Thanks to the success of “Valentine Love,” “You Are My Starship” and “We Both Need Each Other,” Connors gained a reputation for being an important contributor to the quiet storm area of R&B. Dyer is the most prominent of the four vocalists Connors had featured her extensively on 1979’s Invitation, and reuniting with her on Take It to the Limit (originally released by Arista Records) the following year was a wise move.
The rest of the album, however, is decidedly vocal-oriented, and Connors keeps the vocal factor high by featuring Glenn Jones on “Melancholy Fire,” Johnson on “I Don’t Need Nobody Else,” Ware on “Everywhere Inside of Me” and Dyer on “You’ve Been on My Mind,” “Justify,” “You Bring Me Joy” and the title track. And Hubbard’s melodic flugelhorn playing is the main attraction. Although Hubbard was best known for his trumpet playing, he played the flugelhorn as a second instrument-and he is instantly recognizable on “Black Cow.” Although “Black Cow” includes some background vocals, that selection is an instrumental for all intents and purposes. The fact that Connors deemphasized instrumental jazz in the late 1970s and early 1980s doesn’t mean that he abandoned it altogether, and Take It to the Limit contains one pop-jazz instrumental: an interpretation of Steely Dan’s “Black Cow,” which features the late Freddie Hubbard on flugelhorn. So Connors features four other lead singers on this album: Glenn Jones, Leon Ware, Al Johnson and Chicago-born Ada Dyer, a.k.a.
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Carn was recording for Philadelphia International Records, Henderson enjoyed a major funk hit in 1980 with “Wide Receiver,” and Hyman was still getting a lot of mileage out of her 1979 single “You Know How to Love Me” (which British neo-soulster Lisa Stansfield covered in 1997). Connors didn’t let them down.Ĭarn, Henderson and Hyman are not among the singers Connors features on Take It to the Limit in 1980, all of them were busy with their solo careers. And when Take It to the Limit came out in 1980, Connors’ followers-many of them people he had converted after deemphasizing instrumental jazz-expected him to feature some fine vocal talent. Hyman, meanwhile, was featured on two Connors singles from 1976: “We Both Need Each Other” (a duet with Henderson) and a remake of Thom Bell & Linda Creed’s Philly soul favorite “Betcha By Golly Wow” (a big hit for the Stylistics in 1972). That approach proved advantageous for him: he scored major R&B hits by featuring Henderson and Carn on “Valentine Love” in 1975 and Henderson in 1976 on the haunting quiet storm ballad “You Are My Starship” (which became Connors’ biggest hit ever and reached #4 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart). But most of the time, Connors made his mark in R&B by finding great singers to feature-singers like Michael Henderson, Jean Carn and the late Phyllis Hyman. Occasionally, Connors would sing lead on his R&B-oriented albums of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
But while Duke, Rushen, Ayers and Benson came to be recognized as R&B singers, Connors usually left the lead vocals to others. The Philadelphia native started out as a jazz drummer and an instrumentalist before making R&B his main focus. Norman Connors is another musician whose name belongs on that list. And George Benson, once exalted as a master of hard bop guitar, found himself being compared to Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway rather than Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell or Grant Green. Pianist/keyboardist George Duke hit big in the funk realm with his 1977 smoker “Reach For It.” Patrice Rushen, also a pianist/keyboardist, gained an abundance of new fans with her 1979 smash “Haven’t You Heard.” Roy Ayers, a masterful vibist who was influenced by Milt Jackson and Bobby Hutcherson, became better known for his funk and quiet storm hits than for the hardcore jazz he had played in the 1960s. During the 1970s, a long list of jazz instrumentalists successfully reinvented themselves as R&B artists.
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