Loleatta Holloway (November 5, 1946 – March 21, 2011) – Catch Me On The Rebound (1978)

The opening cut from her Queen of the Night LP was co-written and produced by Norman Harris with an all-star Philly soul lineup, remixed by Walter Gibbons.

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The great singer Loleatta Holloway became an underground disco superstar in the late 1970s and is currently the most-sampled female performer in music history.

Born in Chicago, Holloway get her start singing in her mother’s gospel group the Holloway Community Singers. She was a member of the Caravans from 1967-71, another Chicago gospel vocal group.

Her first single was the gospel-soul burner “Rainbow ‘71,” a cover of Gene Chandler’s hit from 1963 (which he scored another hit with two years later, re-recorded as “Rainbow ‘65”), written by Curtis Mayfield. It was released on Apache Records but licensed to Galaxy for national distribution.

Holloway’s manager and producer Floyd Smith (who she later married) secured her a recording contract with Aware Records, the soul music subsidiary of Atlanta-based General Recording Corporation (GRC). She released two albums on the label. Her second LP Cry to Me reached #47 on the R&B charts in 1975, propelled by its emotional title track which cracked the R&B top-ten at #10.

GRC was owned by the notorious Greek-American gangster Michael Thevis. He got rich in the pornography business, specifically through peep show machines located in X-rated bookstores. Thevis had ties to the mafia through the Five Families of New York City, and murdered some of his business rivals, which led to his arrest in 1974. GRC subsequently fell apart, and Holloway was signed by the great Philly producer Norman Harris in 1976 for his new Salsoul Records subsidiary Gold Mind.

Her self-titled debut album on Gold Mind was recorded during 1976-77 and released in 1977. Its opening cut “Hit And Run” went to #3 on the disco charts and #56 R&B on its way to becoming one of her signature dancefloor anthems. Co-written by Harris, Ron Tyson, and the talented Philly songwriter Allan Felder, it was later remixed by the legendary DJ Walter Gibbons.

That same year, Holloway also appeared as the featured vocalist on a classic track by Salsoul’s house band the Salsoul Orchestra from their Magic Journey LP. “Run Away” was another #3 Disco hit although it only reached #84 R&B. In 1997, it was covered by Louie Vega and Kenny Dope’s Nuyorican Soul and hit #1 on dance charts. The track was memorably remixed as an extended version in recent years by DJ Danny Krivit.

For her next album, Queen of the Night (1978), Harris and Tyson co-wrote the slamming opening track “Catch Me On The Rebound.” It featured an all-star Philly soul lineup, including unsung bassist Jimmie Williams (who also played on “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”), Harris and T.J. Tindall on guitars, Ron “Have Mercy” Kersey on keyboards, Larry Washington on congas, the Sweethearts of Sigma (Carla Benson, Evette Benton, and Barbara Ingram) on background vocals, and Earl Young on drums.

Holloway performed it live in 1978 during one of her first-ever television appearances, when she was a guest on the Philadelphia music show Steel Pier, hosted by Ed Hurst and broadcast on WPVI Channel 6. “Catch Me On The Rebound” went to #9 on dance charts and #92 R&B, and Walter Gibbons created another masterpiece with his extended 12” remix.

In 1979, Holloway joined forces with the great singer/songwriter Dan Hartman and provided vocals for his #1 Disco hit, the dancefloor masterpiece “Vertigo/Relight My Fire,” mixed by remix pioneer John Luongo. See our earlier post on Hartman for more on their collaboration on this track.

After “Vertigo/Relight My Fire” went to number one, Hartman wrote and produced the title track to Love Sensation (1980), her fourth and final album on Gold Mind. It was another #1 club hit, and has since been sampled more than 180 times by other artists.

In the early eighties, Holloway performed frequently at nightclubs around the country, and was a regular act at Club Zanzibar in Newark, New Jersey where DJ Tony Humphries kept the dancefloor on fire and helped house music go global. According to Larkie Rucker, Zanzibar's assistant manager and host:

“We used to partner up with Paradise Garage and brought in some really good acts. But the person who came the most, and who would actually stay at the hotel, was Loleatta Holloway; she was like our resident.”

Birthday party for Holloway at Zanzibar

With the rise of house music, Holloway’s disco anthems took on new life as they began to be heavily sampled. In 1989, the producers behind the Italian house group Black Box bought a 12” acapella record of “Love Sensation” on a trip to New York City. Back home, they used an Akai S900 sampler to sample her vocals for a track they titled “Ride On Time,” a mistaken translation of her lyric “right on time.” The single was originally issued by Italy’s Discomagic Records, then licensed by the British label Deconstruction. It blew up in the UK, going to #1 on the charts for six weeks and becoming the best-selling single of the year.

When sales took off, Deconstruction’s corporate owner BMG tried to reach an agreement with Salsoul Records over the unauthorized use of Holloway’s vocals. They eventually came to a settlement, but according to sources, Salsoul got paid while Holloway did not. In a 2005 interview with dancefloor historian Bill Brewster, she reflected on the experience:

“You know, at one time, with the Black Box situation, I thought I was gonna lose my mind. Seriously. I almost had a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t talk about it without cryin’. I’d spent so long tryin’ to be an entertainer and then here’s this big record in London of all places, one of the biggest records, and I’m not even getting a credit for it! It was like, “How dare they?” Someone’s just taken something from you, right in front of your face. For years it destroyed me. It made me a person I don’t like, and I’m not a bad person. But in life you get what you got coming.”

Happy Heavenly Birthday to Loleatta Holloway.

Further info:

“Loleatta Holloway, Gospel and Disco Singer, Dies at 64,” obituary, The New York Times, March 24, 2011.

“How Loleatta Holloway Became Disco's Most Sampled Artist,” by Tim Lawrence, TimLawrence.info, October 15, 2015.

"Loleatta Holloway: Queen of the Night," 2005 interview by Bill Brewster, Red Bull Music Academy Daily, January 22, 2018.

#soul #disco #NormanHarris #DanHartman #LoleattaHolloway