Barbara Lynn: the songwriter who set the gold standard of R&B and soul
Behind the squeaking doors of a run-down club in Beaumont, Texas, in 1961, a young performer sits in the corner, playing guitar for the sparse crowd of drunks and deadbeats swarming around the bar. It would have been easy for the musician, going by the name of Barbara Lynn, to blend into the damp walls of the venue had it not been for her voice. With all the poise and power of riot and the delicate beauty of an angel, her voice soon transported her from that dingy club in Texas to the nationwide R&B charts.
It was rock and roll star Joe Barry who first discovered Lynn performing in clubs around her home state of Texas during the early 1960s, barely out of her teenage years. Barry had been drawn to the performer both for her groundbreaking tones and the fact that she had adopted the guitar-led sounds of early rock and roll, something of a rarity for female performers at the time. Quickly, the performer was ushered into a studio to record what would become her debut single, ‘You’ll Lose A Good Thing’.
At the time, across virtually all genres and record labels, artists – particularly female artists – were told to record songs written for them by other songwriters. This was standard practice within pop music, with the thought that it would produce easier hit songs to benefit the record labels. However, Lynn stood firm against these wishes; she had been writing songs since childhood. So, the self-penned ‘You’ll Lose A Good Thing’ became her debut single, and it went on to top the R&B charts in America.
Lynn was a true original for the time period, writing her own material and playing lead guitar on virtually all of her recordings. She was completely self-sufficient and came fully formed as a musical revelation ready to take the landscape of R&B and soul music by storm. Following on from her debut single, Lynn’s songs continued to feature in the R&B charts, and even if they rarely troubled the mainstream musical scene, her work became known through artists like Aretha Franklin and The Rolling Stones, who recorded versions of Lynn’s work.
In addition to being covered by everyone from The Stones to Cold Blood, Lynn regularly toured with the soul stars of the 1960s, including performers like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and the various artists who made Motown Records such a commercial stronghold during the 1960s. Her early sound might have been rooted in the guitar-led rebellion of rock and roll, but Lynn’s timeless songwriting proved itself adaptable to funk, soul, and R&B just as easily.
Before she knew it, Barbara Lynn became one of the most prolific R&B performers and songwriters in the United States, all while in her early 20s. By 1968, she was signed to the legendary Atlantic Records – the label that had made a soul star out of gospel singer Aretha Franklin two years prior. However, poor promotion and mismanagement from the label led Lynn to largely retire from the music industry for much of the 1970s and early 1980s.
During this time, Lynn’s name fell into relative obscurity, particularly when compared to some of the colossal names she toured with during those early years. However, her songwriting lived on through this time, as many of her records were dusted off and discovered by the blossoming northern soul scene, which dominated youth subculture across the north of England during the early 1970s. The voice that had elevated her from the small clubs of Texas in the early 1960s was, all of a sudden, booming through the speakers in venues like Wigan Casino and Manchester’s Twisted Wheel.
Eventually, Lynn returned to performing during the mid-1980s, returning to her hometown soon after to record the studio album You Don’t Have to Go, her first in 20 years. Since then, Lynn’s music has been rediscovered by multiple different generations, rightly hailed for its pioneering spirit, quality songwriting, and defiant performance style.
Even today, many of the songs originally written by Lynn sound fresh and captivating; the fact that she was one of the very few female artists writing and performing their own work during the 1960s speaks to the gold standard she set out for the landscape of R&B and soul music during that period.
