Monday 5 July 2021

Tina Britt born 5 July 1939


Tina Britt (born Marion Brittingham; July 5, 1938) is an American R&B singer who had two hits on the Billboard R&B chart in the 1960s. She released one album Blue All The Way and six 45s between 1965 and 1970. 

Tina Britt was born in Smyrna, Delaware, and raised in Florida and Philadelphia. She had a peripatetic life travelling with her father, and started singing as a teenager at the First Missionary Baptist Church in Sanford, Florida. Whilst working in New York in 1965 she was introduced to Henry 'Juggy' Murray who offered her the chance to record secular rhythm and blues for the Eastern record label, a subsidiary of the Sue label. Her first single, a version of "The Real Thing" written by Nickolas Ashford, Valerie Simpson, and Jo Armstead, but originally credited to their publisher Ed Silvers, reached #20 on the R&B chart. 


                             

The session that produced "The Real Thing" also gave up the follow-up single "You're Absolutely Right", another Ashford-Simpson-Armstead song and "Look", a side penned by Sidney Barnes and J.J.Jackson. Competition came from a version by the Apollas on the Loma label and sales were split, resulting in a chart miss for both. 

It would be three years before her next releases for the Veep label, a subsidiary of United Artists Records, in 1968. They released two singles, "Who Was That", which reached #39 on the R&B chart, and a revival of Don Covay's "Sookie, Sookie". Both records were produced by Juggy Murray. 

Veep Records ceased in 1969 resulting in Britt being transferred to Minit Records, a subsidiary of the newly acquired Liberty Records. They released her only album, the Murray produced Blue All The Way. However, her only single for Minit, a cover of Otis Redding's Hawg For You, failed to chart. Aside from occasional session work as a background vocalist, notably for Wilbert Harrison's album Let's Work Together, her recording career had ended by 1970, and Britt left the recording industry soon afterwards. Her later life centred around raising her children. 

In autumn 2009, when interviewed by In The Basement magazine, she was living in Philadelphia. In 2012, she released a new download single, "Play It Back" after which she seems to have retired again.

Her singles were compiled, together with other previously unreleased tracks, on the 2006 CD Blue All the Way ...plus.  (Edited from Wikipedia)

4 comments:

boppinbob said...

For “Tina Britt – Blue All The Way …plus (Stateside 2006)” go here:

https://krakenfiles.com/view/7juDGpy3zI/file.html

1 Who Was That 2:53
2 God Bless The Child 4:07
3 When We Get On Cloud 9 2:20
4 Johnny I Love You 2:55
5 Hawg For You 3:24
6 My Lover's Prayer 2:57
7 Born On A Bayou 4:13
8 I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know 5:33
9 Sookie Sookie 2:45
10 Bright Lights Big Cities 2:33
11 Key To The Highway 2:40
12 You Ain't Nothing But In The Way 3:53
Bonus Tracks
13 The Real Thing 4:32
14 Teardrops Fell (Every Step Of The Way) 3:23
15 Look 3:37
16 You're Absolutely Right 5:42
17 I Found A New Love 2:58
18 It's My Thing 4:17
19 He Put The Hurt On Me 3:20
20 Doctor Feel Good 4:47

First time on CD, Blue All The Way…Plus is her 1969 album for Minit records, which is bolstered here by 8 bonus tracks, three of them previously unreleased: ‘It's My Thing’, an answer to the Isley Bros., ‘He Put the Hurt on Me’, the finest of her three Otis Redding covers and a cool version of ‘Doctor Feel Good’. Tina Britt was famous for recording tracks by other great writers and musicians including 'God Bless The Child' (by Billie Holliday), 'Jonny I Love You' (by Booker T), 'My Lovers Prayer' (by Otis Redding) and 'Sookie Sookie (by Steve Cropper and Don Covay). The album might have been too much of a mixture to be a commercial success, but the world has been a poorer place without any further Tina Britt recordings.

D said...

BB, you always amaze with what you post. Historical and needed. You keep music's history alive.
Thanks.

David said...

Thank you for continuing keeping the music alive.

puw said...

Many thanks for this Bob