Arthur Conley grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, where he joined a Gospel group, the Evening Smiles, at just twelve years of age. Soon after that, he formed an R&B group, Arthur & the Corvets, with whom he released a number of singles. In 1964, he made his first solo single, “I’m a Lonely Stranger”, on the Ru-Jac label, which came to the attention of Otis Redding.
Conley was still only eighteen, but Redding was impressed enough to invite him to Memphis, to re-record “I’m a Lonely Stranger” at Stax and to release the song on Redding’s newly-formed label Jotis Records. Another Jotis release “Who’s Foolin’ Who” followed in 1966.
At that point, Redding suggested a switch to FAME Records. Conley duly went to Muscle Shoals with Redding to sign for FAME, where a Dan Penn song “I Can’t Stop (No, No, No)” was chosen as his first FAME release. The next release was “Take Me (Just As I Am)”, which Solomon Burke took into the charts the following year. The Conley version was equally good but had failed to make an impact. The music business can be very unfair at times!
Redding and Conley looked for inspiration and found it in the form of a Sam Cooke song “Yeah Man”, which they started to adapt. They co-wrote a new version of the Cooke original, calling it “Sweet Soul Music”, which was recorded at FAME in January 1967 and distributed on the Atco label.
The single rose to number two on both the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart and the Billboard Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles Chart. In the UK it went to number seven on the Official UK Pop Singles Chart, also charting in several other European markets. With total sales of over one million copies, “Sweet Soul Music” was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.
Arthur Conley 1967
Photo: Atco Records Trade Ad (cropped) (Wikimedia Commons)
Sadly, the inspiration provided by Sam Cooke which had opened the gates to this major success also led to a problem. J.W. Alexander, Sam Cooke’s business partner, sued Conley and Redding for stealing Cooke’s melody. A settlement was reached, by which Cooke’s name was added to the songwriting credits. In addition, Redding undertook to record some songs from Kags Music, a music publishing company that Cooke and Alexander had set up together. The outcome could have been much worse.
In 1967, two Arthur Conley albums were released on the Atco label, containing a mix of Jotis, FAME and Atco recordings. They are “Sweet Soul Music” and “Shake, Rattle & Roll”. Otis Redding is credited as producer on both, with help from Jim Stewart and Rick Hall. Together the albums give an excellent overview of Conley’s contribution to Soul music, combining a voice that sounds very like Sam Cooke and a style that is much influenced by Otis Redding. It would be hard to find two better models.
Conley came to live in the UK in 1970, before moving to Belgium and then the Netherlands, where he died in 2003.
