Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
Occasionally the Secret History of Chicago Music is a tale of two cities. Soul singer Bobby McClure worked mostly out of Chicago and Saint Louis, but he didn’t get the recognition he should have in either place. He recorded for some of the greatest soul labels of all time (including Hi Records and the Chess/Checker family), helped jump-start the careers of future stars such as Fontella Bass, and sang with Sam Cooke, one of the founding fathers of R&B.
I know only one true-blue fan of McClure’s work: my old roommate Benjamin Pirani, who helped found the Windy City Soul Club and now lives in New York. He’s a soul music expert and has a few releases of his own as an R&B singer on the Cherries and Colemine labels. “McClure could do a bit of everything,” Pirani says, “like that hard shouting style that comes from the south but also that very Chicago sweet soul sound.” But McClure isn’t even mentioned in Robert Pruter’s 1991 book Chicago Soul, widely considered the bible of the genre. Needless to say, he doesn’t deserve to be that obscure.
Bobby McClure was born in Chicago on April 21, 1942, but his family moved with him to Saint Louis when he was an infant. By age nine he was singing in church, where the best soul artists started, and in the 1950s, his clear tenor voice set him apart from the pack. McClure soon graduated to performing in gospel groups, and while still a teenager, he sang with the venerable Soul Stirrers, then led by Cooke. Alas, he doesn’t appear on any of the group’s recordings.
Like Cooke, McClure would move into secular music in the late 1950s, trying his hand at doo-wop in Bobby & the Vocals and singing R&B in a band led by saxophonist and drummer Oliver Sain. At around that time, Sain became musical director for blues singer and guitarist Little Milton, in whose group Fontella Bass played keyboards and sang—a connection that would soon prove significant for McClure.
I’ll admit I’m not sure which of McClure’s gigs happened where—the Soul Stirrers were based in Chicago when he was involved, for instance, and lots of artists traveled between Saint Louis and Chicago to work. Bass and McClure ended up the two lead singers in Sain’s soul revue after Sain parted ways with Little Milton, and at some point in the mid-60s they moved separately to the Windy City. Bass would marry trumpeter Lester Bowie, who came to Chicago from Saint Louis in 1966 and joined the group that would evolve into the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
McClure and Bass continued to collaborate, and in 1965 they released a duet for Checker: the snappy “Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing,” written and produced by Sain, which hit number five on the Billboard R&B chart and number 33 on the Hot 100. The tune would prove to be McClure’s most commercially successful—and it was later recorded by Booker T. & the MG’s, Gregg Allman, Ry Cooder, and the duo of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty.
Later in ’65, McClure and Bass followed up with the sassy and classy “Don’t Jump” b/w “You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone),” but it didn’t do as well. Their duo dissolved shortly thereafter, because Bass’s solo career took off: Her next session, which included saxophonist Gene Barge, backing vocalist Minnie Riperton, and future members of Earth, Wind & Fire, would produce the timeless smash “Rescue Me.”
McClure also made his own solo debut in 1965, working with Chess Records imprint Checker on the funky, bluesy “I’ll Be True to You,” cowritten by Sain. This dance-floor groover is now a beloved classic with the Northern Soul set, a music fandom that arose in the UK in the late 60s and still exists today. McClure followed it with two more Checker singles: “You Got Me Baby” b/w “Peak of Love” in 1966 and “Baby, You Don’t Love Me” b/w “Don’t Get Your Signals Crossed” in 1967. Both could’ve been dance-floor sensations, but only “Peak of Love” did well, reaching number 16 on the R&B chart.
In the early 70s, McClure made a couple singles for the smaller Cedric label, run by songwriter and producer James Vanleer. Cedric was also home to greats such as Jackie Ross and Don Gardner, and Vanleer’s next operation, Sedgrick Records, added Bobby Rush. McClure’s 1970 track “Love’s Comming [sic] Down on Me” slaps with crackling energy, and its B-side, the smooth, horn-led “Never Let You Get Away,” reappeared in 1971 as the A-side to “Have a Little Mercy,” making for a perfectly sweet single of out-of-time Chicago soul.
McClure then returned to Saint Louis, where in ’75 he released the smoky “I Got a Good Women [sic]” b/w “Begging You Baby” through the local Vanessa label, run by his old collaborator Oliver Sain. That same year, his gooey, string-soaked track “You Bring Out the Love in Me” shared a split 45 on Island Records with “Daybreak” by disco-tinged group Survival Kit. McClure’s radio-friendly tune has been sampled in “Bring Out the Love” by Dj Quads in 2017 and “Revolving” by Yung Bae in 2020.
Next McClure signed with Memphis’s legendary Hi Records, at the time still home to Al Green but on the downslope of the string of huge successes Green had with the label. McClure debuted on Hi with the 1976 single “Doing It Rite on Time” b/w “She’s Miss Wonderful,” and I have no clue why its slamming, disco-adjacent funk didn’t rocket up the charts. It was the first of several excellent singles he released through the label, including 1977’s clavinet-fueled “I Ain’t Gonna Turn You Loose” and 1978’s pleading “To Get What You Got.” All of McClure’s output for Hi was produced by future electro-dance pioneer Don “O’Mar” Boddie, usually working with label head and studio wizard Willie Mitchell.
After this point, I get even less confident about what McClure was doing where. He worked in an Illinois penitentiary as a corrections officer and started his own label, called B-Mac, in Saint Louis in the early 80s. McClure put out the first of several B-Mac singles in 1981, the two-part “You’ve Got the Makings,” a sleek and tuneful bit of boogie soul written and coproduced by Boddie. Working with Los Angeles label Edge Records, in 1986 McClure released “You Never Miss Your Water” b/w “It Feels So Good (to Be Back Home),” which could’ve competed with Luther Vandross, Kool & the Gang, New Edition, or any other soul on the charts at the time.
In 1988, McClure released The Cherry LP on Japanese label P-Vine. It also came out in the States, with accompanying singles, on the S.D.E.G. imprint run by famed funky bluesman Swamp Dogg. (In 1994, Shanachie reissued it as Younger Man Blues.) Swamp Dogg produced the album and wrote nine of its ten songs, and it has a drum-forward, high-gloss 80s sound. Grittier tracks such as “Today You Started Leaving Him (and Loving Me)” and “Younger Man Blues” sit nicely beside doo-wop-style throwbacks “Cherry Pie” and “Do Do Do Doop (Please Come Back).”
McClure had moved to Los Angeles by the time of his death, which came much too early: He passed away at age 50 on November 13, 1992, from complications of a stroke following a brain aneurysm. His music is still out there, though, on compilations such as Peak of Love (released by P-Vine in 1991), Hi Records Presents Bobby McClure & Willie Clayton (from 1992), and Chess Northern Soul (curated by Mojo magazine in 2005).
McClure remains a Northern Soul favorite, but it’d be great to see him get the respect in Chicago that he sees overseas. “McClure seemed like he was looking for the place to be,” says Pirani. “But he sold records here, evidenced by the proverbial crates of easily had, quality titles I’d find in Chicago in the day.” If an esteemed local label released a McClure box set, that would definitely help. Numero Group, you listening?
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.
The Secret History of Chicago Music is sponsored by Dusty Groove Records. Find rare, new, and used LPs and CDs at dustygroove.com or in-store 9 AM–7 PM, 1120 N. Ashland.
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