Biography
During the 1960s, numerous soul vocalists shared Mary Love’s profile—skilled and capable artists who nonetheless remained overshadowed, owing to an absence of standout songs or distinctive charisma sufficient to set them apart amid intense competition. After completing session work as a teenager in Los Angeles, she secured the opportunity to record roughly six singles for the Modern label in the middle of the decade. Those sides constituted competent, commercially viable soul—nothing exceptional, merely serviceable, and positioned a shade further from pop conventions than Motown yet not markedly divergent. Although she obtained material from noted songwriters Frank Wilson and Ashford-Simpson, her only minor R&B success on Modern arrived with the 1966 single “Move a Little Closer,” which peaked at number 48.
Love re-entered the lower reaches of the R&B Top 50 in 1968 with Roulette’s “The Hurt Is Just Beginning”; curiously, she released just one further 45 on that label, and it did not appear until 1971. Recording activity then stayed negligible for the following decade. When she resurfaced in the mid-1980s as Mary Love Comer, her performances featured updated soul bearing a Christian-centered message. England’s “Northern soul” market sustained a modest following for her work, as it did for many other obscure soul singers, and a CD reissue of her recordings emerged there in the mid-1990s.
Love re-entered the lower reaches of the R&B Top 50 in 1968 with Roulette’s “The Hurt Is Just Beginning”; curiously, she released just one further 45 on that label, and it did not appear until 1971. Recording activity then stayed negligible for the following decade. When she resurfaced in the mid-1980s as Mary Love Comer, her performances featured updated soul bearing a Christian-centered message. England’s “Northern soul” market sustained a modest following for her work, as it did for many other obscure soul singers, and a CD reissue of her recordings emerged there in the mid-1990s.
Albums
