It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “We’re Gonna Make It” by Little Milton
May 19, 1965
“We’re Gonna Make It” by Little Milton
#1 on the Billboard Hot Rhythm and Blues Singles chart, May 1-21, 1965
Chess Records was the single most famous, influential, and important blues label ever. It helped bring African-American music into the mainstream without pandering to white audiences and provided the model of a viable independent record company that could regularly produce quality material and compete with the majors. The label’s recordings of such legends as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Little Walter, as well as the prodigious contributions of staff songwriter and producer Willie Dixon, defined the Chicago electric blues sound in the 1950s. Later in the decade, as home to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, it helped birth the sound of rock ‘n’ roll.
By the early to mid-’60s, however, the fortunes of the bluesmen and rock ‘n’ rollers who built Chess had begun to flag. African-American audiences’ taste had migrated from electric blues to soul, while white rockers — British blues bands, in particular — covered Chess classics to greater success than the original artists had ever known. Pop-jazz-blues-soul balladeer Etta James was Chess’s most prolific artist of the era, but even she suffered a slump in the middle of the decade, going nearly two years without releasing so much as a single. Yet while Chess was no longer the artistic and commercial juggernaut that it had been in the previous decade, it managed to score a few triumphs with artists who leavened the label’s classic blues sound with a heap of modern soul.
One of the most successful of the new breed of Chess stars was Little Milton (born James Milton Campbell, Jr), a native of the Mississippi Delta whose enormous yet controlled voice, and wrenching yet polished electric guitar sound, often earned him comparisons to B.B. King. Milton had briefly been signed by onetime Sun Records A&R man Ike Turner, but left the legendary Memphis label in 1955 having failed to score any hits. Milton then formed his own label, the St. Louis-based Bobbin Records. There, his regional hit “I’m a Lonely Man,” as well as his work with up-and-coming R&B stars Albert King and Fontella Bass, attracted the attention of Leonard and Phil Chess, Polish immigrant brothers who ran their namesake label. They began distributing Bobbin in 1959, and within a few years Milton switched over to the Chess subsidiary Checker Records.
Little Milton started out his career as a straightforward bluesman, as demonstrated by his first R&B chart hit for Checker/Chess, the Muddy Waters-ish “So Mean to Me,” in 1962. He earned his biggest success, however, when he transitioned into a more modern, soulful sound. “We’re Gonna Make It” takes a basic blues structure and adds a more melodic spin and fuller, jaunty instrumentation. The song’s catchy tune is bolstered by its ambiguous lyrics: on the surface, it can be read as a triumph of love over poverty (“we may have to eat beans every day / but we’re gonna make it”); on a more metaphorical level, it’s an optimistic anthem for the civil rights movement à la Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” released just a few months earlier.”Togetherness brings peace of mind / we can’t stay down all the time,” Milton promises, “so we’re gonna make it / I know we will.”
Despite topping the R&B charts, Little Milton, like most of his ’60s Chess compatriots, never really crossed over into the mainstream pop world in the way that so many Motown and Atlantic artists did. “We’re Gonna Make It” peaked at #25 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking his lone venture into the Top 40. Nevertheless, Milton maintained a healthy career for decades, touring and recording consistently until his death in 2005. Many of his other records, including “Who’s Cheating Who,” “Walking the Back Streets and Crying,” and “Grits Ain’t Groceries,” are perhaps even better remembered among blues and soul fans than “We’re Gonna Make It.” Milton didn’t even release his signature song, “The Blues is Alright,” until 1984.
“We’re Gonna Make It” earned Chess its first R&B #1 since Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” in 1958. Its success, as well as others of the era such as Fontella Bass & Bobby McClure’s duet “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” and Koko Taylor’s reimagining of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Wang Dang Doodle,” helped inject some much-needed fresh blood into a label that seemed to have its classic years behind it. Yet as important as “We’re Gonna Make It” was to Chess at the time, it proved to be just a warm-up for a much bigger hit later in 1965 — a record that’s arguably the most popular that the label ever produced and the subject of a future installment of this column.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
