shirley Brown performing the song on Soul
Train, presumably, in 1974 and another of Barbara Mason's first answer song
from 1975.
Apparently "Woman To Woman" was initially offered to Inez Foxx (who was signed to Stax's Volt
subsidiary) who turned it down because she didn't want to do the spoken
intro rap.
It has, surprisingly, been covered very few times, by country singer
Barbara Mandrell in 1977, another country version by Joanna Field 1982, Jewell in 1994 featured in the soundtrack for "Murder Was The Case"
movie (video below) and a pretty good version by Jaguar Wright in 2005 (as Woman 2 Woman).
I've updated the original post with a ten minutes long live version
by Shirley Brown in 1998 with Denise LaSalle in a show billed as 'Divas Of The Delta', the full show is here. ("Woman To Woman" starts around 40 minutes in).
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3 comments:
A great old school musical soap opera! :D
For those interested in what happens after Shirley and Barbara speak to each other a couple of times, it's fun to hear the subsequent conversation:
"She's Got Papers on Me" - Richard "Dimples" Fields (the man they're fighting over)
"She Got Papers, but I Got the Man" - Barbara Mason (the spoken word version is the best)
What makes the musical tale so fun is the final conclusion:
"Another Man" by Barbara Mason
For those who haven't heard the "end of the story", listen and enjoy.
Thanks for you comment and observation ... actually the Dimples Field and Barbara
Mason tracks were posted here not long after this post:
https://soulstrutter.blogspot.com/2021/11/richard-dimples-fields-1981-shes-got.html
Actually, Shirley Brown had the last laugh (so to speak). The real end of it came in 1984 when Brown released the song "I Don't Play That". Brown imitates Mason's line in girlish voice "another man is beating my time", then proceeds to state "if a woman is 100% on her woman job, I ain't no way a man could ever beat her for her time". Now does Shirley Brown and Barbara Mason actually have beef I doubt it. It's a friendly musical rivalry.
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