Leroy Hutson (born June 4, 1945) – Love Oh Love (1973)

Co-written by Hutson, this silky smooth masterpiece was the title track from his debut solo LP on Curtom Records.

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Leroy Hutson is a singer/songwriter and producer who replaced Curtis Mayfield as lead singer of the Impressions in the early 70s before launching his own lengthy solo career.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Hutson formed a doo-wop vocal quartet called the Nu-Tones while in high school. At Howard University in Washington, D.C., he was roommates with Donny Hathaway, before Hathaway dropped out to become Curtis Mayfield’s musical director. Initially studying dentistry, Hutson eventually switched his major to music theory and composition.

He joined a group that Mayfield set up on campus, the Mayfield Singers, who released the single “I’ve Been Trying” in 1967, written and produced by Mayfield. It was issued on Mayfield Records, one of the independent labels Mayfield founded prior to his flagship label Curtom Records, which was established the following year.

In 1968, Hutson and Hathaway co-wrote a song with Mayfield for This Is My Country, the Impressions’ first LP on Curtom. A beautiful song about lost love, “Gone Away” featured a lush. complex arrangement and heartfelt lead vocals by Mayfield. It was later recorded by Roberta Flack for her second album, Chapter Two (1970).

Hutson co-wrote Hathaway’s epic jam “The Ghetto” in 1969, which was released late that year as the first advance single from Hathaway’s debut LP Everything Is Everything (1970). It hit #23 R&B and #87 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Three months after graduting from Howard in 1971, Hutson was invited to replace Mayfield as lead singer of the Impressions. He sang with the group for two and a half years before leaving in 1973 to go solo. “We were in a different city for thirty straight days at the end of those years,” Hutson recalled in a 2018 interview. “It was crazy to me.” See our post from yesterday on Curtis Mayfield for more on the history of the Impressions.

Hutson’s first solo album was Love Oh Love, released in 1973 on Curtom. Its slow jam opening cut “So In Love With You” was first issued as a single in 1972. The track was memorably performed by Hutson on Soul Train, and co-written by Hutson and pianist/songwriter Michael Hawkins.

The pair also co-wrote the album’s silky smooth title track, which was released as a single in 1973 but strangely only reached #75 R&B. “Love Oh Love” was also featured on the Impressions reunion live concert album Curtis in Chicago (1973) with Hutson on lead vocals.

From 1973 to 1992, Hutson recorded and released eight solo albums. During the seventies a dozen of his songs made the R&B charts, although none were ever major hits.

He also produced other artists, like Curtom backing vocalist Arnold Blair, who never released an album of his own but put out several singles that became rare groove classics. “Trying To Get Next To You” (1975) was the most well-known, which Blair and Hutson co-wrote together, arranged and produced by Hutson. Its superb B-side slow jam “I Won The Big Deal (This Time)” was solely written by Hutson.

Along with Mayfield and Rich Tufo, he co-produced the Voices of East Harlem’s self-titled second album, released in 1973.

He co-arranged the LP and co-wrote seven of its nine tracks, including the stellar opener “Cashing In,” the superb call for unity and living together in harmony “Giving Love,” and the powerful, upbeat closing cut with an uplifting message, “New Vibrations.”

“Time to make the people see...we can save humanity with love. If we could just come together now…there’d be no end to what we could do. Love, peace, understanding…these are words I’m sure you’ve heard before…don’t take them for granted…these are things that bring an end to war.”

He also produced one single for a young Geraldine Hunt. She released a series of records on Roulette in the early 1970s that became Northern Soul classics, the last of which was the beautiful “You Brought Joy” (1973). Hutson arranged and produced the track, and co-wrote it with Michael Hawkins.

Further info:

“Leroy Hutson – The Man! (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five),” short documentary directed by Lee Cogswell, Acid Jazz Records, 2018.

“Leroy Hutson: The Man's Still Revving,” interview by Paris Pompor, 2SER, October 10, 2020.

#soul #Impressions #GeraldineHunt #LeroyHutson