The Love Doctor Enters Soul Heaven!

Daddy B. Nice's #26 ranked Southern Soul Artist

"Slow Roll It"

The Love Doctor Enters Soul Heaven!

Composed by Charles Jones

June 17, 2023:

Lewis Clark aka The Love Doctor Passes

"The Boogie Report" announced yesterday that The Love Doctor, the performance name of Lewis Clark, passed away Thursday, June 15, 2023. Visitations will occur from 1 to 5 pm Friday, June 23, 2023 at The Affordable Funeral Home, 300 West Madison St., Durant, Mississippi. Funeral services are scheduled for 11 am, Saturday, June 24th at Rose Hill Baptist Church, 805 County Road #12, Tchula, Mississippi (pronounced "choo-la"), the little town north of Jackson, Mississippi memorialized in The Love Doctor's song "Lies" ("Tchula, Mississippi, Tchula, Mississippi.../ Where else would I be born / With all this gold in my mouth?"). Internment will be at Greenlawn Cemetery in Lexington, Mississippi.

The Impact Of "Slow Roll It"

It's hard to overstate the importance of The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll it" to the evolution of 21st-century southern soul music. The tune didn't possess the musical or technical sophistication of the time period's masters--Johnny Taylor, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Little Milton and the like--all recording at Jackson, Mississippi's Malaco Records, but "Slow Roll It" had an indefinable newness, simplicity and relevance. The song marked the convergence of three of the fledgling genre's 21st-century pioneers: charismatic-voiced Lewis Clark (aka The Love Doctor), his gospel-music peer from his younger days, producer Senator Jones (aka Jackson, Mississippi, graveyard-shift, WMPR deejay Uncle Bobo), and a young genius and star-to-be, composer and neophyte producer Charles Jones (no relation). It's Charles' background-singing voice you hear as the tune begins. And it was more Charles' song than anyone else's--his "breakthrough" into the music business as a young unknown. He in turn raided one of the most iconic songs in traditional southern soul--the Staple Singers' "Do It Again"--for its historic and contagious bass line, simultaneously tapping into posterity and the future.

Up in Memphis, producer John Ward put out a cover of "Slow Roll It" with Sheba Potts-Wright. On "Slow Roll It" Sheba had none of the chops of the seasoned R&B/Blues singer she was to become over the next dozen years. What she had was the flirty, half-innocent precociousness of the young, and it's interesting to note, if you listen closely to her "Slow Roll It," that Sheba lets out a girlish giggle identical to the one young Krishunda Echols emits a decade later in her "Mad Dog 20-20". Young feminine sounds such as these are mesmerizing, and for a time the Potts-Wright version of "Slow Roll It" eclipsed The Love Doctor's original. (And, with only a couple of exceptions, Sheba has never had a bigger hit single.) But The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll It" with Sir Charles Jones slowly and inevitably regained its prominence as one of the primary templates of modern southern soul.

Truth be told, I expected collectible versions of the Mardi Gras Records album from which the song came--Doctor Of Love--to be selling for very expensive prices, if available at all. Just the opposite is the case. There are new copies on sale at ridiculously low rates. Adding one to your library would be a wise choice not only musically but financially, because this song will only accrue in value as time goes on.

Buy The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll It" at Amazon.

Daddy B. Nice's Original Critique:

In 2001 a onetime Chicago-area deejay turned soul singer named The Love Doctor flew over the chitlin' circuit scene and dropped a monster track called "Slow Roll It" like a strapping ten-pound baby from a stork's beak. It arrived as an institution, an instant classic, and it filled up the air waves of the Deep South the way only a classic can--as if it had always been there. Southern Soul artists practically tripped over one another to put out their own interpretations.

"I met a girl much older,
And she whipped that thing on me.
She taught me how to take my time,
And do it right."

In the Love Doctor's version, the singer instructed the younger girls in the audience that it took an older woman--"one that knows what to do, when to do, how to do, and where to do it"--to teach him how to get down and "slow roll it." How to "take my time" and "do it right." Not since Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" had an R&B song so effectively stated the importance of sex to a man's life, or slow, lingering sex as a factor in a woman's pleasure.

"Slow roll it,
Stroke it with the motion."

Young artist/songwriter Sir Charles Jones had written (and contributed back-up vocals) to "Slow Roll It," and while he and the Love Doctor deserved the credit for introducing the tune to the Southern Soul audience, those same listeners tended to forget that The Love Doctor's version had competition--Sheba Potts-Wright's female-oriented remake and Roy C's gritty, soulful cover.

The Love Doctor seemed also to be listening to the Roy C version, with its time-etched character infusing the vocal throughout the stanzas of "Slow Roll It," because his next release--the radio single of "Lies"--took his credentials as a blues vocalist to a deeper level than even his most ardent fans could have imagined.

The artist/composer/producer Jimmy Lewis had released a song the year before called "You Said It, No I Didn't (Lies)." Set up as a call and response between a man and a woman on Lewis' 2002 CD Communication (Mardi Gras Records), the Jimmy Lewis original featured a laid-back duet with Natisse "Bambi" Jones on which the listener could almost imagine the performers shaking their heads at the prospect of such far-out lyrics ever being taken seriously by an audience.

And, predictably, few people noticed. But in 2003 The Love Doctor, flush from the success of "Slow Roll It" and accompanied by Thomisene Anderson, covered "Lies" to impressive effect. Like a paddle wheeler crawling up the Mississippi, the ballad's methodical but mesmerizing beat sucked the listener into a world of comedic domestic turmoil.

"You said you graduated from Penn State," Thomisene sang.

"There you go again," sang the Love Doctor.
"I told you I got my diploma,
When I was in State Penn."

The Love Doctor's duet with Ms. Anderson, the longtime back-up singer to Bobby "Blue" Bland, Little Milton, Ronnie Lovejoy, Z. Z. Hill, Willie Clayton and others, first appeared in the Mardi Gras Records sampler, Ultimate Southern Soul, and in 2004 it became the jewel of the Love Doctor's CD Lies.

"You said you were born in L.A.," Thomisene sang,
"But you were born in the South."

"Where else would I be from, baby," The Love Doctor sang,
"With all this gold in my mouth?"

Listening to the track play out on radio stations throughout the South during the last half of 2003, and again through much of 2004, your Daddy B. Nice heard more deejay testimonials in response to this single piece of music than any other in recent years.

"You said you had a new Mercedes,
Fully equipped with air."

"No, no," said The Love Doctor.
"I said it was a 1953,
And honey, I didn't have no spare."

The song seemed to strike a distinct nerve in the black community, touching upon the deep ambivalence about yuppie-style material success on the one hand and working-class poverty, humility and tenacity on the other.

Thomisene Anderson's "country" vibrato as she sang, "Lies. . . Lies. . . Lies. . ." breathed new life into a technique long gone bankrupt (worn out by Whitney Houston and her many imitators), and The Love Doctor's intensity not only belied his newness to the Southern Soul scene but marked him as a modern master. The Love Doctor had resuscitated the kind of duet not heard since the mid-twentieth century and songs like Brook Benton's and Dinah Washington's "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)."

However, The Love Doctor will always be associated first and foremost with "Slow Roll It," one of a handful of songs that have come to symbolize Southern Soul's bid for a legitimate niche in the long and storied history of Rhythm and Blues. One can imagine even the great Johnnie Taylor listening to "Slow Roll It" on his I-Pod on the way through the pearly gates to Soul Heaven.


************************

November 11, 2015:

THE LOVE DOCTOR "RETIRES"!

Daddy B. Nice's Updated Profile:

The Love Doctor. It's still one of the most arresting and appealing artist names in all of Southern Soul, and as we approach the top twenty-five artists and songs in the Southern Soul 21st Century Countdown it's only appropriate to remember the song and the artist which in many ways started it all (the year was 2001): The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll It."

Listen to The Love Doctor singing "Slow Roll It" on YouTube while you read.

Of course, The Love Doctor and Sir Charles Jones (who wrote, sang and produced "Slow Roll It") didn't "start it all." Southern Soul had been churning along under all the mainstream musical genres with standard-bearers no less than Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Little Milton, Marvin Sease and J. Blackfoot.

For any other sub-genre of urban R&B, the passing away of such giants would have spelled the death knell, but Southern Soul not only survived but flourished, and much of it had to do with The Love Doctor, teamed with a young writer/producer/would-be performer named Charles Jones, and a grizzled producer/impresario/deejay named Senator Jones/Uncle Bobo, who collectively (if not always cooperatively) as a trinity proved that Southern Soul could thrive in new hands, in a new direction, and still hit the deepest, most soulful spots in the hearts of lovers of soul music.

There were people who didn't get it, like the All Music Guide critic who called "every single thing about it (Doctor Of Love) laughable and outmoded," just as today there are are people who can't accept the raw, rustic and embarrassingly straightforward vocal style and lyrics of L.J. Echols.

The triumphs of those years, much of it recorded in these pages, led to disappointments and a fallow future (also regretfully noted here), especially for The Love Doctor.

The Love Doctor was pegged the 11th-ranked artist in the original posting of Daddy B. Nice's Top 100 Southern Soul Artists in 2004--the first time, in fact, any of these artists had been grouped together--a chart position from which he slipped only a little (to #14) in the ensuing years.

But although his subsequent work wasn't all bad, The Love Doctor never again achieved the heights of "Slow Roll It" and "Lies" (with Thomisene Anderson).

Listen to The Love Doctor and Thomisene Anderson dueting on "Lies (You Said It, No I Didn't)" on YouTube while you read.

While the Charles Jones-written "Slow Roll It" was by far the more commercial tune, "Lies"--written and previously recorded by renowned songwriter and Peggy Scott-Adams producer Jimmy Lewis--carried more heft for aficionados of Southern Soul.

Thomisene:

"You said you graduated--
Said you graduated
From Penn State."

Love Doctor:

"There you go again.
I told you I got my diploma
When I was in State Pen."

Or. . .

Thomisene:

"Said you were born in LA,
But you were born in the South."

Love Doctor:

"Where else would I be, baby,
With all this gold in my mouth?"

In the Love Doctor's hickory-hard vocal stylings the song's simultaneously poignant and witty lyrics (especially for those conversant with the blue-collar African-American culture of the South) jumped off the CD player, and with Thomisene Anderson's partnering vocal, exquisitely feminine by contrast, the song achieved the rare resonance of Southern Soul classics on the order of Ronnie Lovejoy's "Sho' Wasn't Me" and Johnnie Taylor's "Soul Heaven."

Read about "Slow Roll It" and "Lies" in Daddy B. Nice's Original Artist Guide to The Love Doctor.

The Love Doctor still performs from time to time, and he is still deemed a headliner in the Delta, where his name rings a little louder and carries a little further.

--Daddy B. Nice

About The Love Doctor Enters Soul Heaven!

The Love Doctor was born Lewis Clark and raised in the Memphis area before moving to Illinois and becoming a disc jockey.  Under the deejay name "Blues Doctor," he gained a sizable audience and eventually transformed himself into a performer.  

He changed his name to The Love Doctor in 1997 and put out a debut disc called Midnight Recipe on a small label (Nutrition).  In 2001 he signed with Mardi Gras Records of New Orleans.  His initial CD on that label was the reputation-making Doctor Of Love, which included the smash chitlin' circuit hit, "Slow Roll It."

The album marked the emergence of a new Southern Soul star, Sir Charles Jones, who composed all the tracks for the LP and contributed back-up vocals, most notably on "Slow Roll It."  The disc also reunited Lewis Clark with his old gospel-music peer from his younger days in the South, producer Senator Jones.    

Moaning And Groaning followed Doctor Of Love in 2002.  Another Southern Soul star-to-be, Carl Marshall, took over much of the production work.

The CD Lies, with the landmark track, "Lies (You Said It, No I Didn't)," appeared in 2004, although the single had already made a sensation on Southern Soul radio in 2003.   

"There's No One Like Mama," with a chorus reminiscent of the 50's Ames Brothers, became the standout track from The Love Doctor's 2004 gospel CD of the same name (Mardi Gras, 2004).

The Love Doctor's Discography: 

    2001  Doctor of Love  Mardis Gras 
  
    2002  Moaning & Groaning  (Mardi Gras) 
 
    2004  Lies  (Mardi Gras) 
 
    2004  There's No One Like Mama  (Hep'Me) 
 
    2005  Let's Have Some Fun  (Hep'Me) 
 
    2007  Stupid  (Hep'Me) 
 
    2008  At His Best (Senator Jones)

2010 A New Beginning (Labro) (undistributed)

Song's Transcendent Moment

"I met a girl,
Much older,
And she whipped that thing
On me.

She taught me how
To take my time,
And do it right.

She taught me
How to be
A certified lover

And do it well
Under the covers.

Slow roll it,
My baby told me,
Stroke it with the motion."

Tidbits

1.

September 23, 2012: YouTube offerings for The Love Doctor and "Slow Roll It":


Listen to The Love Doctor (with Sir Charles Jones on background) singing "Slow Roll It" on YouTube.

Listen to Roy C. singing his version of The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll It" on YouTube.

Listen to Sheba Potts-Wright singing her version of The Love Doctor's "Slow Roll It" on YouTube.

Listen to The Love Doctor and Thomisene Anderson dueting on "Lies (You Said It, No I Didn't)" on YouTube.

Listen to The Love Doctor singing "There's No One Like Mama" on YouTube.

Listen to The Love Doctor singing "Make It Do What It Do" on YouTube.

Listen to The Love Doctor singing "Can The Love Doctor Rock You" on YouTube.

Honorary "B" Side

"Lies (You Said It, No I Didn't)"

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