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Maria "Funkyflyy" Granditsky: After "Yes, I'm Ready", you had four more major R&B hits on the Arctic label; "Sad, Sad Girl" ('65), "I Need Love" ('66) and "Oh, How It Hurts" ('68). As you just said, you then signed with National General where you did your first movie soundtrack "The Last Cowboy". When National General went out of business, you ended up on Buddah. That's where your career really took off. Your first top ten hit single on Buddah was "Give Me Your Love" in 1972, a song which was written and produced by Curtis Mayfield. That one was lifted from your first Buddah album of the same name. It also contained an updated version of "Yes, I'm Ready" and another hit called "Bed and Board". Can you tell me more about your first Buddah LP and about Buddah as a label?
OK, so you didn't have too much clothes on, but you sure had lot of hair on the photo of that album, Barbara (laughs). -(Laughs) That was a wig! I had lovely hair, but it took so much time to do it that they decided to put a big wig on. So, there I was, with all this big hair! During this time, the afro hairstyle was in among black people, so that's what they put on me. If you look at the "Love's The Thing" album, you should also see another afro look. From what I have heard, Buddah's president Neil Bogart was a marketing genius. -I would say Neil Bogart was one of the greatest marketing geniuses, greatest CEOs, that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. He had a great ear for picking talent, developing it and coming up with ideas. It was his idea for me to do a video. In those days, we probably didn't call it videos, we probably said "promotional film". We did a film for my song "Give Me Your Love" in 1972 and it was sent to Spain, but at that time, I didn't know about it. What happened was, my manager and I were in New York and Neil decided that we'd be filmed going into a club, acting like I was getting ready to do a performance, but I really wasn't. It was just acting. If I'm not mistaken, the film was shot at a club that was hot at that time called the Bitter End. Anyway, some friends of mine in Philadelphia called me after they got back from a vacation and said "Barbara Barbara! You were on TV in Spain". I said "what are you talking about, I've never been to Spain!" That's when I found out that Neil had sent the film to Spain and they had showed it on TV! I didn't always find out what Neil had done first-hand, sometimes I'd find out through people on the street. So after these friends of mine called I said to myself "There's Neil Bogart again" (laughs). (Laughs) Why did you you decide to change the lyrics to "Yes, I'm Ready" on the "Give Me Your Love" album? -I changed it because I had become older and I was singing to a more adult audience. I might have been twenty-three or twenty-four when we re-recorded it, so I thought it was a little funny standing in front of a mature audience, saying "I don't even know how to love you". I mean, the crowd would think "what's wrong with her?" (laughs). I decided to change the lyrics just a little bit, to fit the audience and we did very well with that particular version. In fact, now it is the most requested of all my songs in the south. When I performed at the Omni venue in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996, the first song they wanted me to sing was "Yes, I'm Ready". Not the original one, but the second one from 1973. How many times have you re-recorded "Yes, I'm Ready"? -I've recorded that many, many times because I do have the ownership in terms of the writers. I don't own the publishing on it although my publisher does pay me every time it is recorded, or every time he leases it out on a compilation. I re-recorded "Yes, I'm Ready" in 1980 and that was on the album I did on WMOT. I also did it sometime in the early seventies for a company in Memphis, Tennessee, but I can't recall the name of it. But people are always coming around, asking if I'd like to re-record it. I really wanna give my own song the justice that it's due because it's such a great song. The next time I record it, I would like to do it like the original. I can sing it exactly like I sang it thirty years ago. The unfortunate thing is that most of the musicians that played on it are dead. We would have to try to re-create that sound which may be a little hard to do. I am the same way about performances. I know there's a lot of new technology out there, but when I go out I always ask for a real guitarist, a real bassist, a real drummer, and normally I get it. I need that in order to be able to create my sound. I don't wanna sound like something mechanical. But the kids today wouldn't understand that, I think. They wouldn't know how to work with real musicians, other than Boys II Men or something and that's because of what Babyface is doing. But Babyface has to have someone to listen to and he listens to the sixties' music. That's how he writes, he writes the way we used to write. You know, Notorious B.I.G. sampled my "Yes, I'm Ready" before he died. The name of his CD was "Ready To Die" and it came out about two-three years ago. Sean "Puffy" Combs put my voice on Notorious B.I.G.'s first CD. I was happy about one aspect of it, but on the other I was unhappy about the untimely way that he died. I wonder why Puffy picked my song. His song was called "Ready To Die" and then I'm singing in the chorus "yes, I'm ready, yes, I'm ready, yes, I'm ready"... I thought to myself "of all the songs in the world, couldn't he have found something else?" Of course I was financially happy about it and flattered that they thought enough of my song to use it. I went out and bought the CD and was quite impressed that these rappers would go back and take my song. They probably don't even know who I am. But they know of that song and they used it. One of the best, classiest album covers I've ever seen is your "Lady Love" album, which also came out on Buddah in 1973. That is one neat photo of you! -That would be the one where I have a long, black dress on. I remember that. It was a very good picture session. I noticed that both "Give Me Your Love" and the "Lady Love" cover photos were taken by a man named Joel Brodsky. Is that the same photographer who during the same period shot those daring photos of a bald woman in various S&M poses for the Ohio Players' Westbound covers ("Pain", "Pleasure", "Ecstasy")?
"Transition" which came out in 1974 is lyrically quite different from all your other albums, as it deals with more with many serious topics; social and political issues. I don't know how to say this without being rude to you, but writing social and political message songs was quite "in" at the time. Was this an album your really wanted to do or did you do it because it fit right in with what was going on in music at that time? I hope I'm not offending you now. -Oh, no, no! Not at all. That is a very good question and no one has ever asked me that before. Actually, I appreciate you asking me that question, because it shows that you are interested in knowing who I am as a person, how I think and feel about things, not just what I've done. I recorded "Transition" because I really wanted to touch upon those things. I've never followed trends, that's why I didn't jump on the Disco bandwagon. I never wanted to be trendy. I consider myself a stylist, so I always wanted to be an individual. When I did "Transition", I was only expressing how I felt at that time. All the songs were what I would call "message songs", each individual song had a message. If I pick one, take "Trigger Happy People", it is about people that are violent. That kill people for no reason. In the song you will hear me say that they killed President Kennedy, they killed Robert Kennedy, they killed Dr. King... Trigger happy people are people that gun down people. I think it could be a hit today because sadly, there's still so much violence going on in the world. I could only foresee what was happening at that time and so I wrote about the times, but I also wrote what was in my heart. I can only write from my heart. The one problem that I have is, say if you write the music for me, then I can't put the lyric to it. Curtis Mayfield once asked me to write the lyric to a track. I said "Curtis, I have to do it all together". He said "I understand, Barbara. You're one of those writers". I'm sort of like Smokey Robinson who I greatly admire, or like Stevie Wonder. It seems that they write the music and the lyric all together and that's the only way I can do it too. I'm not saying that maybe in the future it might happen, but for the last thirty years, I've been writing the music and the lyric together (laughs). And if a song doesn't feel good to me, I can't even sing it. "Transition" didn't give you any hits, but you bounced back in 1974 with "From His Woman To You", your answer to Stax songstress Shirley Brown's "Woman To Woman". How did that come about?
Was it different recording in Memphis, as opposed to Sigma Sound in Philadelphia, where "Transition" and the majority of your other Buddah albums were cut? -Oh no. It was fantastic! They had already done the track. Bettye Crutcher was marvelous, I don't even know how she got my key. I don't remember talking to her. Sometimes producers will call me up and say "sing over the phone to us". This is how we did it in the old days. Norman Harris, when we did the "Transition" album, I remember calling him up in the middle of the night, asking him to come over to my apartment. Norman said "God, it's midnight, what are you doing?". I said "I just wrote a couple of songs". Norman arranged "Miracle Man" and "Half Brother, Half Sister" on the "Transition album, which I'm going to explain what that means. Somebody wrote something incorrect about that song in the liner notes to one of my compilation CD's.
-That is untrue. I'm so glad I am having this interview with you because I've always wanted to clear that up and now you've given me the opportunity to do so. It's not true at all, Maria. I would never write anything like that! There are certain things I just would not write because I don't feel that way or think that way. The song is exactly what the title says. It's about children that have the same father, but different mothers. Or the other way around, same mother, but different fathers. In the United States, we call that a half brother or a half sister. That's exactly what I wrote about and I don't understand how someone can misinterpret it. My lyrics has nothing to do with incest. I wish I knew where the person who wrote that got it from. I would like to contact that source and ask them for a retraction. When I read that on the CD, I was awfully upset and my manager said "Barbara, look what they've written! They've taken this great song and put the wrong connotation to it." Speaking of misunderstandings; did people interviewing you assume that you had been in the situation described in "Another Man" for real, that you had actually been with a man who turned out to be gay? -Oh yes, I had to explain that it was just a song, that I didn't even come up with idea, all the time. Some of the things I have written about, I did live. Some of the things I wrote, other people were living, but could not put it into words. I grew up with people that did certain things; maybe they were in love triangles, so I said "gee, I'll write about this". And the world itself, people in general, I wrote for them. I didn't only write from my own life. So for me to write about incest would be absurd. I don't even think that way. I've tried, but I've never been able to find out who wrote that. It's really trash, that's what it is and it gives people a different view of me and I don't want people to have that. I'm not an angel, but I'm not someone that thinks about incest either. So now I'm explaining it to you, that "Half Sister, Half Brother", which my dear friend Norman Harris arranged and which is a song I love, is for anyone that might have been in that situation; half siblings, children that have a different mother or father. That's all it means. Nothing else. Glad we cleared that up! In an interview with the British magazine Blues and Soul in 1970 you said that you "tried to write in a simple manner so that everyone would understand" and that you "wrote better songs when you were blue". -Yes! That is absolutely true. It is maybe an odd thing for someone to say, but.. You know the movie "The Tale of Two Cities"? In that movie they say "It was the best of times and it was the worst of times". In my worst of times, I write the best stuff and in my best of times I can't seem to come up with anything (laughs). I don't know if it makes sense, but I know that even as a youngster, I stayed pretty much to myself. I was a loner, although I did have two sisters, but they were much younger than myself. When I was feeling kinda melancholic I wrote the greatest stuff. I mean, you don't write "Oh, How It Hurts" or "Sad, Sad Girl" when you're happy (laughs). But I was happy when I wrote "Yes, I'm Ready" and I was ecstatic when I wrote the "Transition" album. I wrote the entire album in one night!
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© Maria Granditsky
May 1998. |
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Barbara Mason: -Sure. The CEO of Buddah, Neil Bogart was so good to
me. If I think back over all of my years, on all the different labels I've been with, I
would have to say Buddah Records, along with my first label Arctic, were the best. Buddah
was a much larger, independent and international label so they were of course able to do
much more for me than Arctic. Neil Bogart certainly did his best for me, he really
enhanced my career. He was one of the founders of the label and after he left Buddah, he
would go on to discover Donna Summer and form Casablanca Records. Neil Bogart had a
great influence on me. It was his decision for me to record Curtis Mayfield's "Give
Me Your Love", after Curtis Mayfield had done it in the "Superfly" movie.
He also decided that a poster, a billboard of me, would be put up on Sunset Boulevard in
Los Angeles, so that when you came down the street, you would see this huge billboard of
me with this shirt on. I was wearing a mans' shirt, in fact it was my manager, Jimmy
Bishop's shirt. We had run out of ideas of what I should I should wear and Jimmy was
standing there so I asked if I could borrow his shirt. It was kinda like a pin-up thing
and then we put an actual size easel back picture inside the album. We were hoping
that it would not cause much of a ruckus, but what happened was that people would
literally take the picture out and look upside down to see if I was naked
underneath that shirt! I did have something underneath, but you just couldn't see it. It
was incredible (laughs), but we sold an awful lot of albums. That was my biggest album to
date and to me it is one of the highlights of my career. Buddah treated me absolutely
marvelous. 
-Yes,
yes, yes! That's the same guy! I remember those Ohio Players album covers. In fact I met
the model and spoke with her, after she got her hair back (laughs). She gave me some good
tips on dieting, on how to present myself in terms of performing, things like that. At
that time, I did not know she was the girl on the covers, though, and I didn't know too
much about Joel as a photographer either. We had a gentleman by the name of Milt Sincoff
at Buddah and he was the guy that was in charge of setting up all the album covers. If you
look at the album that came after "Lady Love", called "Transition",
that particular cover was strange and very different from the previous ones. You'll see a
picture of the devil on there, soldiers with guns.. We wanted to connect each picture with
the songs, so that when you would listen to the album they would not only hear me singing,
but be able to look at the cover and see, kind of, references to the songs. Milt Sincoff
was a great guy for coming up with ideas and he's the one that recommended Joel to
photograph me.
-The writer, Bettye Crutcher,
called my manager and asked if I could fly to Memphis to do the answer song to Shirley
Brown. He said "sure". At the same time, I had "Transition" out and it
wasn't doing well because people didn't want to hear me sing message songs. I was already
in Atlanta, promoting "Transition", so it wasn't too far to fly to Memphis and
Stax, which I did. We recorded "From His Woman To You" in about two takes
and I had another big hit! That's the way I like to record, I'm used to doing that, don't
wanna be in the studio all day long. We used go in and do a whole album in two
days and record it live, with all the musicians right there playing. I've never taken
a million years to record.
I have the CD
you're talking about, it's called "The Very Best of Barbara Mason" and it's on
the British Sequel label. In the liner notes, author John Ridley, writes: "'Half
Brother, Half Sister' marked a further move towards the adult market as she (Barbara)
joined the 'cheating' group of lady singers headed by Millie Jackson. Their obsession with
the geometrical shape of the triangle was given a new twist with Barbara's delicate hints
of incest. Some of the sting in the lyrics was removed by her wistful tones -could someone
who sounds like a little girl lost really be singing these words?"
