Gloria Scott (born February 26, 1946) – I've Got To Have All Of You (1975)

This superb unreleased track from the Northern Soul icon's lost second LP was written and produced by Barry White with possible help from Frank Wilson and Gene Page.

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Gloria Scott is a singer/songwriter whose debut single in 1964 was written and produced by Sly Stone, spent time as an Ikette in the mid-sixties, and had her 1974 debut album produced by Barry White on Casablanca Records. It was the only LP she ever released, and destined to become a highly-sought after record on the Northern Soul scene.

Born in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin’s hometown, she was raised in Houston. Her mother and father were both cooks, and before she was married, her mother sang, once appearing on a gospel show with Sam Cooke and the Gospel Stirrers. She started piano lessons at age 10, but they were too expensive for her parents to continue for long. As she recalled in a 2020 interview, “I did learn a little bit though, and later on started teaching myself chords. So that’s how I started writing songs.”

Scott moved to California in 1960 with her family, and her parents opened a restaurant named Ella's Cafe in Palo Alto. Her aunt sang in a gospel group with radio DJ Sylvester Stewart, aka Sly Stone, She explained in 2020 how they first met:

“My aunt, Centranella Boulding, had a rehearsal of her Gospel group at her place. The group consisted of Sly, his sister Rose, their cousin, and my Aunt Centranella. I was 14 years old at the time. The next time I saw Sly was at a school dance during summer school. Sly and his group at the time, The Mojo Men, were playing. My friend got Sly’s attention, pointed to me and told him, ‘She can sing.’”

When he invited her up on the stage, he was impressed enough with what he heard to form a group for her. Gloria Scott & the Tonettes also featured Sly’s sister as one of the Tonettes, future Family Stone member Rose Stone. He wrote and produced their only single, the upbeat, gospel-flavored R&B jam “I Taught Him (Pts 1 & 2),” which was released in 1964 on Warner Bros. Records.

Next, Scott became one of Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes, hired alongside Pat Arnold and Maxine Smith after the early sixties lineup of Venetta Fields, Robbie Montgomery and Jessie Smith quit to form the Mirettes. She worked with them for nine months during 1965-66, a period she described in a 2022 interview:

“Oh, it was hard. (Ike) fined us for everything. If I had a tag on my dress and one of the other girls didn’t see it, then he’d fine all of us. If we didn’t have our wigs on tight, he’d pull them back, and if he pulled it off, you’d get fined for that. We all were aware of what was going on with him and Tina, and I didn’t like Ike because of that. Tina would say: ‘Why does Gloria always talk back to Ike? Nobody else talks back to Ike.’ But I didn’t respect him, I didn’t think he was a fair person at all, and I guess I was kind of sassy back then.”

Finally, after the Ikettes missed a flight she got fed up with Ike’s controlling, dictatorial behavior:

“As an Ikette I did a lot of gigs. We were always going somewhere. The final straw for me came when we missed the bus when we were flying to Houston. Ike said, we would have to fly ourselves and be fined one night’s pay. We already weren’t making much money and I said, ‘If he fines me, I’m gonna quit. I remember Tina recounting to me that she said to Ike, ‘Gloria said if you fine them, she’s going to quit.’ Ike’s response was, ‘Let the bitch quit then.’ And that’s just what I did.”

In the early seventies, Barry White became interested in a song she had co-written with her then-songwriting partner Herman Chaney. They went to White’s offices at his Soul Unlimited production company on Sunset Boulevard, and after playing some songs for him he signed her on the spot to a seven-year artist’s contract.

White produced her full-length debut LP, What Am I Gonna Do, which came out in late 1974 on Casablanca Records, and co-arranged it with Gene Page and one of their mutual protégés, singer/songwriter Tom Brock. It was only the second album ever released by the label, and the first by an R&B artist. What Am I Gonna Do has been heavily bootlegged over the years, and original copies today sell for $100 on average on Discogs.

Its opening cut title track, co-written by Motown legend Frank Wilson’s brother Vance Wilson and Thomas Alton Anderson, was released as the LP’s lead single (with an instrumental version “What Shall I Do” on the flip) but only reached #74 R&B. Other highlights included the pair of beautiful heartbreak songs “It's Better To Have No Love” and “I Think Of You,” both written by Brock, and the heartfelt closing cut “Help Me Get Off This Merry-Go-Round,” which Scott co-wrote with Brock and Bob Relf.

The album’s standout cut was arguably “(A Case Of) Too Much Lovemakin',” solely written by Brock, which was only released as a single in Australia b/w “What Am I Gonna Do” and never charted. However, within a decade it was destined to become a huge record on the Northern Soul scene. The average price for original copies today on Discogs is a cool $850, and some have sold for nearly twice that amount.

She shortly recorded another album’s worth of material with virtually the same team, this time largely produced by H.B. Barnum. White plus Frank and Vance Wilson co-wrote its lead single, “Just As Long As We're Together (In My Life There Will Never Be Another).” It was produced by White who co-arranged it with Page, and went to #14 R&B, as well as #14 on Billboard’s brand new disco charts in early 1975. The full album was never released, for reasons that remain a mystery to this day.

An alternate, longer version of “Just As Long As We're Together (In My Life There Will Never Be Another)” was featured on the 4XCD box set Barry White Unlimited (2009). This compilation also included the stellar previously unreleased love song “I've Got To Have All Of You,” one of the tracks recorded in 1975 for Scott’s lost second album. It was credited on the box set as having been written, produced, and arranged by White, but this information may be incorrect, with possible additional involvement by Barnum, Frank and/or Vance Wilson, and Page.

In 1979, Scott appeared as a backing vocalist on former Supreme Mary Wilson’s self-titled debut solo LP after the Supremes disbanded, and later toured with her alongside fellow backing vocalist Karen Jackson. Her seven-year contract with Barry White expired without him ever producing another album for her.

By the mid-1990s, Scott had left her time in the spotlight behind and was living on the island of Guam, singing in hotels. A tourist from the UK who owned a club called the Underground recognized her name and informed her that “(A Case Of) Too Much Lovemakin” was an extremely popular song among Northern Soul devotees. After she moved back to California, Scott was contacted by German promoters and invited to perform at Hamburg’s Baltic Soul Weekender. This led her to reestablish her musical career, and become a fixture at Northern Soul events in the UK and Europe. Since 2008, she has performed every year at the Baltic Soul Weekender.

Happy Birthday to the fabulous Gloria Scott.

Further info:

“The soulful trip of Gloria Scott,” by T. Watts, Lake County News, October 11, 2020.

“Soul survivor Gloria Scott: 'Tina would say, “Why does Gloria always talk back to Ike?'”,” interview by Alexis Petridis, The Guardian, October 12, 2022.

“Under The Radar,” by Garth Cartwright, Record Collector, December 1, 2022.

#soul #SlyStone #TinaTurner #BarryWhite #MaryWilson #GloriaScott