Donald James Randolph (March 24, 1936 – January 31, 2015), better known by the stage name Don Covay, was an American R&B, rock and roll and soul singer and songwriter most active from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Born Donald Randolph in Orangeburg, South Carolina on March 24, 1938, Covay was the son of a Baptist preacher who died when his son was eight. The family soon after relocated to Washington, D.C., where he and his siblings formed a gospel group dubbed the Cherry Keys; while in middle school, however, some of Covay's classmates convinced him to make the leap to secular music, and in 1953 he joined the Rainbows, a local doo wop group that previously enjoyed a national smash with "Mary Lee."
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| The Rainbows |
By the time Covay joined the Rainbows the original line-up had long since splintered, and his recorded debut with the group, 1956's "Shirley," was not a hit. He stuck around for one more single, "Minnie," before exiting; contrary to legend, this iteration of the Rainbows did not include either a young Marvin Gaye or Billy Stewart, although both fledgling singers did occasionally fill in for absent personnel during live performances.
In 1957 he joined Little Richard’s touring show as a singer, warming the crowd up for the main attraction, and made his recording debut, under the name of Pretty Boy, with a song called Bip Bop Bip, produced by Little Richard and released by Atlantic. As his recording career refused to catch fire, Covay increasingly focused on songwriting, partnering with fellow Rainbows alum John Berry to pen a dance tune called "Pony Time" -- recorded by Covay for the Arnold label with backing band the Goodtimers, the resulting 1961 single proved to be his first chart hit, inching to the number 60 spot on the Billboard pop countdown. Within a year, Covay’s ability to write an emotional ballad was evident when Gladys Knight and the Pips took his Letter Full of Tears into the top 20.
After recording for numerous companies, including Sue, Columbia, Epic, RCA, Big Top and Parkway, it was under the billing of Don Covay and the Goodtimers (with the young Jimi Hendrix on guitar), and on a small label called Rosemart, that he made his first real impact as a solo artist, when his original recording of Mercy, Mercy reached No 35 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964. Impressed by its success, Atlantic bought his contract and sent him to Memphis, where he recorded two further dance-floor favourites, See Saw and Sookie Sookie, with the Stax house band the following year.
However, his songwriting continued to be successful, as he wrote songs for Etta James, Otis Redding, Little Richard (his 1965 hit, "I Don't Know What You Got but It's Got Me"), and notably Aretha Franklin, who had a hit in 1968 with "Chain of Fools", a song Covay had written some fifteen years earlier. Franklin won a Grammy for her performance. Over the years Covay's compositions have been recorded by such varied artists as Gene Vincent, Wanda Jackson, Connie Francis, Steppenwolf, Bobby Womack, the Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, Small Faces, Grant Green, and Peter Wolf, among others.
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| L-R: Ben E. King, Joe Tex, Don Covay, Wilson Pickett & Solomon Burke. |
Covay organized the Soul Clan, a collective venture with Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Ben E. King and Arthur Conley, in 1968, but it was relatively unsuccessful. In 1969, he joined former Shirelles guitarist Joe Richardson and blues and folk singer John P. Hammond to form the Jefferson Lemon Blues Band. The band's single "Black Woman" made number 43 on the R&B chart in 1970 and they recorded two albums: The House of Blue Lights and Different Strokes for Different Folks, before splitting up.
Covay joined Mercury Records in 1972, as an A&R executive, while also starting to record his album Superdude. The album yielded two of his most successful songs, "I Was Checkin' Out, She Was Checkin' In" and "Somebody's Been Enjoying My Home". He followed up with two more successful singles, "It's Better to Have (and Don't Need)" in 1974, his only hit as a performer in the UK, followed by "Rumble in the Jungle", inspired by the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. In the late 1970s, he recorded for Philadelphia International Records but then withdrew from recording for several years, reappearing as a backing singer on the Rolling Stones' 1986 album Dirty Work.
Covay had a stroke in 1992. The following year, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Todd Rundgren and others performed on a Covay tribute album, Back to the Streets: Celebrating the Music of Don Covay. He was presented with a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1994. He recovered to make further recordings, including the albums Adlib (2000) and Super Bad (2009).
Donald Covay died after a stroke on January 31, 2015, at the age of 78 at a hospital in Franklin Square New York.
(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & The Guardian)