Sunday 22 January 2017

A Chess Jigsaw Puzzle

I've just bought and am now listening to the complete Chess recordings of sixties soul singer Sugar Pie De Santo. I'm sure I'm not the only person prompted to pick them up after hearing her sing Go Go Power on this TV advert.

Although Chess Records in Chicago is best known as a blues label, in the sixties its subsidiary Checker had a roster of young female soul and R&B singers which as well as Sugar Pie De Santo included Etta James and Fontella Bass.

The liner notes for the album feature photos of Sugar Pie performing at the Jigsaw club in Manchester. There's a bit about it on this forum, suggesting that it operated in the mid to late sixties as a competitor to the better-known Twisted Wheel, but none of the people I've asked who were going to clubs in Manchester then can remember it, and the building on Cromford Court which housed it was flattened in the early seventies to make way for the Arndale Centre.

Here's Sugar Pie in 1964 singing Slip-In Mules, written by Tommy Tucker (real name Robert Higginbotham) in reply to his own hit, Hi-Heel Sneakers.






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