Táta Vega (born October 7, 1951) – Get It Up For Love (1978)
A stellar dancefloor anthem released as as a double A-side with the Motown diva's top-20 disco single I Just Keep Thinking About You Baby.
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Singer/songwriter Táta Vega released four solo albums on Motown in the late seventies. She then became a celebrated backing vocalist, and was one of the background singers profiled in the 2013 Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet From Stardom.
Carmen Rosa Vega was born in Jamaica, Queens in New York City. Her father was in the Air Force, and she grew up in Panama, Puerto Rico, Colorado, and Texas. She began singing professionally in the early sixties, when she was a teenager.
In 1969, she was cast in the Los Angeles production of the musical Hair, which also featured Bruce Wayne Campbell aka Jobriath and Dobie Gray. After appearing in Hair, Vega joined Gray in a vocal group called Pollution. She was signed to Motown by Berry Gordy after he saw her perform at the Troubadour with two other female vocalists, Brie Howard and Laurie Anne Bell. Their group Earthquire released one album in 1972 on the label’s Natural Resources imprint.
It was produced by Tom Wilson, the legendary producer whose short-lived Transition Records label released the debut albums by Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Donald Byrd in the late 1950s. In the 60s, he produced seminal albums by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, the Velvet Underground, and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention.
The album featured several songs written or co-written by Vega, including its opening cut “Sunshine Man,” the gospel-flavored “Soul Eyes,” and the jazz-soul-rock jam “Soul Long” which she co-wrote with arranger Mark Hofstein.
Earthquire were cut from Motown after their album failed to chart, but Vega was kept on as a solo artist. Gordy’s niece Iris and producer Winston Monseque heard her voice on a demo and decided to manage her, which led to her releasing four solo albums on the label’s Tamla subsidiary in the late seventies.
Her debut LP Full Speed Ahead came out in 1976, produced by Monseque. Its highlight was arguably the upbeat funk jam “Love Is All You Need,” a track written by the unsung Motown songwriter Clay Drayton.
Vega had her biggest commercial success with her third album Try My Love in 1978. The LP’s single “I Just Keep Thinking About You Baby” was a top-20 hit on the disco charts (#17) and reliably packed dancefloors. She memorably performed it live on the German music TV show Der Musikladen.
It was co-written by Harold Johnson and Gwen Cathey, who with Kenny Stover also co-wrote the superb jam “Need To Know You (Better)” for Finished Touch. The single’s stellar double A-side “Get It Up For Love” was a disco anthem in its own right, written by Ned Doheny and co-produced by Monseque with Andre Fischer.
Further info:
“A Táta Vega Primer,” by Andrew Winistorfer, Vinyl Me, Please, October 25, 2019.
"Táta Vega: Celebrating the 71st birthday of this quintessential soul-gospel vocalist," by
, God's Music Is My Life, October 11, 2022.#soul #funk #disco #Motown #TátaVega