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Almost without exception, each of Ann's subsequent singles placed themselves on the American R&B charts and further cemented her popularity, but for some reason none would attract Pop audiences like "I Can't Stand The Rain". It's truly one of life's mysteries why Ann did not receive a wider recognition for her outstanding work, especially considering the enormous impact -and longevity- of "I Can't Stand The Rain" (which a certain John Lennon proclaimed his favorite record). But the lack of hits on the Pop charts didn't have anything to do with the quality of the post-"...Rain" material, or with Ann's performance. In fact, Ann's next album, 1975's "Tellin' It" is one of her strongest. It's chock-full of superior quality Soul. Hi Rhythm never sounded better and the lyrics are witty, crafted in the finest southern storytelling tradition. The funky first single, "Beware", issued in April 1975, is a perfect example. Here, Ann sends out a warning; "you better beware of the dog that bring the bone, she's only trying to break up your home". This sly, devious girlfriend, who is the "leader of the grapevine", doesn't have a man of her own and is ready to do just about anything to get yours. On the follow-up, "Come To Mama", issued in October, Ann was presented at her most sensuous. Over an oh-so-funky beat, accentuated by those ingenious electric timbales, she delivers seductive promises of satisfaction in the lovemaking department ("I've got your favorite toy, guaranteed to bring you joy"). On single number three, "Dr. Love Power" Ann herself was lovesick, desperately yearning for a "double dose" of the doctor's good lovin'. The last 45 taken from "Tellin' It", "I Needed Somebody", is a touching Peebles/Bryant composition about a young girl leaving her small hometown, against her father's will, to seek a life for herself in the big city. The song was not autobiographical, as some people thought. That non-charting single was backed with the getting-down-to-the nitty-gritty'ish "I Don't Lend My Man", where Ann tells how she doesn't mind being a good neighbor, lending food, car, money, clothes, etc., well, anything, but her man ("that man swapping just ain't my bag"). Unlike the girl in "I Needed Somebody", Ann didn't move to the city (Memphis) for its bright lights and opportunities (and besides St. Louis isn't exactly a small town). It was for convenience. After touring heavily, both in the States and abroad, plus going back and fourth between her St. Louis home and Hi's Royal Studio, Ann finally decided it was time to move to Memphis for good. Most likely, the move also had lots to do with a certain man, whom she initially had disliked to the max. In 1974, she and Don Bryant were married and in the ensuing year, the couple had a baby boy. With such talented parents, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that their son is musically gifted. "Jevon plays the piano and drums", Ann said. "Yes, he's very musical, and he used to play with the Gospel groups me and Don have on our Gospel label, By Faith. But then he went to college and now he's so busy. He wants to venture off into the business field of the music industry, which I think is great because we need somebody there that knows every end of the business, and that's what Jevon went to school for." There are loads of "greatest hits" and "best of" CD's and LP's around nowadays, but Ann's first official "Greatest Hits" LP came out in 1977. Apart from the obvious chart successes, it also held a new single, "Fill This World With Love", which struggled to a disappointing R&B #96 in December. As the title suggests, it was a positively charged "message" song that Ann and Don had written with Mavis Staples specifically in mind. For some reason, Mavis never got a chance to hear it at the time, but that situation was rectified almost two decades later when Ann and the lovely Miss Staples recorded it as a duet for Ann's 1996 Bullseye Blues album. Penned by Ann, Don and Gene Anderson, the Gospel-tinged "It Must Be Love", an album track from Ann's "proper" 1977 LP "If This Is Heaven", was also intended for the Staple Singers. It can now be disclosed that the part, which obviously was supposed to be handled by Pops Staples, was sung by Don. The album's title track was selected as a single in the summer of 1977. It is a smooth and -at least by Ann's standards- slick number, and would be the only forty-five issued from that album. Other memorable tracks include the funky "A Good Day For Lovin'", "Games", "When I'm In Your Arms", "Being Here With You", and the superb remake of stablemate O.W Wright's first national 1965 R&B hit "You're Gonna Make Me Cry".
Ann's final album on Hi, "The Handwriting Is On The Wall" may be her most underrated. It yielded three medium sized hits; the hilarious "Old Man With Young Ideas" (R&B #54), "I Didn't Take Your Man" (R&B #55) and "If You Got The Time (I Got The Love)" (R&B #95). Two songs were written by Ann & Don; "Let Your Love Light Shine" and "If I Can't See You". As always, Willie Mitchell produced and engineered, but Hi Rhythm were missing on the credits (only the bass playing Hodges' brother, Leroy, appeared). Ann made a few more singles for Hi during the late seventies and early eighties, when most of the other artists had left the sinking ship, but unlike what you may hear from the artists that recorded for Stax, Ann only has warm recollections of the Hi-days. "Lots of them! I have so many good memories. I'm proud to say that I don't have one bad memory from it, like some artists do. Going in the studio, even if it was just to put down a scratch, was a ball. It was fun, a lot of laughter, a lot of bad notes were being made and we just laughed at it. It was different from Stax because it was smaller and because we were a family. Whereas Stax had, many, many musicians, Hi only had that rhythm section of brothers and that cousin and that's the way it stayed, until Hi changed over to Cream. That made the big difference there from Stax, because it wasn't a whole lot of different musicians coming in and out, playing on this or that session. We shared some of the musicians with Stax, like the Memphis Horns, but even though they worked at Stax, they were a part of the Hi family. That distinguished the Hi sound; the same people always played on everything." With new people in charge, no Hi Rhythm or Willie Mitchell to laugh and create with, Ann decided that now was the time for a hiatus. "I kinda backed off because everything had changed, it was different people.. Cream came out of California, even though we were still cutting at Hi, things just weren't the same any more. So I decided that since everything had changed, I'd take a break and get my head clear, to see where I was going. Plus I really wanted to dedicate my time to my child. Then, as he grew up, I wanted to get back out and start my career again. During the time I was off, I was still writing and still doing studio things, and me and Don started our Gospel label, a school and some other things. When I got back into it, I did my first album coming back with Willie Mitchell."
In addition to a re-make of "I Can't Stand The Rain" and a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Missing You", the remainder of the material on Ann's first Rounder album "Full Time Love" were all originals. Ann wrote several tracks with husband Don and Thomas Bingham, the then guitarist in her backing band. (Thomas, Don informed me, is now touring with J. "Taxi" Blackfoot). The autobiographical "St. Louis Woman With A Memphis Melody" was just one of the many highlights. "Like '99 lbs.', that was another song that I wrote directly to depict Ann Peebles", Don explained. "It was after years and years of being with her, going back and fourth with her to visit her family in St. Louis, listening to the stories of how they came up singing and different things. The song is basically about things that Ann did with her family and how she came into the music field. I don't know, it just all came together when we started working on the 'Full Time Love' album, it hit me again that it would be great to have another I.D. Ann Peebles song. The 'St. Louis woman' part of the title, well, she was born and raised in St. Louis. 'With a 'Memphis Melody', I considered that to be me. I was the 'Memphis Melody'." On "Full Time Love", Ann was re-united with both Hi Rhythm and the Memphis Horns. "It was the most beautiful time", she said. "We hadn't been in the studio together for many years, but we've stayed close, close friends and we still are. As a matter of fact, Howard Grimes and Leroy Hodges play in my band, they go out on the road with me. We've continued to be family, although the Hi days are gone."
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© Maria Granditsky
March 1998. |
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After "I Can't Stand The Rain", three
more singles were culled from the album of the same title. The first was released in May
1974 and landed on #37 on Billboard's Top 100 R&B chart. "(You Keep Me)
Hangin' On", which was the only cover on the entire LP, had been a hit for
Joe Simon in 1968. It was followed by the bluesy "Do I Need You"
in July, which went to #57 R&B. The third forty-five "Until You Came Into
My Life" didn't chart. It is a delicate ballad, sweetened by the exquisite
Memphis Strings, and had been penned by Ann and Don Bryant. So was the last song on side B
of the album, the beautiful "One Way Street". The collaboration with DJ Bernard
Miller, with whom the couple wrote "I Can't Stand The Rain", continued on the
midpaced "A Love Vibration" and "You've Got To Feed The Fire". Other
LP-highlights include the funky "Run, Run, Run", where once again the electric
timbale is used to great effect, and where Ann partially delivers the song in a (for her)
unusual falsetto. "I Can't Stand The Rain" is one of the most
solid southern Soul albums ever made and has a natural place in every serious music
lover's collection. 
1977 was also the year when things started to change at Hi. After
having looked for a new distributor since the deal with London Records ended the previous
year, President Nick Pescue sold Hi to Al Bennet's Los Angeles-based Cream Records, which
many consider the beginning of the end for Hi. "I don't know the details of that
deal. That was a situation where we didn't really get the overall information", Don
Bryant shared. "It was done on the executive level and we were not given reasons for
it. Basically, we were led to understand that it was going to help the company, but we
were not given any details of what was going on or why." Under the new ownership,
Willie Mitchell was offered a new contract and stayed on until the tail end of '79, but by
1980, Mitchell would be gone (to start up his own label, Bearsville) and so would most of
Hi Rhythm. There was also some kind of conflict between Mitchell and Hi Rhythm. Without
Mitchell and Hi Rhythm, the "Hi sound" was lost, even though excellent Memphis
musicians like Ben Cauley and Michael Toles (both formerly of the Bar-Kays and Isaac
Hayes' band) came to the rescue. There are many theories on just exactly what happened.
Changes were taking place within the music music industry at large, and perhaps most
significantly, Hi's biggest star and main provider of hits, Al Green, was leaving to go
into the Gospel field.
"Call
Me" was produced, engineered and remixed by Willie Mitchell, who in addition
co-wrote five of the nine songs. It was cut at the Royal Studio and came out in 1989 on
Willie's short-lived Waylo label. Ann's return was of course warmly greeted by her old
fans, but in all honesty, the CD was a bit disappointing, but only because of the rather
stiff, electronic instrumentation. Even the horns were synthetic. This does not reflect on
Willie Mitchell or Ann, it was just the way music was made in the mid- to late 80's.
"Yeah, it was electronic", Ann commented. "We were just experimenting,
trying for a comeback, you know. But after we did it, I knew I like everything to be real
and live". "Call Me", which didn't include any
compositions of her own, didn't do much, sales- or chart -wise, but nevertheless served
its purpose and brought Ann back in the spotlight. In 1990, she and the "Waylo
Records Family" which included Willie Mitchell, Otis Clay, David Hudson and Lynn
White, toured Europe, and the highlights were captured on the "A Memphis Soul Night -
Live in Europe" album on Waylo. "'Call Me' never went anywhere because of the
money situation, but that didn't stop me, I went on and got with Rounder (Ann's present
record label) and got started over again. Sometimes it's a struggle to get from one place
to another, but you don't let that slow you down because this work is an up and down
situation and you prepare yourself for that. If this is something you love, then
you are gonna love it regardless. That's the way I am and that's the way a lot of singers
are. You have to love from the heart what you are doing and once you know you love it,
there are no low points. Even when things are down, you're still up." 
The Hi label is history, but its queen
still reigns. Ann Peebles may not weigh "99 lbs." anymore (actually she's only
gained a few lbs. since the 70's), but she will forever be one of the heavyweights of
R&B. As active as ever, Ann continues to perform both in and out of the U.S. and in
keeping with her conviction that "real and live" is how music should be played,
her band encompasses ten musicians, two dancers and even has a horn section, a rare thing
these days. The band is led by keyboard player Paul Brown, who not only
is the music director, but Ann's agent. Paul was also the co-writer on most of the songs
on the brilliant "Fill This World With Love", Ann's latest
album, which was released on Rounder/Bullseye Blues in 1996. Currently working on the
follow-up, Ann hopes to have the new Rounder album ready in the fall/winter of '98. Coming
out on Ann and Don's own label, By Faith, is the second CD by Gospel group Victory.
Don, who has cut two Gospel albums of his own on By Faith, may possibly have a
third album up his sleeve this year too. Things are indeed looking bright for Soul music.
