Gloria Jones - Tainted Love

Gloria Jones - Come Go With Me

Gloria Jones - Heartbeat

While Rihanna's brilliant, "Tainted Love"-interpolating, early pop song of the year contender (definitely best pop song since "1 Thing") "S.O.S." is still topping the charts, and with such a perfect set up mention of Northern Soul yesterday, now seems like a good time to talk about Gloria Jones. As you may already know, Gloria Jones was the first artist to record "Tainted Love" for Motown back in 1964, even though she didn't achieve nearly the level of success that Soft Cell had with their synth heavy new wave cover in the 80s. But if you never bothered to look further than her one non-hit classic, or if you've never even heard that song, her catalogue is definitely worth paying attention to.

There was an episode of The Simpsons I caught on a rerun a couple weeks ago, the one where Homer gets his own show to replace Krusty's and he has a discussion group with Moe and Barney and some of the other Springfield regulars. At one point one of the guys in the group complains about oldies. His complaint is "where are the new oldies?" The joke is that it's supposed to be an oxymoron, but I kind of see his point. Can we get an updated playlist on the oldies stations already? I love "My Girl" as much as the next guy, but there were more than five artists on Motown you know. And it seems that obscurer artists like Gloria Jones never get their time to shine.

Because it's not just being obscure that makes Gloria Jones cool, it's not just that music nerd one-upsmanship where you pretend to like someone just because the average person has never heard of them. Gloria Jones is just as good as any other Motown artist and it's a travesty that her singles can't be found on most generic Motown compilations. She's a little rawer than what some Motown fans might be used to though, maybe that's why she's not as nationally beloved, but to me it's what makes her so exciting to listen to. She seems to bridge a gap between two of my favorite 60s genres, Motor City soul and garage rock.

It makes a lot more sense when you take in to account that "Tainted Love" was written by Ed Cobb, who went on to produce L.A. garage legends The Standells. The singles from her classic mid-60s period like "Tainted Love", "Come Go With Me", "Heartbeat" share plenty of DNA with those suburban kids banging out "Louie Louie" in their parents garages; three chord guitar figures, simple driving drum beats, swirling organs, fuzzy strained vocals. If Gloria Jones had been a white boy who played guitar she could have been on Nuggets.

Then the musical degrees of seperation game gets even weirder, after being dropped from Motown she married Marc Bolan from T. Rex and actually joined the band for several years in the mid 70s, singing back up vocals. They had a son together, Rolan Bolan, and she was driving the car when she got into the accident that killed Marc Bolan in 1977.

Insert your own "tainted love" joke here.