Don Covay

Don Covay’s path as a vocalist traversed nearly every facet of R&B, beginning with the high-voltage rock and roll that marked his first sides and stretching to the raw, self-assured deep soul of his most lasting work. The breadth of his output almost certainly kept him from achieving steady commercial traction, leaving the wider audience more familiar with the compositions he created than with the performances he delivered.

Born Donald Randolph in Orangeburg, South Carolina on March 24, 1938, Covay grew up as the son of a Baptist minister who passed away when the boy was eight. The family soon moved to Washington, D.C., where he and his siblings started a gospel ensemble called the Cherry Keys. While still in middle school, classmates persuaded him to switch to secular music, and in 1953 he entered the Rainbows, a local doo-wop outfit that had already scored a nationwide hit with “Mary Lee.” By the time Covay joined, the original members had dispersed, and the group’s 1956 recording “Shirley” failed to register. He remained long enough to cut one additional single, “Minnie,” before departing; contrary to popular lore, this version of the Rainbows never included Marvin Gaye or Billy Stewart, although both young vocalists occasionally substituted during live shows.

Covay soon took a job driving his idol Little Richard and doubled as the star’s opening act. Richard produced Covay’s 1957 solo debut “Bip Bip Bip,” released under the name Pretty Boy on Atlantic, yet the single made no impression. Covay next moved to Sue and, through the rest of the decade, appeared on four further singles for four different labels—“Switchin’ in the Kitchen” on Big, “Standing in the Doorway” on Blaze, “If You See Mary Lee” on Firefly, and “‘Cause I Love You” on Big Top—none of which charted. He then joined Columbia and issued three 1961 singles—“Shake Wid the Snake,” the Ben E. King–styled “See About Me,” and “Now That I Need You”—that revealed the wide range of his style, running from old-school doo-wop to polished uptown soul to smoldering R&B.

As his own recordings stalled, Covay turned increasingly to songwriting. Together with former Rainbows member John Berry he wrote the dance number “Pony Time.” When Covay recorded it himself for Arnold with the Goodtimers, the 1961 single became his first chart entry, reaching number 60 on the Billboard pop list. Chubby Checker soon cut his own version, which topped both the pop and R&B charts in early 1962.

Covay returned to solo work with 1962’s “I’m Your Soldier Boy” on Scepter, then signed with Cameo and scored another modest hit with the novelty “The Popeye Waddle,” tied to New Orleans’ “Popeye” dance fad. Its 1963 follow-up “Wiggle Wobble” went nowhere, as did “Ain’t That Silly” and “The Froog,” both issued on Cameo’s Parkway subsidiary. During the same period Covay kept supplying outside hits, including Jerry Butler’s “You Can Run (But You Can’t Hide),” Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Letter Full of Tears,” and Connie Francis’ “Mr. Twister.” He also wrote “I’m Gonna Cry,” Wilson Pickett’s first Atlantic single.

Covay next joined the small Rosemart label and entered one of his most inventive stretches. His debut single there, 1964’s “Mercy Mercy,” featured an unknown Jimi Hendrix on guitar; after Atlantic took over distribution the track reached the Billboard Top 40. The song stands as an R&B classic and gained wider notice a year later when the Rolling Stones recorded their version for Out of Our Heads; even a casual listen reveals how strongly Covay’s bold delivery and blues-inflected phrasing shaped Mick Jagger’s own approach.

Around the same time Covay returned briefly to the Hot 100 with “Take This Hurt Off Me” before moving full-time to Atlantic with 1965’s “The Boomerang.” Although that single failed to chart, the Atlantic affiliation brought him into contact with Memphis figures such as keyboardist Booker T. Jones and guitarist Steve Cropper, sharpening the soulful edge of his sound. “Please Do Something” came close to the R&B Top 20, and its successor “See Saw” became his strongest showing yet, climbing to the R&B Top Five and number 44 on the pop chart. By then Etta James (“Watch Dog” and “I’m Gonna Take What He’s Got”) and Otis Redding (“Think About It” and “Demonstration”) were already covering his material, yet Covay could not sustain parallel momentum as a performer. In 1966 he released three striking Atlantic singles—“Sookie Sookie,” “You Put Something on Me,” and “Somebody’s Got to Love You”—none of which charted. The modest “Shingaling ’67” at least reached the R&B Top 50, but both “‘40 Days–40 Nights’” and “You’ve Got Me on Your Critical List” vanished without notice. Even though Aretha Franklin scored one of her signature successes in 1968 with “Chain of Fools,” a song Covay had written fifteen years earlier, his own recording that year made no impact.

Hoping to revive his fortunes, Covay assembled the Soul Clan, an all-star R&B lineup that also featured Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Ben E. King, and Arthur Conley. The group’s lone Atlantic single, “Soul Meeting,” reached the R&B Top 40 in late 1968. After two more unsuccessful solo releases, “I Stole Some Love” and “Sweet Pea,” Covay joined former Shirelles guitarist Joe Richardson and folk artist John Hammond in the Jefferson Lemon Blues Band. That unusual venture into underground blues-rock produced the 1969 album The House of Blue Lights and yielded an R&B number 43 single with “Black Woman.” Covay left Atlantic for Janus in 1970, issued a second Jefferson Lemon Blues Band album, Different Strokes for Different Folks, and in 1972 joined Mercury as an A&R executive. There he also recorded Superdude, the 1973 album many regard as his finest; it spawned the pop hit “I Was Checkin’ Out While She Was Checkin’ In” and the follow-up “Somebody’s Been Enjoying My Home.”

The gospel-tinged non-album single “It’s Better to Have (And Don’t Need)” returned him to the charts in 1974, followed a year later by “Rumble in the Jungle,” a novelty track inspired by the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman heavyweight clash. He then moved to Philadelphia International and collaborated with producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff on 1976’s Travelin’ in Heavy Traffic. Neither “Right Time for Love” nor the title track charted, and after two independent singles—1977’s U-Von release “Back to the Roots” and 1980’s Newman release “Badd Boy”—Covay’s recording career appeared finished.

He resurfaced in 1986, adding backing vocals to the Rolling Stones’ Dirty Work. In 1993 Ron Wood repaid the gesture by appearing, alongside Iggy Pop and Todd Rundgren, on the tribute album Back to the Streets: Celebrating the Music of Don Covay. That same year the Rhythm & Blues Foundation presented Covay with one of its Pioneer Awards, though he could not attend the ceremony because of effects from a 1992 stroke. He recovered sufficiently to release Ad Lib in 2000, his first new studio album in nearly twenty-five years. Covay died on January 31, 2015, at age 78 after suffering another stroke.