Tuesday's Twosome # 4+5

... come today on a Wednesday. Work kept me away from the net the previous days and yesterday I fell asleep faster than I could glimpse. I try to make up for it today, and today's duets, both mixed, will not be generally well-known, even though one song reached the Top 10 of the r&b charts in 1968. Apart from 45s, a good source for lesser known material are LP samplers of the epoch.

SSS Int'l LP # 3 (1969)

In 1969, Shelby Singleton's SSS International of Nashville released a sampler of (more or less) soul music, with little imagination simply called Soul Gold Volume 1. This album contains 12 tunes, two of them instrumentals and one song by Betty Harris (»There's A Break In The Road«). And there are three duets, one by Laura Greene & Johnny McKinnis and two by Peggy Scott (later Scott-Adams) & Jo Jo Benson.

Peggy & Jo Jo hit it big in spring '68 when their first single, »Lover's Holiday«, reached the Top 10 r&b and #31 pop. In 1968 and '69, they were the biggest soul asset of SSS Int'l, and the two LPs preceding today's sampler were both by Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson (I will play some tunes from their first LP soon).

Actress, TV-commercials singer, model, life- style icon (and what not) Laura Greene was coupled with singer Johnny McKinnis and their first single on Silver Fox (a subsidiary of SSS Int'l), »Pledging My Love«, was out in February 1969; it reached #49 r&b although only staying two weeks on the charts.

These two songs from the SSS Int'l LP beautifully complement each other: Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson's »Lover's Holiday« is a gritty tune with a pretty, rough-voiced female vocal part. Laura Greene & Johnny McKinnis's »Pledging My Love« is rather the contrary: a lovers' plea, musically underpinned by gentle strings; both singers have a »confidential« spoken part in the middle, the almost inevitable element of a romantic ballad in the duet mode. Well, no great songs both, but nice. Listen here:

Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson: »Lover's Holiday« / Laura Greene & Johnny McKinnis: »Pledging My Love« from
the SSS International LP # 3 (1969):