OBIT ~ Homer Banks, Soul pioneer; Independent

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 01:49:33 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
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Homer Banks
Soul pioneer of the cheating song
17 April 2003 Homer Banks, songwriter and singer: born Memphis, Tennessee 2 August
1941; married (one son); died Memphis 4 April 2003.
Until the 1970s, the subject of marital infidelity had been largely the
province of country music, but the songwriter Homer Banks, with such classic
songs as "Who's Making Love (To your Old Lady While You are Out Making
Love)" and "(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don't Want to be Right", brought the
issues to soul music. For the first time in any type of music, Banks
revealed that the participants were enjoying their infidelity. "They were
revolutionary and pretty radical," he reflected, "but they sound like Sunday
School today."
The mild-mannered Banks, who was born and raised in Memphis, was a member of
a group, the Soul Consolaters, at high school. He was keen to break into the
music business professionally and his chance came in 1965 when he recorded
"Lady of Stone" for the fledgling writers and producers Isaac Hayes and
David Porter at the Genie label.
Over the next three years, he made several singles with Hayes and Porter for
the Minit label including "60 Minutes of Your Love", which made the US
rhythm and blues charts and became a Northern Soul classic, "Round the Clock
Lover" and "(Who You Gonna Run To?) Me or Your Mama?". His 1966 single
"Ain't That a Lot of Love", which he wrote, was revived by Tom Jones with
Simply Red in 1999. The song almost certainly inspired Steve Winwood to
write his hit record for the Spencer Davis Group, "Gimme Some Loving".
In 1968 the Stax label in Memphis had their first major hit with Johnnie
Taylor's million-selling "Who's Making Love", which was criticised in some
quarters for combining an immoral lyric with gospel overtones. Its success
caused Banks to ignore his own singing career and concentrate on
songwriting, often working with Bettye Crutcher, Raymond Jackson and Carl
Hampton in various collaborations.
Banks had written "(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don't Want to be Right" with
Wilson Pickett's co-writer Sir Mack Rice, for the Emotions, but the
sentiments in the song were considered too powerful for the girl group and
the song was not released. Two years later, in 1972, the soul singer Luther
Ingram noticed the song on a shelf and, intrigued by the title, he played it
and decided to record it. It won him a gold disc and was successfully
revived by Rod Stewart in 1980. Banks also wrote a response to the song with
the Soul Children's "I'll Be Your Other Woman" in which the part-time lover
is expected to be faithful - that is, he must not have more than two women.
Among Banks's other hits were "Woman to Woman" for Shirley Brown and "I
Can't Stand Up for Falling Down" for Sam & Dave, which was also a UK Top Ten
hit in 1980 for Elvis Costello. Banks often wrote songs with novel themes
such as "I Could Never Be President", "Poem on the School House Door" and
"Take Care of Your Homework", and he also produced albums for Albert King
and J. Blackfoot.
With the demise of Stax Records in 1975, Banks wrote for a variety of
labels, having some success with the Memphis soul singer Randy Brown
(notably "Welcome to My Room", 1978) and releasing his own album, Passport
to Ecstasy (1977) on the Warner Brothers label. One of his best cheating
songs was "Caught in the Act (Of Getting It On)" for the Facts of Life, who
recorded it for the TK label in Florida in 1976. In the song, the
philandering couple are caught in a hotel bedroom by their respective
partners, and one of the lovers asks them to wait a few minutes as they
haven't finished.
His final song, "Lost in Yesterday", was recorded by Ann Hines last month.
Banks's business partner, Lester Snell, said, "He knew what he was doing
with his words. He could put the exact thing he wanted in your mind. There
was never a doubt what anything meant." It's true - nobody wrote a cheating
song like Homer Banks.
Spencer Leigh