Tuesday March 30, 2021 “Band of Gold” Freda Payne
A woman deserted and left with only her band of gold...nope.
Jazz singer Freda Payne was persuaded to join the Invictus recording label which was formed by the Holland Brothers and Lamont Dozier who were the chart topping Motown songwriters Holland-Dozier-Holland who had left Motown in 1969 to start their own label.
When presented with her first song at Invictus, a pop tune “Band of Gold”, Payne’s reaction was not positive saying she just didn’t like the song. Fortunately for her, Dozier, a childhood friend of Freda, passed along a valuable philosophy, suggesting that she didn’t have to like the songs, she just had to sing them. So reluctantly she did and it went on to become an international top ten multi-million selling song...and haven’t we heard that story before.
Ray Parker Jr., future singer of ‘who you gonna call, Ghostbusters’ fame played guitar on this and Joyce Vincent Wilson, and Telma Hopkins provided the background vocals. Joyce and Telma would go on to be the Dawn part of successful 70s singing group Tony Orlando and Dawn.
So what’s so disconcerting about this song? The problem comes up in the second and third verses…”But last night on our honeymoon we stayed in separate rooms” and Freda is still waiting alone in her dark room for her husband to “walk back through that door and love me like you tried before.”
Wait something’s wrong there, isn’t there?
So the interpretations started: is her husband nervous, is he impotent, is he gay? There was listener support for all those possibilities but as it turned out there were lyrics left out of the radio version because the songwriters felt it would be too long to get radio airplay. Included in what had been eliminated was "And the memories of our wedding day, and the night I turned you away". Offers an explanation, but it's not really much better.
Stay safe and well...and is it at least interesting to find what’s hidden away in a song?