TRANSITIONS | R&B/Soul Great Joe Simon dead at 78

 Joe Simon was a Grammy-winning R&B singer whose hits included 1969’s “The Chokin’ Kind” and 1972’s “Power of Love” and was sampled in OutKast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” and other hip-hop classics, died Monday (Dec. 13) in his longtime hometown near Chicago. He was 78.

Born in Simmesport, La. in 1943, Joe Simon hated picking cotton and as a youngster moved to the bay area (near Oakland, California) with his family. There Simon was a fledgling songwriter and singer, he joined the Golden West Gospel Singers and later after becoming influenced by Sam Cooke and Arthur Prysock who both enjoyed burgeoning secular success after beginning in gospel, the group decided to turn secular and recorded “Little Island Girl” as the Golden Tones in 1959.

Later at the urging of others around him, Simon decided to step out on his own, and in 1964 Simon scored a minor hit when the owner Chicago’s of Vee-Jay Records paid him $1,100 to record four songs written by others. He brought in local musicians including future funk greats Sly Stone and Larry Graham to play on 1964’s “My Adorable One,” which became Simon’s breakthrough hit. Simon managed to score again in 1965 with “Let’s Do It Over”, which landed a #13 spot on the Billboard R&B Chart, however the Vee-Jay label folded soon after the song’s release.

All told, Simon charted 51 U.S. Pop and R&B chart hits between 1964 and 1981, including eight times in the US top forty, thirty-eight times in the top 40 of the US R&B charts, and 13 chart hits in Canada.