Millie Jackson (born July 15, 1944) – A Child Of God (It's Hard To Believe) (1972)

The world was served notice of Jackson's poetic genius when she co-wrote her first single to hit the R&B charts, arranged by Tony Camillo.

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The great singer/songwriter Millie Jackson’s records were staples of the R&B charts in the 1970s and 80s. She has been called the “Mother of Hip Hop” because of her extensive spoken word monologues within her songs and many profanity-laced, sexually explicit lyrics. But her raunchy image has overshadowed her immense songwriting talent, revealed over the years through her master storytelling as she chronicled the Black American working class experience.

Born in Georgia, Mildred Virginia Jackson’s mother died when she was a child and she moved with her father to Newark, New Jersey. When she was a teenager, she went to live with her aunt who lived in Brooklyn.

Jackson started her singing career in the mid-sixties. Some accounts claim she won a talent contest at legendary Harlem nightclub Smalls Paradise, which she had entered on a dare, while others say she simply took the stage at the Psalms Café on 125th Street to win a $5 bet. She was offered more gigs from there, played supper clubs in New York and New Jersey over the next few years, and toured for a time with Sam Cooke’s brother. Her onstage monologues became central to her live act, a style she initially adopted because performing made her nervous.

She recorded a single for MGM in 1970 which did not chart, and soon switched to independent New York label Spring Records. The following year in 1971, the world was served notice of her poetic genius when she released her first single on Spring, the profound meditation on ghetto life “A Child of God (It's Hard to Believe).”

She co-wrote it with Don French, who also co-produced the single with Spring’s in-house producer Raeford Gerald. It was arranged by genius arranger/producer Tony Camillo. “A Child of God (It's Hard to Believe)” went to #22 on the R&B charts, and convinced the label to let her begin recording a full-length album.

For her self-titled debut album, released in 1972 on Spring, Jackson recorded several tracks which were not included on the final LP. These included the upbeat “I Don't Wanna Talk About It,” and the powerful message song “Hypocrisy,” which she co-wrote with Victor Davis, who she married for a brief period. Jackson later re-recorded the track with alternate lyrics, and it was released on her second album, It Hurts So Good (1973). She memorably performed “Hypocrisy” live on Soul Train that same year.

Like her entire debut album, the original version of “Hypocrisy” was produced by Raeford Gerald. The album was arranged by Tony Camillo and another brilliant arranger/producer, Bert DeCoteaux.

Over the next two decades, Jackson was seldom off the R&B charts, with more than three dozen of her singles and nearly twenty full-length albums charting during the 70s and 80s. Backed by the Muscle Shoals Swampers, the quality of her music was top notch. Combined with Millie’s storytelling, the results were true masterpieces like her epic suite “Keep The Home Fires Burnin’” / “Logs and Thangs” / “Put Something Down On It,” from the 1978 LP Get It Out'cha System.

Her audience was primarily Black, female, and working class. And she knew exactly who she was singing for. As she once told Atlanta Magazine in an interview:

“I didn’t sell record to bougies. It was the poor people who bought my music. The women who bought Diana Ross did not buy Millie Jackson. The people in the projects understood me. I was down and dirty. I told you like it was.”

Further info:

“Millie Jackson,” interview, 1980.

“Music Sermon: Millie Jackson – The Original Bad Girl,” by Naima Cochrane, Vibe, March 17, 2019.

#soul #funk #MillieJackson