Millie Jackson benefited greatly from the support of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section on her Spring Records albums and singles. She had three gold-certified albums, all of them recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.
Mildred Virginia Jackson was born in Thomson, Georgia, in 1944. Like several other singers in the Muscle Shoals story, she came from a family of sharecroppers. Her mother died when she was young, so she grew up with her father. As a teenager she moved to New York to live with an aunt and started modelling for magazines. At the age of twenty, she started performing, developing an act that involved more talking than singing. Millie enjoying writing poetry and her songs often contained long spoken sections.
She signed for MGM Records in 1970, but soon left to join Spring Records, where she worked with Raeford Gerald. By 1971 she had her first hit, “A Child of God (It’s Hard to Believe)”, which reached number twenty-two on the R&B chart. The follow-up singles, “Ask Me What You Want” and “My Man, A Sweet Man”, also sold well. Over the next couple of years, she released a series of R&B songs which established her success.
In 1974, Millie Jackson came to Muscle Shoals to record her fourth studio album “Caught Up”, with Brad Shapiro as producer. It gave her the first gold album. The personnel on the album were: Millie Jackson (vocals, concept), Barry Beckett (keyboards), Roger Hawkins (drums), David Hood (bass), Jimmy Johnson and Pete Carr (guitars), Mike Lewis (orchestration), Tom Roady and Brad Shapiro (percussion). The album reached number twenty-one on the Pop album chart and number four on the R&B chart. The single taken from the album was “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right”, written by Stax songwriters Carl Hampton, Homer Banks and Raymond Jakson. Stax artist Luther Ingram had recorded the song and sold over a million copies. Now the song helped Millie strike gold, attracting two Grammy nominations along the way. The next album “Still Caught Up” was less successful, but it features an excellent version of “Loving Arms”, which was released as a single. Millie Jackson shared production duties with Brad Shapiro, and there are some strong backing vocals form Rhodes, Chalmers, Rhodes and Janie Fricke.
Millie Jackson in 2012 at the Howard Theatre, Washington
Photo: Polyester-queen (Wikimedia commons)
The “Feelin’ Bitchy” album was released in 1977 and was her second album to be certified gold by the RIAA. This time the album project was recorded at several recording studios in America which included Muscle Shoals Studio, featuring David Hood on bass, Rodger Hawkins on drums, Barry Beckett on keyboards and finally Jimmy Johnson on guitar. It reached number thirty-four on the Billboard Pop album chart and number four on the Billboard Top Soul Albums chart.
The final studio album to receive a gold plaque for Miss Jackson was “Get It Out’ Cha System” in 1978 at the height of the disco era. It didn’t quite hit the heights of the first two gold albums, but nevertheless Millie Jackson was the only female artist to obtain three gold albums based mainly on the Muscle Shoals signature sound. She recorded over a dozen albums for the Spring Records label, most of them with the Muscle Shoals session men, with regular chart entries. The Swampers must have enjoyed playing some R&B again!
Header Photo: Millie Jackson’s Kent Records album (used with permission of Ace Records)
