Digital Roundup: 2/11/2015

After our Digital Roundup made its grand return for 2015 a couple of weeks ago, you may have noticed that we promptly followed that up with a week of radio silence. Look, people, it’s a slow roll-out. We’ve got to build, you know? But we’re back this week, and although it’s only a small showing (the sum total of our additions is three digital 45s, which makes for a whopping six songs), we dare say it’s a good week for Betty Harris fans.

“Cry to Me” / “I’ll Be a Liar” – The A-side is, as R&B fans probably already know, a cover of a Bert Berns song which was famously recorded by Solomon Burke, but Harris slowed down the tempo of the track and earned a top-10 R&B hit and well as a #23 single on the Billboard Hot 100. Both Burke’s version and Harris’s take on the song were produced by Berns, which is fair, since who would’ve known better how the song should’ve sounded than the man who wrote it?

“His Kiss” / “It’s Dark Outside” – Although “His Kiss,” written by Berns and Mike Stoller, wasn’t as commercially successful as its predecessor, Harris still managed to take the track into the lower reaches of the pop and R&B charts. Weirdly, though, the B-side was what got written up in Billboard, where it was described as a “smoky blue side with good shouting vocal done against an intriguing arrangement.”

“Mo Jo Hannah” / “Now It’s the Hour” – Written by Clarence Paul, the website SirShambling.com described “Mo Jo Hannah” as “a very pacy if slightly messy swamp-soul opus,” although they acknowledge that the song was “rather better recorded by Esther Phillips in February 1964.” That’s as may be, but both “Mo Jo Hannah” and “Now It’s the Hour” are solid reasons why Betty Harris has continued to maintain a devoted fanbase over the years.