Howard Tate
Encyclopedia
Howard Tate is an American soul music
singer and songwriter.
group that included Garnet Mimms
and, as the Gainors, recorded rhythm and blues
sides for Mercury Records
and Cameo Records
in the early 1960s. Tate performed with organist Bill Doggett
and returned to Philadelphia.
Mimms, leading a group called the Enchanters, introduced Tate to record-producer Jerry Ragovoy
, who began recording Tate for Verve Records
. Utilizing top New York City
session musician
s such as Paul Griffin
, Richard Tee
, Eric Gale
, Chuck Rainey
and Herb Lovell, Tate and Ragovoy produced, from 1966 to 1968, a series of blues
y soul-music recordings that are regarded as some of the most sophisticated of the era. "Ain't Nobody Home" (1966), "Look at Granny Run Run" (1966), "Baby I Love You" (1967), and "Stop" (1968) all written or co-written by Ragovoy, were well received by record buyers. "Ain't Nobody Home", "Look At Granny" and "Stop" charted pop and top 20 R&B.
performed another single, the title track from his first album, "Get It While You Can", during this time. The album was regarded as a classic by aficionados, but it failed to sell in large quantities. However, Tate's reputation among critics was high. As Robert Christgau
writes in his review of Tate's Verve material, "Tate is a blues-drenched Macon native who had the desire to head north and sounds it every time he gooses a lament with one of the trademark keens that signify the escape he never achieved. He brought out the best in soul pro Jerry Ragovoy, who made Tate's records jump instead of arranging them into submission, and gave him lyrics with some wit to them besides."
Tate, working apart from Ragovoy, made an album called Howard Tate's Reaction that was released in 1970 on Turntable Records. Produced by Lloyd Price
and Johnny Nash
, it was distributed in minute quantities, and critics felt it lacked the flair of his Verve material. Still, as Christgau writes, "Tate's voice is potent enough to activate more inert material." The record was reissued, as Reaction, in 2003. Ragovoy and Tate reunited for the 1972 Atlantic Records
Howard Tate, which included more songs by Ragovoy along with Tate's versions of Bob Dylan
's "Girl from the North Country" and Robbie Robertson
's and Levon Helm
's "Jemima Surrender." Again, the album was acclaimed by critics and virtually ignored by listeners.
After recording a single for Epic Records
and a few songs for his own label, Tate retired from the record business in the late 1970s. He sold securities in the New Jersey and Philadelphia area, and in the 1980s developed a dependence on drugs, ending up living in a homeless shelter. In the mid-1990s Howard Tate began counselling drug abusers and the mentally ill, and worked as a preacher. A Jersey City disc jockey discovered Tate's whereabouts early in 2001, and in spring 2001 Tate played his first date in many years, in New Orleans. He then began working with Ragovoy on an album that was released, as Rediscovered, in 2003. It was regarded as a return to form and included covers of songs by Elvis Costello
and Prince as well as a new version of "Get It While You Can."
At Roskilde Festival
2004 he sang Love Will Keep You Warm with Swan Lee
. The song can be found on the 'Swan Lee - The Complete Collection' from 2007
In 2006, Shout! Factory
released Howard Tate Live, recorded in Denmark in summer 2004. Working with producer, arranger and songwriter Steve Weisberg, Tate recorded A Portrait of Howard, which was released in fall 2006 on the independent Solid Ground label. It included compositions by Randy Newman
, Nick Lowe
, Lou Reed
and Carla Bley
, as well as songs written by Tate and Weisberg.
In late 2007, Tate recorded Blue Day in Nashville with producer Jon Tiven
. The record was released in summer 2008.
Tate was also a judge for the 6th annual Independent Music Awards
to support independent artists' careers.
2010 saw a release of a limited vinyl only direct-to-disc live recording from Blue Heaven Studios with Tate and his touring quartet performing songs from his catalog.
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
singer and songwriter.
Early life
He moved with his family to Philadelphia in the early 1940s. In his teens, he joined a gospel musicGospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
group that included Garnet Mimms
Garnet Mimms
Garnet Mimms is an American singer, influential in soul music and rhythm and blues...
and, as the Gainors, recorded rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
sides for Mercury Records
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...
and Cameo Records
Cameo Records
Cameo was a USA based budget record label, first flourishing in the 1920s, not connected with a later record label of the same name which was active in the 1950s and 1960s.The Cameo Record Company was based in Manhattan, New York...
in the early 1960s. Tate performed with organist Bill Doggett
Bill Doggett
Bill Doggett was an American jazz and rhythm and blues pianist and organist. He is best known for his tracks, "Honky Tonk" and "Hippy Dippy", and variously working with The Ink Spots, Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Jordan.-Biography:William Ballard Doggett was born in...
and returned to Philadelphia.
Mimms, leading a group called the Enchanters, introduced Tate to record-producer Jerry Ragovoy
Jerry Ragovoy
Jordan "Jerry" Ragovoy was an American songwriter and record producer.His best-known composition "Time Is on My Side" was made famous by The Rolling Stones, although it had been recorded earlier by Kai Winding and Irma Thomas...
, who began recording Tate for Verve Records
Verve Records
Verve Records is an American jazz record label now owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded by Norman Granz in 1956, absorbing the catalogues of his earlier labels, Clef Records and Norgran Records , and material which had been licensed to Mercury previously.-Jazz and folk origins:The Verve...
. Utilizing top New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
s such as Paul Griffin
Paul Griffin (musician)
Paul Griffin was an American session musician and pianist, who recorded with hundreds of artists from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
, Richard Tee
Richard Tee
Richard Tee was a pianist, studio musician, singer and arranger.Tee graduated from the High School of Music and Art and attended the Manhattan School of Music. Though better known as a studio and session musician, Tee led a jazz ensemble, the Richard Tee Committee, and was a founding member of the...
, Eric Gale
Eric Gale
Eric J. Gale was a leading American jazz and session guitarist.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gale began playing guitar at the age of 12. Although he majored in chemistry at Niagara University, Gale was determined to pursue a musical career, and began contributing to accompaniments for such stars as...
, Chuck Rainey
Chuck Rainey
Chuck Rainey, is an American bass guitar session musician, known for playing with many well-known American musicians and acts, including Donald Byrd, Steely Dan, Quincy Jones, and Aretha Franklin.-Biography:Rainey's youthful pursuits included violin, piano and trumpet...
and Herb Lovell, Tate and Ragovoy produced, from 1966 to 1968, a series of blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
y soul-music recordings that are regarded as some of the most sophisticated of the era. "Ain't Nobody Home" (1966), "Look at Granny Run Run" (1966), "Baby I Love You" (1967), and "Stop" (1968) all written or co-written by Ragovoy, were well received by record buyers. "Ain't Nobody Home", "Look At Granny" and "Stop" charted pop and top 20 R&B.
Career
Janis JoplinJanis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
performed another single, the title track from his first album, "Get It While You Can", during this time. The album was regarded as a classic by aficionados, but it failed to sell in large quantities. However, Tate's reputation among critics was high. As Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
writes in his review of Tate's Verve material, "Tate is a blues-drenched Macon native who had the desire to head north and sounds it every time he gooses a lament with one of the trademark keens that signify the escape he never achieved. He brought out the best in soul pro Jerry Ragovoy, who made Tate's records jump instead of arranging them into submission, and gave him lyrics with some wit to them besides."
Tate, working apart from Ragovoy, made an album called Howard Tate's Reaction that was released in 1970 on Turntable Records. Produced by Lloyd Price
Lloyd Price
Lloyd Price is an American R&B vocalist. Known as "Mr. Personality", after the name of one of his biggest million-selling hits...
and Johnny Nash
Johnny Nash
John Lester "Johnny" Nash, Jr. is an American pop singer-songwriter, best known in the US for his 1972 hit, "I Can See Clearly Now". He was also the first non-Jamaican to record reggae music in Kingston, Jamaica.-Life and career:...
, it was distributed in minute quantities, and critics felt it lacked the flair of his Verve material. Still, as Christgau writes, "Tate's voice is potent enough to activate more inert material." The record was reissued, as Reaction, in 2003. Ragovoy and Tate reunited for the 1972 Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
Howard Tate, which included more songs by Ragovoy along with Tate's versions of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's "Girl from the North Country" and Robbie Robertson
Robbie Robertson
Robbie Robertson, OC; is a Canadian singer-songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known for his membership as the guitarist and primary songwriter within The Band. He was ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time...
's and Levon Helm
Levon Helm
Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm , is an American rock multi-instrumentalist and actor who achieved fame as the drummer and frequent lead and backing vocalist for The Band....
's "Jemima Surrender." Again, the album was acclaimed by critics and virtually ignored by listeners.
After recording a single for Epic Records
Epic Records
Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...
and a few songs for his own label, Tate retired from the record business in the late 1970s. He sold securities in the New Jersey and Philadelphia area, and in the 1980s developed a dependence on drugs, ending up living in a homeless shelter. In the mid-1990s Howard Tate began counselling drug abusers and the mentally ill, and worked as a preacher. A Jersey City disc jockey discovered Tate's whereabouts early in 2001, and in spring 2001 Tate played his first date in many years, in New Orleans. He then began working with Ragovoy on an album that was released, as Rediscovered, in 2003. It was regarded as a return to form and included covers of songs by Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello
Elvis Costello , born Declan Patrick MacManus, is an English singer-songwriter. He came to prominence as an early participant in London's pub rock scene in the mid-1970s and later became associated with the punk/New Wave genre. Steeped in word play, the vocabulary of Costello's lyrics is broader...
and Prince as well as a new version of "Get It While You Can."
At Roskilde Festival
Roskilde Festival
Roskilde Festival is a festival held south of Roskilde in Denmark and is one of the six biggest annual music festivals in Europe . It was created in 1971 by two high school students, Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller, and promoter Carl Fischer...
2004 he sang Love Will Keep You Warm with Swan Lee
Swan Lee
Swan Lee was a Danish band featuring Pernille Rosendahl on vocals. The name was taken from a Syd Barrett song.In 1996 Pernille Rosendahl formed a band with guitarist Jonas Struck, drummer Emil Jorgensen and her boyfriend Tim Christensen. After Christensen left in 1999, the remaining trio continued...
. The song can be found on the 'Swan Lee - The Complete Collection' from 2007
In 2006, Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an entertainment company founded in 2003 that was started by Richard Foos , Bob Emmer and Garson Foos initially as a specialty music label...
released Howard Tate Live, recorded in Denmark in summer 2004. Working with producer, arranger and songwriter Steve Weisberg, Tate recorded A Portrait of Howard, which was released in fall 2006 on the independent Solid Ground label. It included compositions by Randy Newman
Randy Newman
Randall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores....
, Nick Lowe
Nick Lowe
Nicholas Drain "Nick" Lowe , is an English singer-songwriter, musician and producer.A pivotal figure in UK pub rock, punk rock and new wave, Lowe has recorded a string of well-reviewed solo albums. Along with vocals, Lowe plays guitar, bass guitar, piano and harmonica...
, Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
and Carla Bley
Carla Bley
Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...
, as well as songs written by Tate and Weisberg.
In late 2007, Tate recorded Blue Day in Nashville with producer Jon Tiven
Jon Tiven
Jon Tiven is a composer, guitarist and record producer. He has produced albums by Wilson Pickett, Frank Black and Don Covay as well as a series of tribute albums paying tribute to the songwriting of Don Covay, Arthur Alexander, Otis Blackwell, Curtis Mayfield, and Van Morrison.-Early career:He was...
. The record was released in summer 2008.
Tate was also a judge for the 6th annual Independent Music Awards
The Independent Music Awards
The Independent Music Awards is an international program that honors top-ranked independent artists and releases in more than 50 Album, Song, Music Video and Design categories....
to support independent artists' careers.
2010 saw a release of a limited vinyl only direct-to-disc live recording from Blue Heaven Studios with Tate and his touring quartet performing songs from his catalog.
Discography
- Howard Tate's Reaction (1970; reissued 2003)
- Howard Tate (1972; reissued 2001)
- Get It While You Can: The Legendary Sessions 1995 (produced by Jerry Rappaort, released by Polygram on the Mercury label)
- Get It While You Can: The Complete Legendary Verve Sessions (2004)
- Rediscovered (2003)
- Live! (2006)
- A Portrait of Howard (2006)
- Lost Soul (1994; this compilation contains one song by Tate, "Ain't Got Nobody to Give It To")
- Blue Day (2008)
- The Jerry Ragovoy Story: Time Is on My Side (2008; compilation contains three songs by Tate: "You're Lookin' Good," "Ain't Got Nobody to Give It To" and the Rediscovered remake of "Get It While You Can")