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Johnnie Harrison Taylor (May 5, 1934 – May 31, 2000) was an American recording artist and songwriter who performed a wide variety of genres, from blues, rhythm and blues, soul music, and Gospel music to pop music, doo-wop, and disco. He was initially successful at Stax Records with the number-one R&B hits "Who's Making Love" (1968), "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone" (1971) and "I Believe in You (You Believe in Me)" (1973), and reached number one on the US pop charts with "Disco Lady" in 1976.
In 2022, Taylor was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
A few years later, after Cooke had established his independent SAR Records, Taylor signed on as one of the label's first acts and recorded "Rome Wasn't Built In A Day" in 1962. However, SAR Records quickly became defunct after Cooke's death in 1964.
In 1966, Taylor moved to Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was dubbed "The Philosopher of Soul". He recorded with the label's house band, which included Booker T. & the M.G.'s. His hits included "I Had a Dream", "I've Got to Love Somebody's Baby" (both songwriter by the team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter) and most notably "Who's Making Love", which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 record chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1968. "Who's Making Love" sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. In 1970 Taylor married Gerlean Rocket, with their divorce finalized on May 10, 2000, 21 days before his passing. His children from that marriage are Jon Harrison Taylor, and Tasha Taylor, both musicians.
During his tenure at Stax, he became an R&B star, with over a dozen chart successes, such as "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone", which reached No. 23 on the Hot 100 chart, "Cheaper to Keep Her" (Mack Rice) and record producer Don Davis's penned "I Believe in You (You Believe in Me)", which reached No. 11 on the Hot 100 chart. "I Believe in You (You Believe in Me)" also sold more than one million copies, and was awarded gold disc status by the R.I.A.A. in October 1973. Taylor, along with Isaac Hayes and The Staple Singers, was one of the label's flagship artists, who were credited for keeping the company afloat in the late 1960s and early 1970s after the death of its biggest star, Otis Redding, in an aviation accident. He appeared in the documentary film, Wattstax, which was released in 1973.
Backed by members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, as well as in-house veterans such as former Stax Records keyboardist Carson Whitsett and guitarist/bandleader Bernard Jenkins, Malaco gave Taylor the type of recording freedom that Stax had given him in the late 1960s and early 1970s, enabling him to record ten albums for the label in his 16-year stint.
In 1996, Taylor's eighth album for Malaco, Good Love!, reached number one on the Billboard Top Blues Albums chart (No. 15 R&B), and was the biggest record in Malaco's history. With this success, Malaco recorded a live video of Taylor at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas, in the summer of 1997. The club portion of the Good Love video was recorded at 1001 Nightclub in Jackson, Mississippi.
Taylor's final song was "Soul Heaven", in which he dreamed of being at a concert featuring deceased African-American music icons from Louis Armstrong to Otis Redding to Z.Z. Hill to The Notorious B.I.G., among others.
His highly complex personal life was revealed after his death. Having six accepted children and three others with confirmed paternity born to three different mothers, the difficulties associated with executing his will were presented in an episode of the TV program The Will: Family Secrets Revealed called "The Estate of Johnnie Taylor". In a 2021 Rolling Stone article, Fonda Bryant, one of the nine heirs of Taylor's estate, shared some of the complexities that she and her other siblings have had to deal with during the past decade regarding her father's royalty payments from Sony Music. Bryant believed that the alleged lack of transparency concerning those payouts was reason enough for Sony to disclose her father's personal information. Sony's refusal to do so left Bryant and the other heirs in the dark. Music industry attorney Erin M. Jacobson stated in the article that "'a label is not just going to turn over a bunch of financial records to anyone that asks for it.'" An audit is a viable option for "heirs who are distrustful of a label's accounting" practices. The down side to doing one, though, is the exorbitant amount of money that it would cost to do so, something too "unrealistic for most heirs like Bryant."
|- |rowspan="1"|1969 |rowspan="1"|"Who's Making Love" |Best Male R&B Vocal Performance | |- |rowspan="1"|1977 |rowspan="1"|"Disco Lady" |Best Male R&B Vocal Performance | |- |rowspan="1"|2001 |rowspan="1"| Gotta Get the Groove Back |Best Traditional R&B Vocal Album | |- |}
Johnnie Taylor was awarded the first-ever Platinum Record Award in history by the RIAA for his two-million-selling smash hit, "Disco Lady".
| 1967 | Wanted: One Soul Singer | — | 26 | Stax Records | |||
| 1968 | Who's Making Love... | 42 | 5 | ||||
| Raw Blues | 126 | 24 | |||||
| Rare Stamps | — | 33 | |||||
| 1969 | The Johnnie Taylor Philosophy Continues | 109 | 10 | ||||
| 1971 | One Step Beyond | 112 | 6 | ||||
| 1973 | Taylored in Silk | 54 | 3 | ||||
| 1974 | Super Taylor | 182 | 10 | ||||
| 1976 | Eargasm | 5 | 1 | Columbia Records | |||
| 1977 | Rated Extraordinaire | 51 | 6 | ||||
| Reflections | — | 45 | RCA Records | ||||
| Disco 9000 | 183 | 22 | Columbia | ||||
| 1978 | Ever Ready | 164 | 35 | ||||
| 1979 | She's Killing Me | — | 53 | ||||
| 1980 | A New Day | — | 75 | ||||
| 1982 | Just Ain't Good Enough | 172 | 19 | Beverly Glen | |||
| 1984 | This Is Your Night | — | 55 | Malaco Records | |||
| 1985 | Wall to Wall | — | 46 | ||||
| 1987 | Lover Boy | — | 70 | ||||
| 1988 | In Control | — | 43 | ||||
| 1989 | Crazy 'Bout You | — | 47 | ||||
| 1991 | I Know It's Wrong But I... Just Can't Do Right | — | 59 | ||||
| 1993 | Real Love | — | 76 | ||||
| 1996 | Good Love! | 108 | 15 | ||||
| 1998 | Taylored to Please | — | 44 | ||||
| 1999 | Gotta Get the Groove Back | 140 | 30 | ||||
| 2001 | There's No Good in Goodbye | — | 30 | ||||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart. | |||||||
| 1963 | "Baby, We've Got Love" | 98 | *No Billboard R&B chart published in this period. | — | — |
| 1966 | "I Had a Dream" | — | 19 | — | — |
| "I Got to Love Somebody's Baby" | — | 15 | — | — | |
| 1967 | "Somebody's Sleeping in My Bed" | 95 | 33 | — | — |
| 1968 | "Next Time" | — | 34 | — | — |
| "I Ain't Particular" | — | 45 | — | — | |
| "Who's Making Love" | 5 | 1 | — | 7 | |
| 1969 | "Take Care of Your Homework" | 20 | 2 | — | 27 |
| "Testify (I Wanna)" | 36 | 4 | — | 35 | |
| "I Could Never Be President" | 48 | 10 | — | — | |
| "Love Bones" | 43 | 4 | — | 38 | |
| 1970 | "Steal Away" | 37 | 3 | — | 36 |
| "I Am Somebody Part II" | 39 | 4 | — | 45 | |
| 1971 | "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone" | 28 | 1 | — | — |
| "I Don't Wanna Lose You" | 86 | 13 | — | — | |
| "Hijackin' Love" | 64 | 10 | — | — | |
| 1972 | "Standing in for Jody" | 74 | 12 | — | — |
| "Doing My Own Thing (Part I)" | 109 | 16 | — | — | |
| "Stop Doggin' Me" | 101 | 13 | — | — | |
| 1973 | "I Believe in You (You Believe in Me)" | 11 | 1 | — | 35 |
| "Cheaper to Keep Her" | 15 | 2 | — | — | |
| 1974 | "We're Getting Careless with Our Love" | 34 | 5 | — | 77 |
| "I've Been Born Again" | 78 | 13 | — | — | |
| "It's September" | — | 26 | — | — | |
| 1975 | "Try Me Tonight" | — | 51 | — | — |
| 1976 | "Disco Lady" | 1 | 1 | 25 | 14 |
| "Somebody's Gettin' It" | 33 | 5 | — | 94 | |
| 1977 | "Love Is Better in the A.M. (Part 1)" | 77 | 3 | — | 63 |
| "Your Love Is Rated X" | — | 17 | — | — | |
| "Disco 9000" | 86 | 24 | — | — | |
| 1978 | "Keep On Dancing" | 101 | 32 | — | — |
| "Ever Ready" | — | 84 | — | — | |
| 1979 | "(Ooh-Wee) She's Killing Me" / "Play Something Pretty" | — | 37 79 | — | — |
| 1980 | "I Got This Thing for Your Love" | — | 77 | — | — |
| 1982 | "What About My Love" | — | 24 | — | — |
| 1983 | "I'm So Proud" | — | 55 | — | — |
| 1984 | "Lady, My Whole World Is You" | — | 74 | — | — |
| 1987 | "Don't Make Me Late" | — | 74 | — | — |
| 1990 | "Still Crazy for You" | — | 60 | — | — |
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that territory. | |||||
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