Maxine Brown - A Profile

Today's birthday tribute is to a singer much loved on the UK Northern Soul scene in particular, Maxine Brown who is 82 today.

My baptism to her music as a youth was via an Ian Levine compilation for Pye "Disco Demand's Solid Soul Sensations" which featured her 1966 Wand recording "Let Me Give You My Lovin'". Possibly her biggest and most well known song on the scene is "One In A Million" but putting the tribute playlist of 40 of her best recordings together uncovered many well known and some not quite so well known songs buried on albums.

She began singing as a child and as a teenager performed with a couple of gospel groups The Angelairs/The Angeleers, The Royaltones and also The Manhattans (not the Carnival group). Her first solo recording was on a small label Nomar in 1961. She recorded three singles for the label, the first two of which did well on R&B chart reaching #2 and #3 respectively with "All In My Mind" and "Funny".

The success of these singles got her a signing to ABC Paramount where she recorded around eight unsuccessful singles (mainly owing to ABC being boycotted by Payola DJs as ABC wouldn't play ball) and after a year she left moving to Scepter subsidiary Wand. She had several R&B hits with the label, the biggest being with the first release of the Goffin & King song, "Oh No Not My Baby", which had been recorded, but not released, earlier by The Shirelles as Luther Dixon the producer scrapped it as each of the members were singing a verse each and it didn't work (hear for yourself as it was released 30 years later). Maxine was given a demo to rearrange the song and recorded it using The Shirelle's instrumental track. Whilst at Wand she recorded a couple of albums, and singles, with Chuck Jackson.

On many of her songs the backing singers were The Sweet Inspirations which included Cissy Houston. At Wand at the same time were young unknown songwriters Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson who, along with ex Ikette Jo Armstead, wrote several songs she recorded. Ashford & Simpson later moved to Motown taking songs intended for Maxine and Chuck that were then recorded by Motown artists. Most of the material that Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell recorded was originally intended for Maxine Brown & Chuck Jackson but Florence Greenberg at Wand refused to do a deal with them, so imagine "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" recorded by Maxine & Chuck! Also, "Let's Get Stoned' recorded by Ray Charles, who had a hit with it, was lined up for them to record but they did eventually record it in 1973 on Scepter.

Brown left Wand in 1968 joining Columbia for whom she recorded two singles on Epic. Then in 1969 signed with Commonwealth United where she recorded another two singles, both written by Rosemary McCoy, the second of which, "I Can't Get Along Without You", became well know on the UK modern soul scene. A couple more singles appeared on Avco in the early 70s. The first, "Make Love To Me", produced by Van McCoy, which Maxine claims is one of her best records but it wasn't promoted, and her final single in 1972 produced by Tony Camillo.

She released four solo albums in her prime along with another two duet albums with Chuck Jackson.  In fact her first release on the label in 1963 was an album, "The Fabulous Sound Of", which consisted of masters Wand had purchased from ABC which Wand issued to prevent ABC reissuing them if they became hits. Aged 66 in 2004, she released her first album in 35 years "From The Heart". However, Discogs lists no fewer than 25 compilations of her music and 7 of those have been on the UK Kent label. I'm sure I've read somewhere that she is Ady Croasdel's favourite female singer and is one of a very few, if any, who has appeared at Cleethorpes 6Ts soul weekenders (run by Ady) more than once over the years. Her first appearance was in 1997 (video below), then at the 10th anniversary in 2003 and more recently in 2016.

Maxine didn't quite make the big time as sadly she was in the shadows of someone you might know, Dionne Warwick, at Scepter/Wand with only a small handful of Billboard hits (3 in top 30 and two of those were her first two singles in 1961) but from the 40 tracks selected below you can see why she is held in high regard in Northern Soul circles.

The above is just a very short synopsis of her career. If you wish to learn much more then I recommend an article written by Dave Moore posted on Soul Source in 2015.

Some of the detail above was sourced from an interview Maxine held with Mile Fenton in Record Collector, May 2014.

Copyright © 2009-2022 SoulStrutter All Rights Reserved