As
a young woman, Denise LaSalle began writing songs. "I thought that
I could do that. I started writing songs and writing songs," she
said in a recent phone interview. "They used to laugh at me on my
job. 'Is she crazy? What's wrong
with her? What is she doing?'
... They wanted to know, 'Writing songs for who?' I would write a
song as I think that someone would sing it. I would say, 'I'm
writing this for Jerry Butler; this is for so-and-so. This one's
for Aretha.' In my mind this is who I thought could sing those
songs."
Now, Denise LaSalle's real life as a happily married wife and grandmother belies her songs that are filled with cheating, lying, and heartache. The Queen of Southern Soul Blues, LaSalle is known for her no-nonsense approach to giving relationship advice in talking raps on recordings as well as from the stage. After all, she's the one who wrote "You Can Have My Husband, But Don't Mess with My Man."
"My ideas come from life itself," she said. "You can look around anywhere and see a song. People are depressed, people have problems - they talk about them to you. People come to me with their problems; they think I have the solution to every problem because I'm always on stage giving advice - how to treat a man, what to do - and they tell me what their man is doing and what her girlfriend did to her. It's not always my song, my story. ... I was in Memphis once and I saw a sign that said 'Make a good thing better - bank with Union Planters Bank.' When I saw that, I wrote this song 'Makin' a Good Thing Better,' and I got to tell the man what to do to make a good thing better."
When she writes songs, LaSalle said, the lyrics and music tend to come at the same time. "The first phrase I get in my head, the melody comes along with it," she said. Often, though, she has a problem with songs sounding more country than rhythm and blues. "I've been a country music fan all my life," she told me. "I grew up with the Grand Ole Opry. I have a problem keeping my songs from sounding so country. I get the idea to sing the phrase and it comes out country and I have to change it to R&B sound."
Born in LeFlore County, Mississippi, in 1939, Ora Denise Allen (LaSalle is her stage name) said she "started singing in church, as a little girl growing up singing duets with my sisters in church. It went from there to choir and gospel groups. When I left home at a very young tender age of 13 and moved to Chicago, I joined a gospel group called the Sacred Five and worked with them for several years."
Then she caught the rhythm-and-blues bug. "I used to be one of the main characters that hung around the Regal Theatre [in Chicago in the '60s] when all the shows came to town," LaSalle said, noting that she lived nearby. "I was there when the doors opened, and I would sit there mostly all day long. They'd have a movie and then a stage show. And the stage presentation was guys like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson - everybody that was somebody played there.
"And LaVern Baker. In fact, I stole a little of my stuff from LaVern Baker. She was one of those characters that talks a lot on stage. ... That little comical routine that I do, it started as a take-off from LaVern Baker." Baker at that time was famous for her hit "Jim Dandy," which became one of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock & Roll."
LaSalle cites Baker as one of two major influences in her career. "Aretha Franklin and LaVern Baker actually formed the character of Denise LaSalle," she revealed. But "Aretha Franklin was the most influence I've ever had. I always wanted to sing just like Aretha Franklin. And I never could. But whatever I did just seemed to make me a better singer than I ever was.
"Eventually I was old enough to get a barmaid job in a nightclub," she said, and a nightclub was where, in 1963, she met Billy "The Kid" Emerson, "an old blues singer from the 1950s." She asked him about getting songs published, because he knew people at Chess Records. "I recorded a song with him playing the organ. When we got to Chess they were more interested in me than the song. They signed me to a contract.
"I had never sung solo. I was afraid to stand on the stage alone and sing." So Chess asked Billy to work with Denise and build up her confidence. "Billy started taking me around, entering me in talent shows. Finally one day I won first place in a talent show, and one of the prizes was a weekend at a nightclub - $15 a night. ... They loved me so much there I worked there month upon month. Then I started getting offers to go up into the white areas of the city."
Within the year LaSalle had enough confidence to not renew her contract with Chess, because they'd never recorded her in that time. By 1967 she'd made a local name for herself. Billy Emerson had a little record label, and he recorded LaSalle singing her own song, "A Love Reputation." That became a big hit in Chicago, second there only to Aretha's "Respect" that year. In 1971, LaSalle had her first gold record: "Trapped by a Thing Called Love," on Westbound Records. It made number one on the national R&B chart and number 13 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
LaSalle continued to have hits on Westbound and then on ABC Records through the mid-'70s. In 1980, she signed with Malaco Records out of Mississippi, and she released a string of critically acclaimed albums from then through the '90s. To date, she's recorded more than 30 albums, and has served as producer on many of them.
"One of the reasons I left Malaco was because my husband joined the ministry in 1996," she said, noting that she'd wanted to do a gospel album, but Malaco wasn't interested in that for her. "I grew up in gospel music and always loved it. I went into the studio on my own and produced a gospel album called God's Got My Back ... and the title cut was a big hit." But her fans were used to much more R-rated fare. "I just told the audience, 'I know you all came out here to hear me talk about men. Well, I'm still talking about a man, but his name is Jesus.'"
After that, she signed with Ecko Records and went back to rhythm and blues. "I feel like, well, God called him [her husband, James Wolfe]; he didn't call me. I went back to doing what I do."
Denise LaSalle's latest album is titled Pay Before You Pump, and the cover shows her filling up her car with gas. But those familiar with her music know that the the words don't have anything to do with fuel prices. There's no telling whether her show at the blues fest will be bawdy or, because of potential children in the audience, cleaned up a bit. In any case, Denise LaSalle will be telling us about real life.
