THE MARGIE JOSEPH STORY, PART 1: A PHOENIX RISING (1950 - 1971)

“Phoenix rising” symbolizes renewal and overcoming adversity, and it’s associated with strength and the ability to triumph over difficult circumstances. Margie Joseph’s life and career in music reflect transformation, hope and - by overcoming trials – becoming stronger. Margie: “I was immature for the record business and my expectations or hopes were probably too great or too high for a young black talented female in that period of time. However, I was a college graduate and very intelligent; maybe not in the financial aspect of the record industry, but I was energetic about sharing my talent with the world. I was confident and strong, assured I would still have been another asset to all their endeavours. Later I moved my interest from the record industry to teaching school and engaging in humanitarian projects. I stared the demon in its eyes and moved on. I was willing to choose battles I knew I would win.”

JUS’ BLUES LEGEND

The good news is that Margie’s music is finally recognized in a grand manner, when she receives the Jus’ Blues Legend Lifetime Achievement Artist Award at the 25^th Anniversary Jus’ Blues Music Awards at IP Casino Resort Spa in Biloxi, Mississippi, on July 31, 2025 - https://www.jusblues.org. Margie: “I’m rehearsing now, because I have to perform at the casino, so I’ve got a lot of preparation to do. It’s a blues conference that travels around the country, and now they’re holding it close to my home town.”

Biloxi is located 21 miles west from Pascagoula, MS, where Margaret Marie Joseph was born on August 19. With a population around 21,000 today, Pascagoula lies on the Gulf coast and close to the border of Alabama. Distance to New Orleans, to southwest is 110 miles. “I was born in a hospital in Pascagoula, but where I stayed and was reared was in Gautier, which was a township about three miles west of Pascagoula. Now they are incorporated.”

“Growing up in Gautier to me was pure. My childhood was pure, simple and resourceful. It was clean living, a good foundation, because the community was small and we took care one another. We didn’t really need money. You had some people, who would grow vegetables. You had some people, where you could get meat. And people did not have cars. They could walk everywhere. That’s the perfect life to me, when I compare it to today – believe it or not. I wish I could rear my children like that, because I know they would get a solid foundation. That’s the beauty of life, when you can find simplicity and purity of it all and get away from the helter-skelter of everything where the world wants to take us now.”

 “My mother is a coloratura soprano. All of her sisters were musicians – piano, guitar - and they had their own little choir. I don’t know how angels sing, but that’s how I think they sang. I would be guided and guarded by my family and ancestors from the Church of God, which they called back then a Sanctified Holiness Church, and in that church I learned music. The very soul of music for me came from the maternal side. The paternal side were preachers, so we are a family of strong faith in God. That’s how we were raised. Music is in my soul. It’s in the marrow of my bones.”

 “My daddy saw the spirit of music in me. He was just delighted with my gift. He would bring me records by Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson and Billie Holiday. These were the people I would use as practice material for my singing. Actually, I adored Sarah Vaughan and the power of Ella Fitzgerald’s voice, and I loved her scat. I liked rhythm & blues, of course, when growing up and dancing, but my tutorial part came from the jazz side. My grandmother said no to both of them, jazz and rhythm & blues. She said I’d better stick to gospel, because I sang gospel music, too.”

 Margie’s first public performance took place at the age of three, when she sang How Much Is That Doggie in a Window. “I’ll never forget that. I was in a pink dress. That was a little program at the end of a school year. When children were ready to start school at five, at three-years-old I was already sneaking into the school building, sitting at the back of a classroom learning. That’s why I finished high school one year earlier.”

 “I sang in every choir. I was so confident in my gift that anytime there was music around me, a choir or something, I wanted to showcase my gift and I probably made a few of my peers indignant” (laughing).

NEW ORLEANS BOUND

 After high school, Margie chose the Dillard University in New Orleans, where she majored in Speech and Communication.  “I graduated in May 1966, and I went to Upward Bound. I had scholarships from many collages – New York City, Columbia… - but I wasn’t really for the big city life, so I chose to go to Dillard, and I’m very glad that I did. And my dad was working in New Orleans, so I wanted to be near him.”

 “I was good in sciences, arts and languages, but my mind was all in music. My dad didn’t want me to go directly into the entertainment side of it. I did choose the Speech part, because that would be a part of me being able to exhibit my knowledge in the entertainment business, if I wanted to do something like television. I had a minor in drama.”

 “I was a sophomore in Dillard. My good friends and dormitory mates were going to a Lou Rawls concert. I couldn’t go, because I had an exam the next morning. They were able to meet Larry McKinley and they told him ‘there’s a girl, our school mate, named Margie Joseph, and you need to hear her.’ Larry was managing Aaron Neville, Ernie K-Doe, Irma Thomas and he was a promoter. He promoted the Lou Rawls show that night.”

 Larry McKinley (1927-2013) was known as the “Voice of JazzFest” because of his significant contribution to New Orleans Jazz Festival. He was also a radio personality, a host of many local radio shows, and the co-founder of Minit Records with Joe Banashak, where he would work with Jessie Hill, Benny Spellman, Allen Toussaint, Chris Kenner, etc.

 Margie: “There were payphones in the hallways of the dormitory. Next morning, after someone shouted ‘Margie Joseph, a phone call’, I came to the phone. Larry introduced himself and asked to meet me. At the audition at WYLD, I sang Brenda Holloway’s Every Little Bit Hurts, because it was one of my favourite songs. I played it on the piano. Willie Tee was there and George Davis.”

 This episode led to a tighter collaboration between the two and eventually to marriage in the early 1970s. “He had three daughters and I had one with Larry. Now they tease me and call me ‘Sister Mama’, because I was so young. I was more like a big sister to them. We had an age difference of about ten years.” Larry together with his wife at that point became also Margie’s managers. Margie’s first commercial performance in 1967 was with Cannonball Adderley. “I never forget that night on a river boat. I chose to sing What Kind of Fool Am I. I did a couple of songs that Cannonball and Nancy Wilson had done together. I remember Joe Zawinul on keyboard. He was so patient, because I was so nervous. That was the official showcasing of Margie Joseph.”

WHY DOES A MAN HAVE TO LIE

 Margie was only 17 years old, when her fist recording session took place at the Cosimo Studios in New Orleans (https://acloserwalknola.com/places/cosimo-recording-studios). “It was a big warehouse kind of studio. It was where the other artists from New Orleans were recording. I was so elated to get a chance to record that actually I’m oblivious of the aesthetics of the building. It was just a little girl getting ready to make a record.” That really was Margie’s first-ever recording session, so no demos exist prior to that.

 Produced by Larry McKinley and Lee Diamond and arranged by George Davis, the song titled Why Does a Man Have to Lie was written by Lee and George. This big-voiced stomper is peppered with a sax solo in the middle, and Margie still has a little girl tone in her voice. “As I grew older, I understood what I was singing. It was funny to me. People would give me songs to sing. I would sing them, as if I had the wisdom behind the song, but, as I grew older, I found out that men do lie… and women do too” (laughing).

 Wilbert Lee Smith, Sr. aka Lee Diamond (1932-85) was a musician (sax, drums), songwriter and a singer, who recorded for Vee-Jay, Minit and Lola and who worked with Little Richard in the Upsetters and James Brown, among others. “Lee was there, when I sang Every Little Bit Hurts, when I auditioned. Lee was funny. He made me feel very comfortable and he understood that I was very young. I think he was floored also by my gift, that I could sing like that and he wanted to be a part of that. He was a very humble kind of guy. He didn’t show himself as somebody famous or anything like that. All of them were like my daddies, they were old men to me (laughing). I was only seventeen. I just showed them respect, like I was taught to do.”

 George Richard Davis, Jr. (1938-2008) was a jazz musician and songwriter. George and Lee wrote Tell It Like It Is for Aaron Neville in 1966 and that same year George played guitar on Robert Parker’s Barefootin’.

 The same threesome of Larry, Lee and Robert were in charge of the B-side, too. Titled See Me, the song is a very slow and slightly bluesy number and features surprisingly soulful vocalizing from Margie. “I really do like See Me. That was my first slow r&b, and I felt like grown, like a woman.”

 Larry leased the song to Okeh Records and it was released in late 1967. Columbia didn’t support Okeh strongly those days anymore, which eventually meant the closure of that subsidiary in 1970. Margie’s debut single wasn’t a commercial success, although Margie wasn’t aware of the sales figures. “I never knew anything about the record business until my late, late years, when I found out that I need to be more adept in the recording business and entertainment businesses. I entrusted all of that to them. My father was very displeased, because he lived in New Orleans and he knew some of the gossip about things and he didn’t want me in it. I trusted people and I was very naïve. And I also finished collage.”

 “I have a 21-year-old granddaughter, who out-sings me. She’s awesome, and I’m going to showcase her very soon, but the wolves will have to come through me if they’re interested."

 The other two songs – the poppy A Matter of Life or Death and the funky Show Me (not the Joe Tex song) – that were recorded in that session by the same lot were released as Margie’s second and last Okeh single in 1968.

NEVER CAN YOU BE

 For the next three years Margie’s recording home was Volt Records, a subsidiary of Stax out of Memphis. “That was Larry McKinley again. He had connections with Al Bell, who was the vice-president of Stax. They were good friends. Larry could move mountains back then. He was well-known and did a lot of networking… and he really was a genius.”

 Released in March 1969, One More Chance is a catchy and horn-heavy toe-tapper, written by Willie Tee. Willie Tee (1944-2007) aka Wilson Turbinton was a singer, producer, songwriter and keyboardist, who had releases on Atlantic, Capitol, Gatur, U.A., etc. He was the brother of the co-arranger of One More Chance, Earl “Fats” Turbinton.  “Willie, Larry, George and Lee Diamond – they were like a team.”

 Willie’s song Never Can You Be on the flip is a melancholy, hurting ballad with a convincing vocal performance. “That was the song that I thought I was really grown old. Even I’m a fan of that song the way I sang it. That’s an awesome song. In fact, I’m thinking about doing it again. I don’t think I can top that, but I’d like to do it from the woman with wisdom now.”

 The plug side of Margie’s second Volt single in October 1969 was an easy, snappy dancer called What You Gonna Do. It had appeared first as the B-side to Bobby Womack’s Minit single titled What Is This in 1968. On that record the credited writers are Bobby Womack, Darryl Carter and David Sanders of the Masqueraders. On Margie’s single, however, the last two names are missing.

 On the label it reads “produced by Consoul of New Orleans”, which is Larry’s production company. “Isaac Hayes was there. He’s actually the one that I want to say produced it. I needed a song, somebody called Bobby Womack, he sent the song, Isaac changed it around and all I did was sing it. I had no limitations back then. I could sing anything. That’s what Jerry Wexler used to say. That session was in Baton Rouge. That’s all I remember. They were moving me so fast. I would just end up there by the microphone and I would be singing, and they would put a lot of background on records after I had recorded them.” Margie and Isaac had probably visited the Capital City Sound Studios in Baton Rouge.

 Willie Tee’s song on the flip named Nobody is a floating, up-tempo mover with a rich instrumentation and choir on the background.

YOUR SWEET LOVIN’

 Margie’s third Volt single, Your Sweet Lovin’, is actually her first charted record. Released in April 1970, it hit # 46 on Billboard’s soul charts two months later. “I recorded that in Memphis. They would show me Billboard magazines and the bullets for my songs, but I didn’t know what was success. They chose not to enlighten me of the business side. I was hung upon just singing. I was ignorant and naïve. That’s why I’m going to speak at a seminar to young musicians how important it is to guard your gift. I didn’t start paying attention to the business side until I started handling my own career.”

 Produced and written by Darryl Carter and Fred Briggs, Your Sweet Lovin’ is a mid-tempo, almost funky number with an intense and sensual delivery from Margie, whereas What’s Wrong Baby on the flip is a tender and poignant ballad.

 Darryl Carter is a singer/songwriter/producer/engineer, who moved from Chicago to Memphis in 1964, where he first worked with Chips Moman. He is the man behind countless hit songs by Wilson Pickett, Joe Simon, Oscar Toney Jr., Bobby Womack, the Sweet Inspirations, O.V. Wright, Otis Clay, Syl Johnson etc., not forgetting his own recordings.

 Freddie Julius Briggs was brought from Detroit by Don Davis. He cut solo recordings in the 1960s and ´70s and wrote songs for the Dells, Mavis Staples and Johnnie Taylor. He’s the former husband of Kim Tolliver. He also recorded under the name of Coldwater Stone an album called Defrost Me on GSF Records in 1973.

 “That’s a mighty super-dynamic duo. Darryl and Freddie had two different styles. They presented their individual concept of how they heard me. That is why my upcoming album was a hit. It was two sides. It was like a colouring book.”

 A pounding mid-tempo and big-voiced song titled Sweeter Tomorrow was Margie’s fourth Volt single and it was written, produced and co-arranged by Fred Briggs. The other arranger was Dale Ossman Warren (1943-94), a producer, arranger, songwriter, conductor and a violinist, who first became known as an arranger at Motown in the early 60s. He also arranged Bettye LaVette’s Let Me Down Easy and at Stax did some arrangements for Isaac Hayes as well. He is probably best known for the funk album, Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth, which he produced and wrote in 1973 for 24-Carat Black on Enterprise.

Punish Meon the B-side – composed by Briggs, Carter and Warren – is a pleading beat ballad with rich orchestration. “My studio sessions were packed with people. If I was recording in Memphis at Stax, I would see a host of people there just listening. It was like I was doing a performance.”

STOP! IN THE NAME OF LOVE

 Margie’s debut album on Volt, Margie Joseph Makes a New Impression, was released in October 1970 and it evolved into the biggest LP in her career. On Billboard’s soul charts it went as high as # 7 and on the pop side it reached # 67. “That album was again produced by Darryl Carter and Freddie Briggs, the dynamic duo. That was a fantastic album. That was awesome – the recording experience, the material… I have a different feel for every song, a different vibe.”

 Recorded both at Stax and Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, the album was one of the most popular ones among Stax/Volt albums at that point, alongside Isaac Hayes releases. Arranged by Dale, Darryl and Fred, as engineers you can spot such familiar names as Bobby Manuel, Ed Wolfrum and Jimmy Johnson.

 Bobby Manuel: “I played guitar on all the tracks at Stax as well as engineered. The most memorable thing that I remember about that session was Darryl Carter and Freddie Briggs arguing incessantly. I actually thought they were going to come to blows. Most of the arguments were over string arrangements. Darryl wanted the record to be much simpler and Freddie being an arranger wanted them maxed out with strings and horns. They left the rhythm grooves pretty much to us. Over all it was a fun session with Darryl and Freddie keeping us amused all the time and Margie was fantastic, of course.”

 In the credits it says “tracks cut by the Bar-Kays, Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and staff musicians at Stax Records, Memphis, Tennessee.”

 For deep soul music fans, the highlight of the album must be Margie’s reading of Stop! In the Name of Love, which was released as a single in March 1971. It went to # 38-soul and # 96-pop, but its popularity has grown over the years. This Holland-Dozier-Holland’s song was originally catapulted to the top by the Supremes in early 1965, but it was Fred’s idea to create a slow and passionate version of it. However, it was Margie’s idea to add the Women Talk monologue to it. Margie: “I admire Diana Ross greatly. She’s awesome. I had formed my own school group and we were the Supremes in my high school, and Diana Ross was I. That’s when I started singing rhythm & blues. When Freddie said ‘let’s do it’, I knew I had to put my signature on it. I didn’t want to just sing it the way it was written for Diana. So, I decided to tell a story. The monologue is like a reference story to why he needed to stop – because I loved him. That monologue was covered by Lil Wayne. He did it over, but I never got recognized for it. I’m still battling the publishing on it. That’s the business. People steal your stuff. They just take it.” The monologue was sampled in Lil Wayne’s Gossip in 2007.

 The album version of the song lasts over eight minutes, and most of the second half is improvising. On the single, Stop! was backed with John Anderson’s beautiful and plaintive country-soul ballad called Make Me Believe You’ll Stay. “That’s the story that’s applicable to my life. I began to lose trust in people and in the music industry. That song makes you cry. That’s a beautiful song, and I recorded it twice.”

MEDICINE BEND

 A poppy and hooky, Motown type of a dancer called Medicine Bend was released as a single in the U.K. in September 1971. “Back then the moral of the story was about a young lady, who got pregnant. I didn’t like it at first, but now - as I grew older - I began to like it. A lot of things that were presented to me I would just sing, because I knew I could sing them, but my soul wasn’t in it at the time.” Fred’s writing partner on this song was David Allison Butler, who has written material also for Kip Anderson and Johnnie Taylor.

 Among the other new songs on the album there are Darryl’s and Fred’s Come Tomorrow, which is a pretty ballad and almost like a show song, and an energetic, light and bouncy ditty named Same Thing, and here the writer credits go to Margie. “It was my first that I recorded. I used to write a lot of songs, when I was a teenager.”

 How Beautiful the Rain - by Darryl Carter, Marvell Thomas and Nancy Pratt – is a lush ballad with a lot of strings, Darryl’s I’m Fed up is an almost aggressive stormer, boisterous and finally Fred’s Temptation’s about to Take Your Love is an up-tempo, melodic number.

 “Freddie produced Stop! In the Name of Love, Medicine Bend and Sweeter Tomorrow, and Darryl would produce more of a pop sound, like How Beautiful the Rain. It was like one day Freddie would be there, then the next day Darryl would be there. It was like I was turning on switches – okay, I’m going to sing this style today, and tomorrow I’m going to sing this way. It was a learning experience. It was exciting. I wasn’t just singing. I knew how to feel the song.”

PHASE II

 Released in July 1971, Margie’s follow-up album called Phase II is produced by Fred Briggs alone, without Darryl Carter. He also plays piano and arranged the rhythm for the Bar-Kays. Horns and strings are arranged by Dale Warren, and Ron Capone and William Brown are the engineers.

 “The First Impression album speaks volumes over this Phase II. The Phase II was for me ‘let’s hurry up and get another album out there.’ I was just singing – ‘give me the songs’ – because I love music.”

  Margie may be a bit too critical in her review of the album, since the A-side features beautiful and soulful music – at least for this scribe. The side kicks off with the only single off the album, an emotional and powerful beat-ballad titled That Other Woman Got My Man & Gone. Released one month earlier, the song was composed by Dorothy K. Briggs, Fred’s wife and better known to soul music aficionados under the name of Kim Tolliver. On the B-side they put a melodic, mid-tempo toe-tapper named I’ll Always Love You, and it was penned by Roslyn Nocentelli. “That’s Leo Nocentelli’s sister. Leo was a member of the Meters. Leo played with me a lot. He was always there with me in New Orleans.” Although a great double-sider, the single didn’t chart.

 Another Supremes hit from 1965, My World Is Empty Without You, is moulded into the winning formula of the preceding single. “Fred was trying to do something he did with Stop!” Margie’s fine vocalizing is backed by delightful symphonic soul orchestration. My World Is Empty Without You has over the years been covered by many artists: Jean King, Barbara McNeir, the Originals, Vanilla Fudge, Lamont Dozier, etc.

 The concluding song on the A-side is Fred’s impressive and high-powered soul ballad titled Strung Out. “They were giving me a lot of songs talking about heart-aching and heartbreaking.”

 They increase tempo on the B-side of the album with Fred’s mellow toe-tapper called Please Don’t Stop Lovin’ Me and Fred’s easy dancer titled Takin’ All the Love I Can. A mid-paced, horn-heavy funk named Didn’t Have to Tell Me is falsely credited to Roslyn Nocentelli. Margie: I wrote Didn’t Have to Tell Me. I like the Memphis funk.” There is, however, I Love You Too Much to Say Goodbye, which is Dorothy’s (Kim’s) emotive and poignant soul ballad. Unfortunately, the album got lost.

 Margie’s six-year period with Atlantic with six albums will be covered in the second part of our story, which still leaves us four more albums to discuss.

DISCOGRAPHY

SINGLES

(Label / titles / # Billboard placings: Soul/Pop / year)

Okeh 7304) Why Does A Man Have To Lie / See Me (1967)

Okeh 7313) A Matter Of Life Or Death / Show Me (1968)

Volt 4012) One More Chance / Never Can You Be (1969)

Volt 4023) What You Gonna Do / Nobody

Volt 4037) Your Sweet Lovin’ (# 46 – soul) / What’s Wrong Baby (1970)

Volt 4046) Sweeter Tomorrow / Punish Me

Volt 4056) Stop! In the Name of Love (# 38 / # 96) / Make Me Believe You’ll Stay (1971)

Volt 4061) That Other Woman Got My Man & Gone / I’ll Always Love You

ALBUMS

MARGIE JOSEPH MAKES A NEW IMPRESSION (Volt 6012; # 7-soul, # 67-pop) 1970

Monologue: Women Talk & Stop! In The Name Of Love / Punish Me / Medicine Bend / Come Tomorrow // Sweeter Tomorrow / Same Thing / How Beautiful The Rain / I’m Fed Up / Make Me Believe You’ll Stay / Temptation’s About To Take Your Love

PHASE II (Volt 6016) 1971

That Other Woman Got My Man & Gone / My World Is Empty Without You / I’ll Always Love You / Strung Out // Please Don’t Stop Lovin’ Me / I Love You Too Much To Say Goodbye / Didn’t Have To Tell Me / Takin’ All The Love I Can

..............

Interview conducted on June 14, 2025; acknowledgements to Margie Joseph, Alex Subinas, Bobby Manuel and (the late) Peter Dawson. Sources: David Cole’s “In The Basement” magazine # 36, Bob McGrath’s Soul Discography and Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles and Albums.

Unfortunately we couldn’t include any photos from the past, because Katrina swallowed up them all.

© Heikki Suosalo