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"I've Been Lonely For So Long"
Keisa Brown
Composed by Peter Knight and Jerry Weaver
Gospel and R&B are the yin and yang of the Deep South. Many radio stations alternate the two genres to accommodate their two biggest audiences: those interested in the service of God, and those interested in having a "hell" of a good time. Many times the audiences overlap.
And yet, if the sins of plagiarism perpetrated by Gospel music upon the "Devil's music" were ever tallied, Gospel music would be seen as a sinner for the ages. This can be easily ascertained by driving by day through the Deep South and listening to Gospel music's many "clones" of R&B classics. (Although in an earlier era--Sam Cooke's day--R&B was the prime raider of Gospel music and technique.)
Luckily, the two genres and cultures co-exist with a surprising tolerance. Most R&B singers began singing as children in church. Singing well early, they naturally learned to sing Gospel well. Their switch to "secular" music, as Gospel fans refer to it, was a natural and symbiotic step in most blues artists' careers, and Gospel remains one of the primary influences on the music itself.
"I've Been Lonely For So Long" is an example of R&B "sinning" against Gospel. Craftily arranged and perfectly produced, Keisa Brown's gospel-hymn-turned-blues-chant dares to superimpose the rawest and arguably most talented set of R&B pipes since Tina Turner over a studio-perfect soul background immaculately free of any of the accoutrements of a "live" recording.
Yet Keisa Brown, a consummate performer whose years of dues-paying fill every funky, hurricane-blast syllable, makes the recording sound as if the sweating fans and burning cigarette ash were just a spilled drink away from her microphone.
"Let me see the hands of everybody in the house that's been lonely," she exhorts.
"Oh come on, wave your hands now.
See, it ain't no shame in the lonely game.
Come on, you back there in the back.
Let me see you raise your hands,
If you're by yourself.
If you're looking for somebody,
If you need somebody."
She hasn't even begun to sing and she has you in the palm of her hand. A North Mississippi blues beat is established. A gospel-inflected chorus pipes up. A booming bass voice provides a fillip. And Keisa begins speaking in tongues, or delivering her sermon, or something close.
Not to give the impression that Keisa Brown is a gospel singer. If you have any doubt of that listen to the ribald "Fly On The Wall," which hails back to funk's early-90's obsession with bi-sexual love triangles as exemplified by Peggy Scott-Adams' "Bill" and Barbara Mason's "Another Man."
Nor is Keisa, in spite of her single CD catalog, a one-hit wonder. In addition to "Fly On The Wall," "Some Bridges Need Burning Down" is strong enough musically to anchor an LP of material. "Two Birds With One Stone," and "I'm Still In Love With You" still hold up as radio singles today.
Keisa Brown's performance on this recording was essentially her concert routine, complete with motivational and inspirational homilies. But for those of us who didn't grow up in the chitlin-circuit (and I suspect for many who did), "I've Been Lonely For So Long" provided us with a taste of the real thing, a bit of the flavor of what Southern rhythm and blues might have sounded like under a big revival-sized tent in the open air of the fragrant South.
--Daddy B. Nice
About Keisa Brown
Keisa (pronounced "Key-sa") Brown was born in Mississippi. Blessed with a powerful, one-of-a-kind singing voice, she apprenticed in churches and secular venues, making a name for herself in Chicago and then Los Angeles. Unlike her "first cousin" of Southern rhythm and blues, Peggy Scott-Adams, Brown never had the good fortune to establish a longtime partnership with a producer/songwriter/mentor as Adams did with Jimmy Lewis. Brown's collaboration with Frederick Knight in the eighties was the highpoint of her career, resulting in a flurry of exceptional songs on two small labels no longer in print.
In fact, Brown's career was in many ways the reverse of the Southern Soul artist norm. In the eighties, while most R&B musicians were idle and disenfranchised, Keisa Brown was headlining concerts throughout the nation and Europe and scoring lucrative gigs as a back-up singer with superstars like Gladys Knight, Neil Diamond, Tina Turner, Patti LaBelle, Boyz II Men and Brandy. But by the nineties, when the majority of R&B artists were coming into full flower, Brown was performing less and no longer recording.
At last, in 1999, Jackson, Mississippi's Malaco Records, recognizing Brown's pivotal place in contemporary soul, reunited her with Frederick Knight for what was essentially a "greatest-hits" album, The Keisa Brown Collection. All of the experience of her years performing her legendary concert act was distilled into an album that remains her single, greatest gift to posterity, and the tracks from that CD, including not only "I've Been Lonely For So Long" but the anthemic "Fly On The Wall" and "Some Bridges Need Burning Down," still grace the rotations of today's Southern Soul deejays.
Editor's Note: Keisa Brown died on November 18, 2006 in Maulton, New Jersey. Despite an extended illness, Ms. Brown had continued to perform. Funeral services were scheduled at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church on Broad Street in Philadelphia, according to her longtime producer, Frederick Knight of Juana Records.
Song's Transcendent Moment
"These ain't rain clouds over my head.
Everybody's throwing rocks in my face.
I can't seem to get ahead in life.
Nothing I do ever turns out right.
Won't somebody help me, please?"
Tidbits
1. "I've Been Lonely So Long" is another example of the cross-pollination of white and black artists and rock and roll and soul music that has been going for over half a century. The obvious antecedent for the song is Felix Cavaliere's and the Rascal's blue-eyed soul hit, "I've Been Lonely Too Long," produced by Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin in 1967.
If You Liked. . . You'll Love
If you liked Ike and Tina Turner's "A Fool In Love," Keisa Brown's "I've Been Lonely For So Long" should be right up your line.
Honorary "B" Side
"Fly On The Wall"
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I've Been Lonely For So Long
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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Fly On The Wall
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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Some Bridges Need Burning Down
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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I'm Still In Love With You
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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Two Birds With One Stone
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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Your Love Is So Good
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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I'm Leaving Married Men Alone
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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Let's Take The Long Way Home
CD: Keisa Brown Collection
Label: Malaco
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