Songs that Changed Music: Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way (ft. James Gadson & Jimmy Webb)
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➡️➡️Learn more about Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way (ft. James Gadson) here: The allure of a great disco song is an infectious arrangement, lively instrumentation and a stellar vocal to take you away into the stratosphere – such as the inescapable “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston. After years of record deals on Capitol Records with The Art Reynolds Singers and 1969 debut album Sunshower produced by the legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb on ABC-Dunhill, Thelma Houston simply didn’t have a hit. Even with a record deal on Motown Records’ west coast venture, MoWest none of her songs were taking off. It was not at all due to a lack of talent. It wasn’t until Motown’s Head of A&R Suzanne de Passe took notice of Teddy Pendergrass’ vocal on the initial version of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. While observing Thelma’s talent during a Las Vegas performance, de Passe was impressed and convinced that a female voice was needed for the song to be a hit – and that voice belonged to Thelma Houston. The production went into high gear, taking off from where producers Gamble & Huff left off with the original 1975 Pendergrass version with more frantic emotion, prominent instrumentation across bass, drums, strings and horn sections and one once-in-a-lifetime vocal from Thelma Houston that has become her signature song. “Don’t Leave Me This Way” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 as well as achieving #1 status on the Hot R&B Songs and Dance Songs charts. To put the song’s success into perspective, it joined other No. 1's that year including “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, “Hotel California” by the Eagles and “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder. “Don’t Leave Me This Way” earned Thelma Houston a Grammy in 1978, victorious over fellow nominees Aretha Franklin, Natalie Cole, Dorothy Moore and Diana Ross. Thelma actually didn’t attend the Grammy telecast that year simply because she didn’t think she was going to win. At the 1975 ceremony, Houston was nominated for the first time for her minor 1974 hit “You’ve Been Doing Wrong For So Long”, but ultimately that award went to Aretha Franklin for “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing” – closing out an eight-year winning streak for the Queen of Soul. Thelma just didn’t think she would beat out Aretha Franklin. ❤️My Favorite Plugins:
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➡️Warren Huart Kemper Pack https://lancasteraudio.com/shop/kemper-packs/warren-huart-kemper-pack/ ❤️GEAR:
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➡️UK Sound 1173: https://vintageking.com/uk-sound-1173?utm_source=warrenhuart&utm_campaign=uk1173&utm_content=uk1173
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#ThelmaHouston Giveaway Winners: https://www.producelikeapro.com/giveaway-winners/ Produce Like A Pro is a website which features great tips to help the beginning recordist make incredible sounding home recordings on a budget. Source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ccM59TjUrk
Referral Content
Resources
Resource page for music producers and beat makers. Curated lists of tools and external websites that I have used to help promote my beats online. Throughout my years of selling beats I have used various tools both good and bad.
I decided to make this resource page to give you an idea of what tools work really well and will help you make and sell beats. I will be updating this page often as I am continually trying different methods on selling beats. I recommend bookmarking this page, as it will be updated often. Enjoy!
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something.
MY MOST RECOMMENDED TOOLS TO HELP YOU SUCCEED
Thrive Themes is a tool that enables me to create these amazing landing pages in a matter of minutes. My resource page and my whole website is created using Thrive Themes.
I've been using WordPress for a long time and, to be honest, I always thought it was the best tool for the job. But recently starting using something that changed my mind (although I'm still using WordPress):
After seeing what this new plugin does, I don't think I can ever go back to the "normal" WordPress editor. I didn't even know it was possible to have this kind of a completely visual editor, but there it is (check the link for a demo video).
Before now, I never realized just how much time I was spending waiting for page reloads while creating content in WordPress. You can save massive amounts of time with a "live" editor like this.
And what I love about this tool is that it doesn't just replace the boring and clumsy old WordPress editor, it's also a whole sales-page-building suite! If you build marketing pages and landing pages, this thing is brilliant!
It is very easy to create sales pages, squeeze pages , download and thank you pages. All in a matter of minutes.
That's without any website code experience. Try It Out Here
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When it comes to picking a hosting company, speed, and reliability matters greatly. When I started selling beats online, I didn’t know much about websites & hosting.
All of my niche websites are hosted on Bluehost. Why? Because they make it incredibly easy to get a new site up and running with their one-click automatic WordPress Blog installation.
I made the mistake of assuming all hosting companies were equally as good as each other!! oh, boy was I wrong. Having a slow website, lost me a lot money in terms of sales from beats. When I look back now I can understand why.
I put myself in my customer's shoes, coming to my site to buy beats. As I typed the url and pressed enter the time it took to load was awful and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I, as a customer don’t want to wait, I want a pleasant experience. It also dawn on me that first impressions are everything when it comes to websites, so you want your website to be fast.
I highly recommend using Bluehost for your first website, and you can get started now at $3.89/month.
2
Airbit Beat Store
Beat Store I Use & Trust
When it comes to selling beats, Airbit is a must for hosting your beats. Airbit is an all in one solution for any producer wanting to sell beats online.
No matter how many beats, online profiles, or websites you have, Airbit players can be integrated seamlessly to give you and your customers a professional and fully automated service to sell instrumentals on many other websites.
Your customers can listen to your beats, select the beats they want to buy, and place their order directly from the player. Thanks to the technologies of html5 you can take Airbit players for selling beats and place them all over the internet to maximize your exposure as a producer.
I recently wrote an article on how to place the Airbit player on Your Website, it can be found here – guide on how to add Airbit to Website
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This is one tool/service I cannot live without. Aweber is a vital tool in allowing me to reach thousands of people with the click of a button. I truly recommend Aweber to anyone wanting to sell beats or anything for that matter.
I would even recommend it to bands and artists, who want to communicate with their audience. I could talk for forever about this service but my best advice is to go try it, you’ll see what I mean when you use it.
Also, the first month is only $1 it’s a no brainer!!!
Join AD & Legion Live training where they’ll show the blueprint for how they sold over a Million dollars of beats online EACH...
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