Mitty Collier was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1941. She developed her musical ability in church choirs and joined the Hayes Ensemble and the Lloyd Reese Singers. She then started performing secular music in various local clubs as a means of paying for her college studies.
In 1959 Collier entered a talent contest at the Regal Theatre in Chicago, organized by DJ Al Benson, which she won. As part of her prize, she was invited to perform at a concert featuring B.B. King and Etta James. An offer of a contract with Chess Records soon followed, which her mother dealt with, as she was below the legal age to sign. Her first releases were the Lloyd Reese song “I’ve Got Love” in 1961 and “Don’t Let Her Take My Baby” in 1962. Neither made much of an impact. However, the follow-up, 1963’s “I’m Your Part Time Love”, finally broke into the Billboard R&B Singles Chart, reaching number twenty.

Several singles followed, including some Billy Davis songs and a version of Willie Dixon’s Blues composition “My Babe”, but success was still elusive. The next breakthrough came in 1964, with “I Had A Talk With My Man”, which went to number forty-one on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart and number three on the Cash Box R&B Singles Chart.

The song was a re-working of a James Cleveland Gospel song “I Had A Talk With God Last Night”, with the new lyrics credited to Billy Davis and Leonard Caston and arrangements by Riley Hampton. The B-side was “Free Girl (In The Morning)”, written by Billy Davis and Mitty Collier, after she had just split up from her partner. The A-side was later covered by Jackie Ross and Dusty Springfield. James Cleveland’s record company, Savoy Records, took exception to the song-writing credit on Collier’s version and forced Chess to change it. Chess duly credited the song to James Cleveland, without realising that the original was the work of the Reverend Lawrence Roberts.
The follow-up release was a Billy Davis song “Together”, backed by another James Cleveland re-write by the Davis, Caston, Hampton team, entitled “No Faith, No Love”. This entered the charts, reaching number twenty-nine on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and number ninety-one on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart.

In 1965, Chess Records released Collier’s first album, “Shades Of A Genius”, produced by Billy Davis as usual. It features three Ray Charles songs, “Come Back Baby”, “Ain’t That Love”, and “Hallelujah (I Love Him So)”, plus the two James Cleveland adaptations, the first of which is now erroneously credited to him. There are several ballads, with a big band arrangement, the best of which is the Henry Glover song “Drown In My Own Tears”, which Ray Charles had released in 1956. The phrasing in Mitty’s version is very reminiscent of the Ray Charles version. This isn’t surprising, as the Genius of the album title is Ray Charles, not Mitty Collier. This was her tribute to one of her musical heroes, with whom she had toured and got to know.
The first two Ray Charles songs were issued as a single in 1965, arranged by Phil Wright, but failed to chart. Seven more singles were released by Chess between 1965 and 1968, but only one made any impact. This was Collier’s final hit, 1966’s “Sharing You”, written by Ronald Saunders, which reached number ten on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and number ninety-seven on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart, with Phil Wright responsible for the arrangements once more. The B-side is an Oliver Sain song, with a strong Gospel feel.

The last of Collier’s Chess singles was actually recorded at Muscle Shoals with Rick Hall and the FAME session band. Leonard Chess had received an invitation from Rick Hall to send some of the Chess artists to cut some tracks at FAME and had decided to take up the offer, sending Etta James, Laura Lee, Irma Thomas, Mitty Collier and several more singers in 1967 and 1968. Collier’s resulting single was a reworking of “Gotta Get Away From It All”, the B-side of her first ever Chess release. The first version made reference to Collier carrying a gun for protection, which was removed for the FAME version! The B-side, “Everybody Makes A Mistake Sometime”, is a slow Country Soul ballad, written by Eddie Floyd and Al Bell, very much in the style of Stax. Otis Redding cut his version a year later, and Collier’s version stands comparison. When the single failed to chart, she left Chess and went to William Bell’s company Peachtree Records, where she recorded five singles and an album.
A dramatic change occurred in 1972, when, having recovered her singing voice following treatment for polyps on her vocal cords, she decided to devote herself to the church. She studied to become a pastor, achieving ordination in 1989. Her musical output since 1972 has been limited, consisting of five Gospel albums, featuring some of her own songs.
In 1998, Chess Records put together a compilation of twenty-two Mitty Collier songs entitled “Shades of A Genius”, an extended version of her original Chess album. Ten years later, Ace Records in the UK released a compilation of twenty-four Collier recordings that Chess had released between 1961 and 1968, on the Kent label. It is an excellent collection that concentrates on the singles, including all fifteen A-sides plus nine B-sides. Twenty-one of the tracks are in stereo, so do justice to Collier’s rich contralto voice and the excellent productions of Billy Davis and the Chess session musicians. The interest in Chicago Soul is ongoing; two more compilations appeared in 2021, “Golden Selection” on Mastertape Records and “I’ve Got Love” on the Astigmatic label. The second only has ten songs, but the first is an excellent selection, with remastered versions of twenty-four songs. The quality of the horn section shines out. Collier’s strong vocal delivery copes equally easily with the Blues composition “I’m Your Part Time Love”, the Gospel-based “No Faith, No Love”, and the romantic ballad “Like Only Yesterday”. It is difficult to understand why she wasn’t much more successful.

“Shades of Mitty Collier”: The Kent Records compilation
Album Cover courtesy of Ace Records (UK)