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| Wish I had a shot of them writing... |
If you bet me $20 this song is in the movie Running Scared, I would take the bet. Even though I think I’m wrong…wait, yeah, that was based in Chicago...helluva cast, man...
The Hit
“During the 1970s, the label released a string of worldwide hits that emphasized lavish orchestral instrumentation, heavy bass and driving percussion.”
McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” puts that description into musical form. Since picking around Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes a couple years back, I’ve spent the time in between trying to figure out how and/or why that sound clicks so easily with me. My best guess is that was what the music I heard growing up and that lets it check a bunch of boxes on the lizard-brain level.
It doesn't hurt that it just works. What starts as a strong bass-line line turns busy and bubbly under a medley of strings that tickle your ears like a summer breeze; what's not to love? To admit one drawback - especially for a guy who later switched on to songs with a hard three-minute limit (and most wrapped up in two-and-a-half) - your average Philly soul song tends to play out on a groove that lasts nearly that long.
That didn’t stop “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” from climbing high on the charts; it topped the R&B charts through the summer of 1979 and ticked up as high as No. 3 on the mainstream pop chart. It had a real cultural resonance as well, with some people calling it “the new black national anthem” and Philadelphia sports adopting it as an anthem of their own. According to a blog post on a site called From the Vaults (best single source I read, fwiw), McFadden & Whitehead recorded their hit in just one take; it also claims Whitehead made up the lyrics on the spot. For anyone wondering how the pair reached such a high level of proficiency, here’s…
The Rest of the Story (don’t sue me from beyond the grave, Paul Harvey)
Gene McFadden and John Whitehead grew up on the hard-scrabble side of Philly in the 1960s. There isn’t much about them growing up (e.g., no musical parents, no playing at church or performing in the choir, all common back-stories), but they formed a band they named The Epsilons by the mid-‘60s, i.e., in their late teens. They recruited other members - Allen Beatty, James Knight and, future member of the Blue Notes, Lloyd Parks - and start performing locally. The group did well enough for Otis Redding to bring them on, an arrangement that lasted until Redding died in a plane crash in 1967. From the Vaults' post includes a sentence that hints at even broader exposure, but it’s hard to really nail that down due to an absent verb:
“The Epsilons also with James Brown, Gloria Gaynor, the Intruders, the Jacksons, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Melba Moore, People's Choice, Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls and Stevie Wonder and also Arthur Conley on his classic ‘Sweet Soul Music,’ but following Redding's tragic death the group's fortunes waned, and after the 1968 Stax single ‘The Echo’ they dissolved.”
So, yeah, The Epsilons even recorded a single, but it was onto the next project from there. Though Beatty dropped out, the other four members took another run at success in a new act called Talk of the Town. When that group drew the interest of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, then just beginning to build their influential Philadelphia International Records (PIR; also hold that thought), they got signed to a subsidiary called North Bay, a label Gamble and Huff used to “groom talent.” Talk of the Town recorded a bunch of songs - including, but not limited to “Little Bit of Your Lovin’,” “Super Groover (All Night Mover),” and “Bumpin’ Boogie” - none of which got much traction for band or label. What made all that odd was the general recognition that McFadden and Whitehead wrote decent songs. And, as the 70s got going, they tried that next.
The Hit
“During the 1970s, the label released a string of worldwide hits that emphasized lavish orchestral instrumentation, heavy bass and driving percussion.”
McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” puts that description into musical form. Since picking around Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes a couple years back, I’ve spent the time in between trying to figure out how and/or why that sound clicks so easily with me. My best guess is that was what the music I heard growing up and that lets it check a bunch of boxes on the lizard-brain level.
It doesn't hurt that it just works. What starts as a strong bass-line line turns busy and bubbly under a medley of strings that tickle your ears like a summer breeze; what's not to love? To admit one drawback - especially for a guy who later switched on to songs with a hard three-minute limit (and most wrapped up in two-and-a-half) - your average Philly soul song tends to play out on a groove that lasts nearly that long.
That didn’t stop “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” from climbing high on the charts; it topped the R&B charts through the summer of 1979 and ticked up as high as No. 3 on the mainstream pop chart. It had a real cultural resonance as well, with some people calling it “the new black national anthem” and Philadelphia sports adopting it as an anthem of their own. According to a blog post on a site called From the Vaults (best single source I read, fwiw), McFadden & Whitehead recorded their hit in just one take; it also claims Whitehead made up the lyrics on the spot. For anyone wondering how the pair reached such a high level of proficiency, here’s…
The Rest of the Story (don’t sue me from beyond the grave, Paul Harvey)
Gene McFadden and John Whitehead grew up on the hard-scrabble side of Philly in the 1960s. There isn’t much about them growing up (e.g., no musical parents, no playing at church or performing in the choir, all common back-stories), but they formed a band they named The Epsilons by the mid-‘60s, i.e., in their late teens. They recruited other members - Allen Beatty, James Knight and, future member of the Blue Notes, Lloyd Parks - and start performing locally. The group did well enough for Otis Redding to bring them on, an arrangement that lasted until Redding died in a plane crash in 1967. From the Vaults' post includes a sentence that hints at even broader exposure, but it’s hard to really nail that down due to an absent verb:
“The Epsilons also with James Brown, Gloria Gaynor, the Intruders, the Jacksons, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Melba Moore, People's Choice, Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls and Stevie Wonder and also Arthur Conley on his classic ‘Sweet Soul Music,’ but following Redding's tragic death the group's fortunes waned, and after the 1968 Stax single ‘The Echo’ they dissolved.”
So, yeah, The Epsilons even recorded a single, but it was onto the next project from there. Though Beatty dropped out, the other four members took another run at success in a new act called Talk of the Town. When that group drew the interest of Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, then just beginning to build their influential Philadelphia International Records (PIR; also hold that thought), they got signed to a subsidiary called North Bay, a label Gamble and Huff used to “groom talent.” Talk of the Town recorded a bunch of songs - including, but not limited to “Little Bit of Your Lovin’,” “Super Groover (All Night Mover),” and “Bumpin’ Boogie” - none of which got much traction for band or label. What made all that odd was the general recognition that McFadden and Whitehead wrote decent songs. And, as the 70s got going, they tried that next.
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| Helped make these guys... |
They landed a minor success when a PIR band called The Intruders released their single, “I’ll Always Love My Mama,” but it was actually the first song McFadden and Whitehead wrote (as they told Don Cornelius), The O’Jays “Back Stabbers,” that put both them and PIR on the map. It landed PIR its first-ever gold album and established the duo as viable songwriters. I have no damn idea why Wikipedia’sentry on McFadden & Whitehead failed to finish the thought “they wrote and produced some of the most popular R&B hits of the 1970s” by getting it all in one place, but they proved to be very viable songwriters:
“As writers and producers, McFadden and Whitehead would go on to score 22 gold records, two platinum albums, and two Grammy nominations over the next six years.”
Some of those hits went to Archie Bell & the Drells (“Let’s Groove” and “The Soul City Walk”), some went to Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (“Bad Luck” and, love this one, “Wake Up Everybody”), a couple to Teddy Pendergrass after he split from Harold Melvin (“The More I Get, the More I Want” and “Cold, Cold World”), and a couple more went to Melba Moore (“Pick Me Up, I’ll Dance” and “Standing Right Here”). After helping all those other people get famous, McFadden and Whitehead set up as McFadden & Whitehead made one more attempt at crashing the main stage. And it paid off with “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.” Unfortunately, it rolled down hill from there. And then it caught fire...
They floated another single from their eponymous debut, “I’ve Been Pushed Aside,” and tried again with an album/single called I Heard It in a Love Song, but that just put them through the same experience they had with Talk of the Town all over again. They parted ways after 1982’s aptly-named Movin’ On and things got worse from there. The feds nailed Whitehead for tax evasion and locked him up for a stretch and, somewhere after he got out, he gave the world a sense of where he was at with the general/possible specific 1988 single, “I Need Money Bad.” The two eventually reunited to work the nostalgia circuit and corporate events, which counts as a living.
McFadden & Whitehead’s story ends on a pretty hard downer. Whitehead was murdered in 2004 and the discrepancy in the source is…something else. The way Wikipedia described it - “he was shot once by one of several unknown gunmen, who then fled” - already sounds like a hit (aka, a planned murder), but the elaboration I found on a (very cool) blog called, The Cemetery Traveler makes it sound, like a lot worse:
“He and nephew Ohmed Johnson were shot (Johnson lived) in an apparent case of mistaken identity. The crime has never been solved. Obviously Whitehead never made a fortune in the music business, as he was killed while changing someone’s car radiator hose behind his home.”
“The gunmen fired more than 10 shots from handguns and then fled, and police believe the shooting was not random. In an interview with Whitehead’s widow in September, 2004 (four months after his death), Elnor Whitehead called the notion that her husband was a target nonsense. ‘I keep hearing all these crazy things … they keep saying he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was not in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was home.’”
It's the part about “never made a fortune in the music business” that really kicks into the chest. It’s always the writers that get stiffed, man.
Sadly, McFadden didn’t last much longer. He was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer the same year and passed two years later, just one day shy of his 57th birthday. To dip into the macabre,another anecdote makes one wonder if McFadden & Whitehead had always lived on borrowed time. Back in 1979, at the height of their success, they’d booked American Airlines Flight 191, with service from Chicago to Los Angeles, only to cancel to squeeze in more interview. Flight 191 crashed immediately after takeoff on May 25, 1979 near Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
About the Sampler
I linked to a lot of it above, as well as including a hefty helping of bonus tracks from the hits McFadden and Whitehead wrote for other artists. To tick through the rest of it, I included another one from their debut that I think most people know, the straight-boppin’ “Just Wanna Love You Baby,” and a song that some people maybe know, “Mr. Music” (another dime, for me); I rounded out the selection from the debut album with “Got to Change,” “I Got the Love,” and a slow-jam titled, “You’re My Someone to Love.” To give a taste of I Heard It in a Love Song, I added “I Know What I’m Gonna Do,” “This Is My Song,” and the brooding “Love Song Number 690 (Life’s No Good Without You).”
I rounded out the sampler with a couple more hits they wrote for others - e.g., “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” by Freddie Jackson, one more by Melba Moore, “Let’s Stand Together,” plus, fun surprise, “Strength of One Man” by The Jacksons (yes, those Jacksons).
As the author of Cemetery Traveler mused, taken all together, that’s one hell of a legacy. Just wish it wasn’t so damn sad at the end. To get to the question left hanging by all the above, my best guess as to why McFadden & Whitehead didn't hit was that the musical formula they'd done so much to develop had almost run its course by the time they get their...third shot at fame. Still, they were a pair of damn good songwriters.
“As writers and producers, McFadden and Whitehead would go on to score 22 gold records, two platinum albums, and two Grammy nominations over the next six years.”
Some of those hits went to Archie Bell & the Drells (“Let’s Groove” and “The Soul City Walk”), some went to Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (“Bad Luck” and, love this one, “Wake Up Everybody”), a couple to Teddy Pendergrass after he split from Harold Melvin (“The More I Get, the More I Want” and “Cold, Cold World”), and a couple more went to Melba Moore (“Pick Me Up, I’ll Dance” and “Standing Right Here”). After helping all those other people get famous, McFadden and Whitehead set up as McFadden & Whitehead made one more attempt at crashing the main stage. And it paid off with “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now.” Unfortunately, it rolled down hill from there. And then it caught fire...
They floated another single from their eponymous debut, “I’ve Been Pushed Aside,” and tried again with an album/single called I Heard It in a Love Song, but that just put them through the same experience they had with Talk of the Town all over again. They parted ways after 1982’s aptly-named Movin’ On and things got worse from there. The feds nailed Whitehead for tax evasion and locked him up for a stretch and, somewhere after he got out, he gave the world a sense of where he was at with the general/possible specific 1988 single, “I Need Money Bad.” The two eventually reunited to work the nostalgia circuit and corporate events, which counts as a living.
McFadden & Whitehead’s story ends on a pretty hard downer. Whitehead was murdered in 2004 and the discrepancy in the source is…something else. The way Wikipedia described it - “he was shot once by one of several unknown gunmen, who then fled” - already sounds like a hit (aka, a planned murder), but the elaboration I found on a (very cool) blog called, The Cemetery Traveler makes it sound, like a lot worse:
“He and nephew Ohmed Johnson were shot (Johnson lived) in an apparent case of mistaken identity. The crime has never been solved. Obviously Whitehead never made a fortune in the music business, as he was killed while changing someone’s car radiator hose behind his home.”
“The gunmen fired more than 10 shots from handguns and then fled, and police believe the shooting was not random. In an interview with Whitehead’s widow in September, 2004 (four months after his death), Elnor Whitehead called the notion that her husband was a target nonsense. ‘I keep hearing all these crazy things … they keep saying he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was not in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was home.’”
It's the part about “never made a fortune in the music business” that really kicks into the chest. It’s always the writers that get stiffed, man.
Sadly, McFadden didn’t last much longer. He was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer the same year and passed two years later, just one day shy of his 57th birthday. To dip into the macabre,another anecdote makes one wonder if McFadden & Whitehead had always lived on borrowed time. Back in 1979, at the height of their success, they’d booked American Airlines Flight 191, with service from Chicago to Los Angeles, only to cancel to squeeze in more interview. Flight 191 crashed immediately after takeoff on May 25, 1979 near Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
About the Sampler
I linked to a lot of it above, as well as including a hefty helping of bonus tracks from the hits McFadden and Whitehead wrote for other artists. To tick through the rest of it, I included another one from their debut that I think most people know, the straight-boppin’ “Just Wanna Love You Baby,” and a song that some people maybe know, “Mr. Music” (another dime, for me); I rounded out the selection from the debut album with “Got to Change,” “I Got the Love,” and a slow-jam titled, “You’re My Someone to Love.” To give a taste of I Heard It in a Love Song, I added “I Know What I’m Gonna Do,” “This Is My Song,” and the brooding “Love Song Number 690 (Life’s No Good Without You).”
I rounded out the sampler with a couple more hits they wrote for others - e.g., “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love” by Freddie Jackson, one more by Melba Moore, “Let’s Stand Together,” plus, fun surprise, “Strength of One Man” by The Jacksons (yes, those Jacksons).
As the author of Cemetery Traveler mused, taken all together, that’s one hell of a legacy. Just wish it wasn’t so damn sad at the end. To get to the question left hanging by all the above, my best guess as to why McFadden & Whitehead didn't hit was that the musical formula they'd done so much to develop had almost run its course by the time they get their...third shot at fame. Still, they were a pair of damn good songwriters.
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