Willie Hutch / Lou Johnson - Soul Warriors of 1969

I don't want anyone to think I'm finished with the blues piano by any means but I'd like to keep the variety up too with a pair of lesser known soul warriors who released these strong, but largely ignored albums in 1969.

"William McKinley Hutchison (December 6, 1944 – September 19, 2005), known professionally as Willie Hutch, was an American singer, songwriter as well as a record producer and recording artist for the Motown record label during the 1970s and 1980s. Born in 1944 in Los Angeles, California, Hutch was raised in Dallas, Texas. He joined a doo-wop group, The Ambassadors, as a teenager. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High, Hutch shortened his last name when he started his music career in 1964 on the Soul City label with the song, "Love Has Put Me Down".

After his move to Los Angeles, his music caught the eye of the mentor for pop/soul quintet The 5th Dimension, and Hutch was soon writing, producing, and arranging songs for the group. In 1969, he signed with RCA Records and put out two albums before he was spotted by Motown producer Hal Davis, who wanted lyrics to his musical composition "I'll Be There", a song he penned for The Jackson 5. The song was recorded by the group the morning after Hutch received the call. Motown CEO Berry Gordy signed Hutch to be a staff writer, arranger, producer, and musician shortly thereafter.

Hutch later co-wrote songs that were recorded by the Jackson 5 and their front man Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson, the newly rechristened Miracles, and Marvin Gaye. In 1973, Hutch started recording albums for Motown, releasing the Fully Exposed album that year. That same year, Hutch recorded and produced the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film, The Mack. Hutch had several R&B hits during this period, including "Brother's Gonna Work It Out" and "Slick". He also recorded the soundtrack for Foxy Brown. Hutch recorded at least six albums for Motown, peaking with 1975's single "Love Power", which reached number 41 on the Billboard Hot 100. He left Motown in 1977 for Norman Whitfield's Whitfield Records.

Hutch returned to Motown in 1982, where he scored the disco hit, "In and Out", that same year and also recorded a song for the film The Last Dragon in 1985 called "The Glow". Hutch left Motown again by the end of the decade and by 1994 had moved back to Dallas.

Hutch continued to record and perform while living comfortably on royalties from old hits and new samples. His manager, Anthony Voyce, said of Hutch: "I've never met a more generous and caring person." He died in 2005.

He is survived by six children, and was the uncle to Cold 187um of the rap group Above the Law." wiki

"Lou Johnson (born 1941, Brooklyn, New York) is an American soul singer and pianist who was active as a recording artist in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Coming from a musical family, he started singing in gospel choirs in his teens, before studying music at Brooklyn College. He learned keyboards and percussion, forming a gospel group, the Zionettes, who recorded for Simpson Records and achieved some local success. Johnson then formed a secular vocal group, the Coanjos, with Tresia Cleveland and Ann Gissendammer, recording "Dance The Boomerang" before Cleveland and Gissendammer left to become The Soul Sisters.

In 1962, Johnson signed as a solo singer with Big Top Records, run by the Hill & Range music publishing company in the Brill Building. There, he met the songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who wrote Johnson's first single, "If I Never Get To Love You". Neither that song nor his second record, "You Better Let Him Go", were hits, but his third single, "Reach Out For Me", also written by Bacharach and David and this time produced by Bacharach, reached # 74 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1963. However, as it rose up the charts, the record company collapsed so limiting the record's success.

Johnson signed to its successor label, Big Hill and continued to record Bacharach and David songs. In 1964, his original version of "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me", with backing vocals by Doris Troy, Dee Dee Warwick, and Cissy Houston, reached # 49 in the US charts. In the UK, a cover version by English singer Sandie Shaw rose to number one on the British singles chart.

Johnson also recorded the original versions of several other Bacharach and David songs that later proved to be bigger hits for other musicians. "Reach Out for Me", "Message to Michael (Kentucky Bluebird)" (originally "A Message To Martha"), and "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" were all American hits, also produced by Bacharach and David, for Dionne Warwick. Several of his records reached the Cashbox R&B Top 20 including "Always" peaking at # 12 and "Reach Out" at # 15. In the UK, Johnson's version of "A Message To Martha" was his biggest hit, reaching # 36 in late 1964, but was outsold by the cover version by Adam Faith.

In 1965, working with the production team of Bill Giant, Bernie Baum and Florence Kaye on the reactivated Big Top label, Johnson recorded a vocal version of Sidney Bechet's instrumental hit of a few years earlier, "Petite Fleur", entitled "A Time To Love, A Time To Cry". He appeared on the British TV programme Ready Steady Go! to promote it, but neither it nor its follow-ups, a version of the jazz standard "Anytime" and then a version of "Walk On By" co-produced by Allen Toussaint, were successful, and the record company's choice of songs distanced him from his earlier audience. An album, also called Anytime, went unreleased as the record company again collapsed.

Johnson recorded two albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first, Sweet Southern Soul, for the Atlantic subsidiary Cotillion, was produced by the company's main R&B producer, Jerry Wexler, at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. Allen Toussaint produced the second, With You in Mind, at his New Orleans studio for Stax's Volt label, but neither proved successful. After moving to Orange County, California, Johnson became a nightclub entertainer. He sometimes performed in a latter-day version of The Ink Spots.

A CD retrospective of his recordings with Big Top/Big Hill Records in the 1960s, was put together by the UK label Ace/Kent Records in 2010. Although released in mono, it contained 'audio-restored' versions of all of his known recordings made at the time, including his work with Bacharach." wiki