{"id":7190,"date":"2015-02-10T05:30:14","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T10:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=7190"},"modified":"2026-08-31T08:48:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:48:27","slug":"the-bobby-lance-story-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/10\/the-bobby-lance-story-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bobby Lance Story, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

The Lance\/Robins songwriting team had come to the attention of George Goldner<\/strong>, head of the Jerry Leiber<\/strong>\/Mike Stoller<\/strong>-founded Red Bird Records. In particular, Goldner recognized Bobby’s talent, and believed he could go far in the business. He asked the teen where he’d like to get a job, and Lance quickly named the label that was home to many of his rhythm and blues heroes: Atlantic Records.<\/p>\n

Goldner lined up a meeting for Bobby Lance with Jerry Wexler<\/strong>, the head of Atlantic. Auditioning his songs in Wexler’s office in front of the record mogul and Atlantic stars Wilson Pickett<\/strong> and Solomon Burke<\/strong>, Lance impressed everyone enough to be invited back the next day. On his return, Lance was signed as an in-house songwriter and arranger; his contract included a provision allowing him to release two albums.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now established at Atlantic (an organization that included \u201chouse\u201d labels Atco and Cotillion), Lance and sister Fran had composed another R&B tune, written expressly for Aretha Franklin<\/strong>. But when the 1968 composition \u201cThe House That Jack Built\u201d wasn’t cut for Aretha’s then-current album, a miffed Lance brought the song to Barry Records and Thelma Jones. In fact, both that tune and its flip, “Give it To Me Straight” were written by the Lance\/Robins team. On its release, Jones’ recording, using Bobby’s arrangement, started making appearances on local and regional record charts.<\/p>\n

However, the next time Lance was at Atlantic, he was called into the studio. They had a surprise for him. They played a new record that Aretha had just recorded: \u201cThe House That Jack Built.\u201d Her version used much the same arrangement as the Jones single, and once released, it quickly pushed Thelma Jones’ version right off the charts and into musical footnote status.<\/p>\n

In his 1999 book The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made<\/em>, renowned critic Dave Marsh<\/strong> ranks Aretha’s \u201cThe House That Jack Built\u201d as #704. The tune reached #6 on Billboard<\/em>‘s Hot 100 and #2 on the R&B charts. It dated from the period during which Atlantic Records made extensive use of the excellence of Muscle Shoals, Alabama session musicians, including Jimmy Johnson<\/strong> (guitar), David Hood<\/strong> (bass guitar), Barry Beckett<\/strong> (keyboards), and drummer Roger Hawkins<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Lance and Robins soon placed another of their tunes, the strutting soul number “One Night is All I Need,” on Arthur Conley<\/strong>‘s final Atco LP, 1969’s More Sweet Soul<\/em>. That album featured backing by the Muscle Shoals studio cats, plus a young session guitarist named Duane Allman<\/strong>. Meanwhile and on her own, Fran Robins penned “Sweep Around Your Own Back Door,\u201d a Lulu<\/strong> B-side on Atco, also recorded in Muscle Shoals. She also placed a tune on Lulu’s Melody Fair<\/em> LP, yet another album featuring Duane Allman’s guitar work.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lance was beginning to chafe within the songwriting partnership he had with his older sister. Their lives were deeply entwined: Fran had acted as a surrogate mother to Bobby for many years; and the two had been writing songs together for a decade. As Lance began to grow toward manhood, he felt a growing need to express himself more independently. To that end, he began thinking about writing songs on his own and\/or with other partners. His na\u00efve pursuit of that goal took the form of signing another contract, this time with Motown. The plan was that he would be an in-house songwriter for the Detroit label, and he might also do some session arranging work. That there might be a serious conflict of interest didn’t occur to the young songwriter.<\/p>\n

Once the executives at Atlantic realized what had happened, they began efforts to extricate Lance from his ill-advised deal with Motown. The legal wrangling would drag on for some time, and the agreement that was finally hammered out ceded to Motown a stake in any financial success that Lance’s Atlantic albums might enjoy.<\/p>\n

In 1971, Lance’s debut album First Peace<\/em> was released on Atlantic’s Cotillion imprint. Cut in late July 1970 in sessions at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios and at Atlantic’s NYC studios, the eleven-track LP featured all original tunes written by the Lance\/Robins team.<\/p>\n

Beckett, Hood and Hawkins provided most of the musical backing on First Peace<\/em>, while Lance sang and played guitar. A King Curtis<\/strong>-led six-man horn section provided beefy charts for several of First Peace<\/em>‘s numbers. A string section conducted by Leo Edwards<\/strong> graced several tracks. Famed session man Eddie Hinton<\/strong> handled the lead and slide guitar on all but one cut. And though he’s not credited anywhere on the original LP, for First Peace<\/em>‘s “More Than Enough Rain,” Duane Allman provided some stinging electric slide guitar.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Though it has been the subject of speculation for decades, Lance vigorously confirms Allman’s presence on \u201cMore Than Enough Rain.\u201d The chronology of Allman’s involvement goes like this: Bobby had self-produced the sessions for First Peace<\/em>, but remained dissatisfied with the completed mixes for a few of the album’s tracks. Ace producer Tom Dowd<\/strong> offered to remix those tracks, so Lance traveled to Dowd’s Miami, FL Criteria Recording Studio (also known as Atlantic Records South), bringing along the multi-track master tapes. Under Dowd’s supervision, Lance overdubbed some vocal tracks, and left the tapes with Dowd. Soon thereafter \u2013 October ’70 \u2013 Allman was at Criteria for the sessions that would produce Ronnie Hawkins<\/strong>‘ self-titled 1970 LP. In a spare moment during those sessions, Dowd asked the guitarist to lay down some licks to improve Lance’s track; the resulting mix of \u201cMore Than Enough Rain\u201d features musical sparring between King Curtis’ horn lines and Duane Allman’s impromptu yet fluid slide guitar work (the track also appears on Rounder’s 2013 box set, Skydog: the Duane Allman Retrospective<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

To be continued…<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… The Lance\/Robins songwriting team had come to the attention of George Goldner, head of the Jerry Leiber\/Mike Stoller-founded Red Bird Records. In particular, Goldner recognized Bobby’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,62,64,69],"tags":[367,726,1796],"class_list":["post-7190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rb","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-soul","tag-bobby-lance","tag-duane-allman","tag-real-gone-music","cat-60-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-69-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32328,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7190\/revisions\/32328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}