Bad Girl

The Fabulous Denos Bad Girl King


Lee Moses Bad Girl Pts 1 & 2 Musicor


Hermon Hitson She's A Bad Girl Minit


Lee Moses She's A Bad Girl Gates

I have posted many features about Johnny Brantley's productions. I still get inquiries about his work and the artists he was involved with especially Lee Moses.

I was recently asked by someone to post up a version of the song Bad Girl. I thought I'd take the opportunity to post the 4 versions above that I know about for comparison.

Sadly Lee Moses and Bobby Lee Fears aka Bobby Dixon aka Bobby Brown died before I could speak to them however I have discussed the song with Hermon Hitson.

Here's what I wrote after about Hermon Hitson's version of Bad Girl after interviewing him:

By 1967, Hermon was going up to New York to work on tracks Brantley had already laid down. These include probably his most famous 45 on the Northern scene – “Yes You Did” This song and “Better To Have Loved” were written by the song-writing team of Lewis, Farmer and Lewis who had given a demo of the song to Johnny Brantley after being introduced by friends of Lee Moses. The backing tracks had already been laid down by the Ohio Players when Hermon entered the Bell Sound Studios on West 54th Street to record his tortured vocals on these classic tracks with both tracks being were licensed to Minit Records.

One of the most iconic songs of this period has to be “Bad Girl”. This was song was written by Lee Moses and Bobby Lee Fears aka Bobby Dixon who was originally lead singer of the Atlanta group The Fabulous Denos. The first recording of the song was by this group followed by the Lee Moses version for Musicor before Johnny decided to give Hermon a shot using the same backing track as Lee’s version. “Bad Girl” was issued on Minit with “Show Me Some Sign”.

When I recorded the tracks for this post, I realised that I was mistaken in saying that Johnny Brantley used the same backing tracks for the Lee Moses Musicor and Hermon Hitson version. You can clearly hear that they are different backing tacks. It is possible that Lee used his own band The Deciples and Johnny used the Ohio Players for the Hermon Hitson version.

You can get more information on the Fabulous Denos over on Georgia Soul blog.

I enjoyed listening to the 4 versions sided by side and taking in the different takes on the song especially Lee Moses's rap on Part 2 of his Musicor cut.

Thanks to Gabe Vaughan for inspiring this post!

Update

Great news from Eli Reed below in the comments concerning the song Bad Girl!

Thanks also to Eli for pointing out the mix up in the tracks - I've now fixed them!!

Eli also reminded me of Hermon Hitson's alternative version of Bad Girl which was released on the Soul-Tay-Shus CD You Are Too Much For The Human Heart back in 2005:

Hermon Hitson Bad Girl Alternative Version