The Philosopher of Soul who took Sam Cooke’s place

Johnnie Taylor was born in Crawfordsville, Arkansas, and grew up in West Memphis, singing in gospel groups as a child. In the 1950s he recorded “Somewhere to Lay My Head” on Chicago’s Vee Jay label with the Highway Q.C.’s, a group that included a young Sam Cooke. His singing sounded strikingly close to Cooke’s, and in 1957 he was hired to take Cooke’s place in the Soul Stirrers.

Cooke later founded his own label, SAR Records, and Taylor was one of its first acts, recording “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day” in 1962. SAR quickly collapsed after Cooke died in 1964. In 1966 Taylor moved to Stax Records in Memphis, where he was dubbed The Philosopher of Soul and recorded with the label’s house band, which included Booker T. & the M.G.’s.

At Stax he became an R&B star with over a dozen chart successes. “Who’s Making Love” reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1968 and sold over a million copies. “Jody’s Got Your Girl and Gone” and “Cheaper to Keep Her” followed, along with “I Believe in You (You Believe in Me)”, which reached No. 11 on the Hot 100 and also went gold. With Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers, he was one of the flagship artists credited with keeping Stax afloat after Otis Redding’s death. He appeared in the 1973 documentary Wattstax.

After Stax folded in 1975, Taylor moved to Columbia Records, where Don Davis was still producing him. The result was “Disco Lady” in 1976, which spent four weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and six at the top of the R&B chart, and became the first single certified platinum by the RIAA. Sales generally fell away afterwards, but he stayed active until his death on May 31, 2000. “What About My Love” comes from that later stretch. Taylor was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2022.