It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass
November 10, 1965
“Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass
#1 on the Billboard Hot Rhythm and Blues Singles chart, October 30 – November 26, 1965
One of the problems with being a one-hit wonder is that your one hit is often remembered as being by someone else. Such is the case of “Rescue Me,” a number-one R&B and number-four pop hit for St. Louis native Fontella Bass. Over the course of five decades’ worth of commercials, movies, and spins on oldies radio, however, the work of the lesser-known Bass is often attributed to the more familiar Aretha Franklin. Never mind that Bass’s voice is thinner and softer than Franklin’s, or that “Rescue Me” was released two years before Aretha earned her breakthrough hit, 1967’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” — a superficial similarity with the most successful female singer of the rock era has led to the more obscure Bass being largely forgotten.
Like many early soul singers, both Franklin and Bass were born into gospel music. Bass’s mother, Martha Bass, briefly sang as a member of the famed Clara Ward Singers, and later released so
lo gospel recordings. Fontella followed in her footsteps before being lured into secular music as a teenager. The younger Bass got her big break playing piano behind blues-soul star Little Milton, eventually earning a vocal showcase during his sets. After she left Milton’s band, Bass signed with his home label, Chess Records. She quickly earned her first hit, the duet “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” with Bobby McClure, which climbed into the R&B Top 5 and the pop Top 40.
The success of “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” may have been a boost for both Bass and the flagging Chess labels, but it was only a warmup. Her solo debut, “Rescue Me,” was not only a chart-topping success, but Chess’s first million-selling hit since Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” nearly a decade earlier. Nevertheless, much as Bass’s voice is often mistaken for Aretha Franklin’s, “Rescue Me” is often believed to be a product of the Motown hit factory. Unlike the Fontella/Aretha confusion, however, this mix-up may have been somewhat deliberate.
In the 1950s, the Chicago-based Chess Records had been the pre-eminent label for blues and R&B, as well as a midwife at the birth of rock and roll. By the start of the ‘60s, however, the heavy blues sound of Chess was falling from favor, replaced by the catchy pop-soul made famous by Motown. Little Milton’s 1965 R&B number-one “We’re Gonna Make It” gave the old Chess sound a light makeover, and Bass and McClure’s “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing” straddled the old-school and new soul divide. “Rescue Me,” on the other hand, abandons the label’s blues roots entirely, in favor of the melodic bass, light horn stabs, and danceable groove characteristic of Berry Gordy’s Detroit soul Mecca.
The gambit paid off, at least to a point. Bass followed “Rescue Me” with a smaller hit, 1966’s “Recovery,” which peaked in the R&B Top 20 and gave the singer her third entry into the pop Top 40. (So much for the “one-hit wonder” designation.) Bass soon faded from the pop landscape, however, as her struggle to earn a co-writer credit for “Rescue Me” branded her as difficult, and she took time to raise a family with her husband, famed jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie. She sang on some of Bowie’s albums, and later returned to her gospel roots, but Bass never troubled the pop or R&B charts again.
Meanwhile, the once-formidable Chess Records struggled to release a record to match the success of “Rescue Me.” It took the label until 1972, when Chuck Berry’s novelty tune “My Ding-a-Ling” topped the Billboard Hot 100, giving both Berry and Chess their sole pop number-one. It proved to be the end of the line; by the mid-’70s, Chess was no more. “Rescue Me” may have given the label one of its last great hits, but it needed to emulate the sound of another, more successful record company to get it.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
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George L