Betty Harris - Ride Your Pony

Sunday, time for a classic.

Betty Harris (born September 9, 1939 in Orlando, Florida, United States) is an American soul singer. Her recording career in the 1960s produced three hit singles that made the U.S. Billboard R&B and Billboard Hot 100 charts: "Cry to Me" (1963), "His Kiss" (1964) and "Nearer to You" (1967). However, her reputation among soul music connoisseurs far exceeds her commercial success of the 1960s, and her recordings for the Jubilee and Sansu record labels are highly sought after in the 2000s by fans of Southern Soul, Northern soul and deep soul.

Soul Jazz Records' fantastic collection Betty Harris' "The Lost Queen of New Orleans Soul" available in new one-off limited-edition heavyweight gatefold special edition green vinyl coloured pressing + download code exclusively for Record Store Day 2022!

Betty Harris's powerful, fiery soulful vocals found a perfect accompaniment with the New Orleans' players that Toussaint put together to back her, which by the time of her funk classic 'There's A Break In The Road' were the legendary super-tight, super-funk New Orleans group THE METERS.

With the extraordinary song-writing skills of Allen Toussaint alongside the powerful, soaring, confident and emotive singer and the groove of THE METERS, you have an unbeatable combination. That Harris never, in fact, lived in New Orleans (she flew in from Florida for all her sessions with Toussaint's local in-house players) seems almost an irrelevance, a geographical aside to the defining New Orleans sound captured on the recordings featured here.

All of these singles featured here were released on Allen Toussaint and his business partner Marshal Sehorn's local New Orleans label Sansu, widely distributed in the southern city but in only limited quantities elsewhere. As a consequence, Betty Harris' music failed to achieve the commercial success of other New Orleans artists such as Lee Dorsey (whom she recorded with) and THE METERS (who backed her). And so at the end of the decade, she stopped recording, retired from the music business to raise her family in Florida.

This is no reflection of the stunning musical quality of all these songs which encompass everything from southern soul, heavy funk, deep soul ballads and northern soul. Betty Harris has been a cornerstone of Soul Jazz Records' New Orleans Funk and New Orleans Soul compilations. Always soulful and always funky, Betty Harris' music contains the essence of New Orleans music. She is the Lost Soul Queen of New Orleans.

Today's tune "Ride Your Pony" is taken from the "The Lost Queen of New Orleans Soul", enjoy today's classic.



More info @

Official Betty Harris Wiki

Listen to ”Betty Harris - Ride Your Pony" on Spotify!

Follow tuneoftheday.blogspot.com on Spotify!