Howard Tate (Born 14/08/1939)

Howard Tate is another in the great line of soul mystery men - he cut some of the very finest soul sides in the mid to late 60s and then all but disappeared. And yet those Verve sessions with Jerry Ragovoy were so fine people have constantly been driven to find him, to try and figure him out, just to try and get close to him.
"Howard was distant, hard to get next to" - that's what producer/writer Jerry Ragovoy has to say about his discovery and he probably knew him better than most!

In many ways, although his recording output is sparse, Tate is the quintessential R&B vocalist. Listening to the recordings on the "Get It While You Can" compilation, you can't help but marvel as he slips effortlessly from straight ahead blues ('Everyday I Have The Blues', 'Part Time Love') to the more conventional soul stylings of the period - and what you always got from Howard was an assured, classy but sincere vocal performance, and about as far away as possible from, say, the Motown sound of Detroit. Jerry Wexler has always said that when he and Atlantic were knocking out those wonderful, seminal soul performances from Aretha and company in Memphis, the Tate recordings had acted as inspiration, if not exactly a blueprint.

Howard brought a lot of blues and gospel to his phrasing, but what made him palatable to the modern R&B (and, to a much lesser degree, pop) audience was the Northeast soul production of Jerry Ragovoy, who also wrote much of Tate's material. What you have to remember is that Tate made the R&B Top 20 only three times in the late '60s (with 'Ain't Nobody Home', 'Stop', and 'Look at Granny Run Run'). Not much commercial success for such a reputation. For a while, it seemed he'd be most famous to rock audiences as the original performer of 'Get It While You Can', which became one of Janis Joplin's signature tunes. His influence is more far reaching than that - in addition to the Janis Joplin note for note remake, B.B. King has recorded 'Ain't Nobody Home', Ry Cooder gave us a fine 'Look At Granny Run Run' and Steve Winwood, Al Green and Jimi Hendrix have all been tempted into cover versions of Tate's performances.Each new generation seemed to say the same thing about the quality of the recordings but we're still no nearer to knowing the man.

Howard was already in his late 20s when he debuted on Verve in 1966. Before establishing himself as a solo performer, Tate sang with the Gainors, a North Philadelphia doo-wop group that also included future soul star Garnet Mimms. In the early '60s, Howard was the vocal front man for Bill Doggett, the organist famous for the instrumental hit 'Honky Tonk'. Jerry Ragovoy was urged to check out Tate by a member of the Enchanters, Garnet Mimms's backup singers. He recorded only about ten singles with Tate between 1966 and 1969, the first for the small Utopia label, the rest for Verve.
Three singles ensued from their first sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's famed living-room studio in New Jersey. After further recordings in New York, there was a 10-track album that produced five more singles. Though there were no big hits - 'Ain't Nobody Home' and 'Look At Granny Run Run' both reached #12 R&B but stalled in and around the 60s on the pop charts - the LP was reissued a short time later with a new cover and two more B-sides. The back liner essay was changed, too, from jazzman Orrin Keepnews' appeal to the soul-blues crowd to Richard Robinson's deemed to be hip "notes from the underground".

Tate's last hit on Verve, 'Stop' went to #15 R&B and #76 pop in early 1968. After Verve, Tate moved on to Lloyd Price's Turntable label, for which he recorded a few singles in the late '60s and early '70s (including 'These Are The Things That Make Me Know You're Gone' which reached #28 R&B in the summer of '69 and 'My Soul's Got A Hole In It' which managed #31 the following year). From there he chalked up a short stint with Atlantic (reunited with Ragovoy), which led to a few other 45s and a critically well-received album ("Howard Tate", now happily available again), but again little commercial success. A final 1974 single for Epic was his swan song. But there was no middle ground for this great singer. Some time in the early 1970s, Howard Tate disappeared from view and into legend.

Always somewhat of a mysterious figure, even at the height of his limited success, until recently he hadn't been seen since the early '80s. Now 'rediscovered' he's back in the spotlight, performing and recording (with Jerry Ragavoy) once again. The first results of the collaboration is the very fine "Rediscovered" album, a true R&B album which merits comparison with Solomon Burke's recent "Don't Give Up On Me". Before this comeback however, the release of the wonderful "Get It While You Can - The Legendary Recordings" on Polygram/Mercury ensured that his music remained in the public eye, especially amongst R&B fans. The compilation includes all the original album plus singles and B-Sides (and one additional previously unreleased track) and features the liner notes of both the original LP and the reissue. For a man with such a short and limited recording career, he is revered by those who know and love his work - check out the CD to find out why.

Additional Source Material:- CD Liner Notes (Harry Weinger).