Motherless Child

If you have come across Willie Mitchell within the annals of soul music it is most probably through his ground-breaking work as writer and producer for Al Green, including his most stellar hits “Tired of Being Alone” and “Let’s Stay Together”. Mitchell was head of his own Hi Records label from 1970 and as well as Green, produced massive hits for the likes of Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson and O.V. Wright, helping to define the Memphis soul sound.

Indeed the sound of Hi Records itself was relatively distinct, with much of the music featuring the hard kick-drum driven sound produced by Booker T and the MG’s own Memphis legend Al Jackson Jr. However, the reason for mentioning Mitchell and I records, as well as the drumming of Mr Jackson Jr, is in order to delve more closely into one of the artists mentioned above, the brilliant and oft-overlooked O.V. Wright. Overton Vertis Wright (what a name to begin with!) was a singer of quite stunning individuality and power, and an artist whose live performances were renowned far and wide for their energy and sheer dynamism.

He, along with the Hi Rhythm section mentioned above, helped to define southern soul, and by rights he could have been up there with stable mate Al Green himself as a revered figure in the soul canon. And yet he died from a heart attack at the tragically early age of 41, his system ravaged by narcotic abuse. His recording career, rising and rising in the early 1970s, also stalled and never recovered following a narcotics-related incarceration in the middle of the decade. However, cuts such as “Ace of Spades”, “A Nickel and a Nail”, “Motherless Child”, “Id Rather Be (Blind, Crippled and Crazy)” and my own favourite “Drowning on Dry Land” remain as testament to his talent, a recognisable style that somehow retains an element of uniqueness that is hard to pin down, but which is definably Wright’s own.

It was Wright who had first recorded “That’s How Strong My Love Is” a song which was then covered, recorded and released by Otis Redding, for whom it became a massive hit. And yet the original, if you can find it, is testament once more to the talent of O.V, even when set up against the supremely gifted Otis. It is Wright also that you hear on Ghostface Killah’s “Motherless Child” from his “Ironman” set, or on “Be A Man” from Rza’s “Bobby Digital” album. Indeed it would appear that O.V. Wright, and other Hi Records acts, provide something of a rich seam of sample material for the Wu beat master, if a study of their sample list is anything to go by. And as you listen to O.V. Wright in particular there is certainly something of the dark and slightly macabre world of the WU in his music, and a sense of melancholic too amongst the soul.

And that is about all I know about O.V. Wright, but am trying to discover more. But in the meantime there is always the music, such sweet soul music, and a singer who seemed to feel every note and every lyric down to his core, the way it should be. O.V Wright is a legend without a legacy, a true great of soul without a plaque to mark it. But now that you know, you know. He deserves his place up at the very top table.