Alex Henderson

Glenn Jones
Everybody Loves a Winner [Expanded Edition]

It’s no secret that numerous R&B singers started out performing gospel. And one of them is Glenn Jones, who was a well-known gospel star before shifting his focus to secular R&B and launching his solo career with his EP, Everybody Loves a Winner (which was originally released by RCA Records in 1983). The Jacksonville, Florida native was only 14 when he formed the Modulations, a popular gospel group that recorded two albums for Savoy Records: 1978’s With a Made Up Mind (which was produced by the late Rev. James Cleveland, a huge name in gospel), and 1980’s Feel the Fire. Over the years, some people have confused Jones’ Modulations with a Durham, North Carolina-based soul quartet that was also called the Modulations—and when Jones’ group started calling itself Glenn Jones & the Modulations, that was a good way to distinguish itself from the North Carolina group (whose 1976 album It’s Rough Out Here was reissued by FunkyTownGrooves in 2012).

In 1980, Jones began to enjoy some exposure in the secular world when Philadelphia-born jazz drummer turned R&B star Norman Connors featured him on his hit single “Melancholy Fire.”

Interviewed in February 2014, Jones recalled: “Norman heard my first gospel album with the Modulations, and he loved it. Norman wanted to feature me on a song called ‘Melancholy Fire,’ which was released as a single and started making a lot of noise. Eventually, RCA Records came to the table and offered me a secular deal. So I worked on a full album, but RCA decided to make it an EP—and that was Everybody Loves a Winner.”

In its original vinyl incarnation, Everybody Loves a Winner contained five tracks: four uptempo grooves (“Love Intensity,” the title track and the singles “I Am Somebody” and “Keep on Doin’”) and the quiet storm/adult contemporary ballad “Thank You for the Love.” But FunkyTownGrooves’ expanded 2014 edition of Everybody Loves a Winner is much longer thanks to the addition of 10 bonus tracks, which include four versions of “I Am Somebody,” the previously unreleased “Share My Love” and three versions of the title track of 1984’s Finesse (Jones’ first full-length solo album). Also included is the 7” single version of “Show Me,” a song that soared to #3 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart and became Jones’ first major solo hit.

Jones notes that his transition from gospel to R&B had more to do with the lyrics than the melodies. Like the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Rance Allen, Andraé Crouch and the New York Community Choir, Glenn Jones & the Modulations favored a very R&B-minded approach to gospel and combined a Christian message with funky, soul-influenced beats and melodies—an approach that was quite cutting-edge in its day.

“The Modulations were doing all kind of progressive things,” Jones remembers. “We were going on stage stepping and dancing. Of course, a lot of the older church people had a problem with it, but we managed to entertain people—and it was a learning experience. It was a good time.”

Jones continues: “Even though I came from a gospel background, the material I was doing with the Modulations was a very contemporary and progressive kind of gospel. It was easy for me to make that transition from gospel to R&B because I was already writing contemporary-type melodies. And when I recorded ‘Melancholy Fire’ with Norman, people knew I was comfortable doing secular music.”

Although Everybody Loves a Winner wasn’t as big a seller as some of Jones’ subsequent releases, it contained two minor hits (“Keep on Doin’” and the Chic-influenced “I Am Somebody”) and boasts some impressive guests. Produced by Al McKay of Earth, Wind & Fire fame, “Keep on Doin’” is a vocal duet with Genobia Jeter (a major gospel star who became Jones’ wife). Two others known for their contributions to EWF, Philip Bailey and Ralph Johnson, both play percussion on “Keep on Doin’”—and “I Am Somebody” employs the Jones Girls as background vocalists. Hubert Eaves III of D-Train fame helps with the album’s producing and arranging.

“On the Everybody Loves a Winner EP, I tried to be conscious about the lyrics I was doing,” Jones explains. “‘Keep on Doin’ and ‘I Am Somebody’ were very positive, feel-good, uplifting kind of songs. Even though I was making a transition from contemporary-type gospel to R&B, I didn’t want to just come out of left field with it. I always tried to keep my lyrics tasteful and positive.”

Jones notes that in the early 2000s, Bobby Brown was hoping to produce a cover of “Keep on Doin’” for Whitney Houston (his wife at the time). But Brown and Houston split up, and that remake never came about.

“Thank You for the Love” was an important recording for Jones in that it marked the first time he recorded a romantic ballad as a solo artist. Jones observes: “People always look at me as a balladeer, but in my early catalogue, I did a lot of uptempo stuff—and when I go to Europe, they want to hear all of those uptempo songs that I cut back in the ‘80s.”

Jones remembers that when he shifted his focus to R&B, he was impressed by how much larger the recording budgets were on the secular side. “If you were doing a gospel album back then,” Jones recalls, “they would send you in the studio and make you finish it in one day. I’ve done that. Back then, you were lucky if you got five grand to cut a gospel album. But when I started recording R&B and saw the size of the budgets and saw the amount of time you could take to really do a quality record, I was like, ‘Man, I want my records to sound like that.’ That was part of why I wanted to do secular music. Eventually, when I got to the point where I had good-sized budgets and could get the people I wanted for my secular records, it was like a dream come true.”

It’s been 31 years since Jones began recording as a solo artist, and with Everybody Loves a Winner, his solo career was off to an exciting start.

—Alex Henderson, March 2014

Alex Henderson’s work has appeared in Billboard, Spin, Creem, Salon.com, The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, JazzTimes, Jazziz, Cash Box, HITS, CD Review, Skin Two, Black Beat, The Pasadena Weekly, Black Radio Exclusive (BRE), Music Connection, Latin Style, The New York City Jazz Record, Jazz Inside Magazine and many other well-known publications. Henderson (alexvhenderson.com) also contributed several thousand CD reviews to The All Music Guide’s popular website and series of music reference books.  



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