When Valerie Simpson Was Exposed by Mark Anthony Neal
Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson wrote, produced and performed some of the most memorable love ballads of the 20th century. Writing signature duets for Motown’s Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell in the late 1960s including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “If This World Were Mine,” and the stirring “You’re All I Need to Get By.” By the mid-1970s Ashford and Simpson established themselves as a great act in their own right, with classic tracks like “Send It,” “Love Don’t Make it Right”, “It Seems to Hang On,” and their chart topping 1984 single “Solid.” Yet, between those peaks, Valerie Simpson recorded two, largely forgotten, albums that spoke to her own genius as a Black woman artist.
In the wake of Aretha Franklin’s crossover success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the recording industry was primed for the emergence of a new wave of Black women artists. Roberta Flack (First Take, 1969), Minnie Riperton (Come to My Garden, 1969), Labelle (Moonshadow, 1972) Betty Davis (Betty Davis, 1973), and Esther Phillips (From a Whisper to Scream, 1972) all released groundbreaking music in that era.
Valerie Simpson’s Exposed (1971) and eponymous Valerie Simpson (1972) were overshadowed at the time but represented the cutting edge of a generation of Black women artists in conversation with the great Blues Women of the 1920s like Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ethel Waters and Ma Rainey. Perhaps because Motown, her label at the time, didn’t have faith that Simpson’s music was commercial enough, solo recordings didn’t garner as much attention. Despite Motown’s lack of support, Simpson’s single “Sinner Man” from Exposed was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1972.
A native of the Bronx, New York, Simpson and Ashford first met at the White Rock Baptist Church in Harlem in 1964. Simpson’s “church” upbringing is all over her debut Exposed particularly on tracks like “I Don’t Need No Help” which intimates a centuries old field song, and the explicitly spiritual “There is a God.” Simpson is straight “testifyin’” at the beginning of “Can’t It Wait Until Tomorrow” (a song initially written for Diana Ross’ first solo album); it’s hard to believe that Natalie Cole didn’t have the song in mind when she takes to the pulpit on her classic “I’m Catching Hell (Living Here Alone)” (1975).
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On Simpson’s innovative remake of Lennon and McCartney’s “We Can Work It Out” (she even outdid Stevie Wonder in this regard), the song is transformed into an introspective Blues groove only to explode into a revival like frenzy. Fans of Simpson may also remember her show stopping Gospel vocals on a version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” that appeared on Quincy Jones’s Gula Matari (1970)
With the exception of “Sinner Man,” much of the rest of Exposed falls firmly in the tradition of the mature Soul that Ashford and Simpson were known for producing. Tracks like “Love Woke Me Up this Morning” (originally recorded by Marvin and Tammi) “Now That There’s You,” are clear evidence of the duo’s maturing musical sensibilities and Simpson’s increased confidence as a vocalist (Simpson has long been rumored to have had her vocals mixed with the ill Tammi Terrell’s on some of the duets with Gaye). Another one of the gems on Exposed is the moody and plaintive “World without Sunlight.”
Simpson’s self-titled follow-up to Exposed, was just as provocative as her debut, with a nod to the political landscape of the moment. On the stellar “One More Baby Child Born,” Simpsons sings of the possibilities and dangers for Black children (“he may grow up to be your president, but then again you might find him stuck in the ghetto cement”) and the anguish experienced by Black mothers (“his mama look down on him with a tender smile/she just want to hold him and keep him safe/cause he’ll only be a baby for a little while”).
Ashford (and Simpson’s) politics are even more pronounced on “Genius,” mocking the quest for development, modernization and greed, in ways that resonate with our contemporary moment: “Man made clouds floating through space/called it pollution ’cause it killed the human race/Took a piece of paper and painted it green/And with the right number on it, it’ll buy anything.” Whereas “Genius” is deliberate and sparse in its pacing and instrumentation, “Genius II” appeals to the dance floor, where the lyrics seem to have an added sting of sarcasm: “what a little genius…is he!”
Valerie Simpson (1972), which in many ways was a far more accomplished project than Exposed, was one of the last projects that Ashford and Simpson did for Motown. They launched their own career as artists with Gimmie Something Real in 1973. Though the act got off to a slow start with Warner Brothers, by the time Ashford and Simpson settled at Capitol Records in the early 1980s they were stalwarts of R&B radio. They also continued their important contributions as songwriters and producers, notably with Chaka Khan’s classic “I’m Every Woman” and producing one of Diana Ross’ many “comeback” albums with The Boss (1979).
The music of Ashford and Simpson represented the mainstream to Soul and R&B music for more than 50 years, but the adventurousness of Valerie Simpson’s early solo recordings suggest that they — and Simpson in particular — had so much more to offer than the industry was willing to recognize.
Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African American Studies and Professor of English and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University. The author of several books including Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities and Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive, both from NYU Press. His next book Save a Seat for Me: Meditations on Black Masculinity and Fatherhood will be published by Simon & Schuster.
