FEATURE:
Denise Johnson: A Timeless Talent
IN THIS PHOTO: Denise Johnson
The Great Lesser-Known Voices on Dance, Trip Hop and Club Classics: The Playlist
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EARLIER in the week…
PHOTO CREDIT: Pete Smith
the music world said goodbye to the great Denise Johnson. Many people might not know her face or name, but you would have heard her voice! It was an especially shocking piece of news, as Johnson seemed to be healthy and in good spirits. She was looking forward to the release of her debut solo album, Where Does It Go, and it was going to be a very busy time for her. The music world have been paying tribute all week, and it has rocked so many people to the core. This is how The Guardian reacted:
“Manchester’s nostalgia industrial complex tends to privilege its white men: Joy Division and Tony Wilson are the ones to have had biopics made about them, with another about Shaun Ryder on the way. But these rightful remembrances can crowd out figures such as Barry Adamson and Rowetta: black, genre-fluid pioneers amid the city’s wildly exciting music scene in the 1980s and early 90s. Vocalist Denise Johnson, who died this week aged 56, was another of them at the vanguard.
“Even though she was a mate,” remembers Johnny Marr, “you felt it was a privilege her being on your song. She kind of gold-plated songs – you knew that the track was going to acquire a few extra gold stars.”
Born into the 1960s working-class Manchester encapsulated by the photographs of Shirley Baker, Johnson was brought up by her Jamaican mother in the shadow of the imposing modernist Hulme Crescents estate. An early passion for Manchester City had to be suppressed as a child due to fears of racial abuse on the terraces, though she would later become an enthusiastic and eloquent advocate of the club. As soon as the infant Denise was aware of singing, however, it became her life, initially schooled on an eclectic syllabus of Tamla Motown, reggae and Hollywood musicals.
Listening to Johnson’s gorgeous voice, you could be forgiven for assuming that her roots were in gospel – instead, she was shaped by the far more prosaic world of the north-west club scene, singing on the Phoenix Nights circuit as part of a four-piece cabaret act, complete with cassette backing tape. She said she was fired for being “too opinionated”, but an entirely different clubland would be waiting to claim her for its own.
In 1989, Johnson joined the British neo-soul outfit Fifth of Heaven – her velvety Just a Little More is an underappreciated cut from that time – but she grew disillusioned with the constraints of the genre. “It sounded so complacent and subdued,” she told Vox magazine in 1994. “And it had no fire. I need fire.” She guested on tracks around Manchester, with the debut single for the Creation Records rave outfit Hypnotone laying the template for a career.”.
I have been inspired by The People’s Playlist on Lauren Laverne’s BBC Radio 6 Music breakfast show from Thursday. To salute Denise Johnson, she asked listeners for those hits featuring singers that we do not hear a lot about. There was a slew of Dance and Club hits in the 1980s and 1990s where the singer was either uncredited or they were not as lauded as the artist who made the song – or their name is not as famous as it should be! From Basement Jaxx and Primal Scream through to Urban Cookie Collective and Black Box, we have grown up around these songs that have soundtracked some of our best years. After hearing of Denise Johnson’s death, I was compelled to listen back to the songs she featured on, and I have been musing about the classic tracks with incredible vocals from relatively unknown singers. I am focusing on women and their voices and, to add to the playlist Laverne collated for her show this week, I am putting out a mix of songs where we might be familiar with the voice but not the person who performed it. Here is a small selection of Dance, Trip Hop and Club classics…
PHOTO CREDIT: @5tep5/Unsplash
OF immense proportions.