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Major Lance (April 4, 1939, – September 3, 1994) was an American R&B singer. After a number of US hits in the 1960s, including "The Monkey Time" and "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um", he became an iconic figure in Britain in the 1970s among followers of Northern Soul. Although he stopped making records in 1982, Major Lance continued to perform at concerts and on tours until his death in 1994. His daughter, Keisha Lance Bottoms, was the 60th mayor of Atlanta.
Lance, who was one of 12 children, Billboard. August 10, 1963. p. 16 moved as a child with his family to the midnorth side of Chicago in the Cabrini-Green projects, a high-crime area, where he developed a boyhood friendship with Otis Leavill, both of whom attended Wells High School. This was the same school Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler attended.Contemporary Black, Volume 43, p. 136 Mayfield called Lance a "sparkly fellow, and a great basketball player, which is probably how we met. His hero was Jackie Wilson, and he was always coming round and looking through my bag for songs that I'd written but didn't want to do with the Impressions. He was pretty good at picking them, too."
Lance was also a baseball player. Lance and Otis both did boxing, and also singing as members of the Five Gospel Harmonaires. The two of them also worked together at a drug store.
The second Okeh single, "The Monkey Time" (also written by Curtis Mayfield), was Major Lance's first hit, became a No. 2 Billboard R&B chart and No. 8 pop music hit in 1963. "The Monkey Time" became Okeh's first hit single in 10 years. "That was my introduction with working with Carl Davis," Pate said. "We had a ball, making some very great music."
A succession of hits followed quickly, including "Hey Little Girl", "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" (his biggest hit, reaching No. 5 in the US pop chart and No. 40 in the UK, where it was his only chart success), "The Matador" (the only one not written by Mayfield), "Rhythm", "Sometimes I Wonder", "Come See", and "Ain't It a Shame".
In 1965 Pate left Okeh, and Mayfield began to concentrate on working with his own group. Lance and Davis continued to work together; "Too Hot to Hold" was a minor hit, but they had diminishing success before Davis in turn left the company.
Over the next two years he worked with several producers, with only "Without a Doubt" becoming a minor hit in 1968. Soon afterwards Lance left Okeh and moved to Dakar Records, where he had the Top 40 R&B hit "Follow the Leader." He then moved to Mayfield's Curtom Records label, which resulted in his last two Top 40 R&B hits, "Stay Away from Me (I Love You Too Much)" and "Must Be Love Coming Down." "Stay Away from Me" was also listed No. 4 in Jet Magazines "Soul Brothers Top 20". He left Curtom in 1971 and recorded briefly for the Volt Records and Columbia Records labels.
In 1972, he relocated to England so as to capitalize on the success of his older records among fans of Northern Soul music in dance clubs that played mostly rare and obscure American soul and R&B records. According to one writer, "The Major's contribution was truly phenomenal and unforgettable... He was to become legendary as a UK club act, known to deliver 110% at every performance." In 1972, while in England, he recorded an album, Major Lance's Greatest Hits Recorded Live at the Torch, at Golden Torch, a club in Stoke on Trent, which has been described as "perhaps the best Northern Soul album ever made."
Lance died in 1994 in his sleep from heart disease in Decatur, Georgia. He is buried at Washington Memory Gardens Cemetery in Homewood, Illinois.
His daughter (with Sylvia Robinson—NOT the singer/songwriter and co-founder of All Platinum Records and Sugar Hill Records), Keisha Lance Bottoms, was the mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022.
After recording briefly for the Motown subsidiary label Soul, he was convicted of cocaine possession in 1978 and served a four-year prison term. The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, vol 3, p. 2070.
In 1987, Lance had a heart attack. He later became nearly blind from glaucoma. As a result, he retired from the music industry.
| 1959 | "I've Got a Girl" b/w "Phyllis" | Mercury 71582 | Non-album tracks | ||||
| 1962 | "Delilah" b/w "Everytime" (Non-album track) | Okeh 7168 | The Monkey Time | ||||
| 1963 | "The Monkey Time" b/w "Mama Didn't Know" | Okeh 7175 | |||||
| "Hey Little Girl" b/w "Crying In The Rain" (Non-album track) | Okeh 7181 | Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um - The Best of Major Lance | |||||
| 1964 | "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" b/w "Sweet Music" (from Major's Greatest Hits) | Okeh 7187 | |||||
| "The Matador" b/w "Gonna Get Married" (Non-album track) | Okeh 7191 | Major's Greatest Hits | |||||
| "Girls" / | Okeh 7197 | ||||||
| "It Ain't No Use" | |||||||
| "Think Nothing About It" b/w "It's Alright" Release planned, but never pressed or issued. | Okeh 7200 | Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um - The Best of Major Lance | |||||
| "Rhythm" b/w "Please Don't Say No More" (Non-album track) | Okeh 7203 | Major's Greatest Hits | |||||
| 1965 | "Sometimes I Wonder" b/w "I'm So Lost" (Non-album track) | Okeh 7209 | |||||
| "Come See" b/w "You Belong to Me My Love" (Non-album track) | Okeh 7216 | ||||||
| "Ain't It a Shame" b/w "Gotta Get Away" | Okeh 7223 | ||||||
| "Too Hot to Hold" b/w "Dark and Lonely" | Okeh 7226 | Non-album tracks | |||||
| "Everybody Loves a Good Time" b/w "I Just Can't Help It" | Okeh 7233 | ||||||
| 1966 | "Investigate" b/w "Little Young Lover" | Okeh 7250 | |||||
| "It's the Beat" b/w "You'll Want Me Back" (from Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um - The Best Of Major Lance) | Okeh 7255 | ||||||
| 1967 | "Ain't No Soul (In These Old Shoes)" b/w "I" | Okeh 7266 | |||||
| "You Don't Want Me No More" b/w "Wait Till I Get You in My Arms" | Okeh 7284 | ||||||
| 1968 | "Without a Doubt" b/w "Forever" | Okeh 7298 | |||||
| "Do the Tighten Up" b/w "I Have No One" | Dakar 1450 | ||||||
| 1969 | "Follow the Leader" b/w "Since You've Been Gone" | Dakar 608 | |||||
| "Sweeter as the Days Go By" b/w "Shadows of a Memory" | Dakar 612 | ||||||
| 1970 | "Stay Away from Me (I Love You Too Much)" b/w "Gypsy Woman" | Curtom 1953 | |||||
| "Must Be Love Coming Down" b/w "Little Young Lover" | Curtom 1956 | ||||||
| 1971 | "Girl Come On Home" b/w "Since I Lost My Baby's Love" | Volt 4069 | |||||
| "I Wanna Make Up (Before We Break Up)" b/w "That's the Story of My Life" | Volt 4079 | ||||||
| 1972 | "Ain't No Sweat" b/w "Since I Lost My Baby's Love" | Volt 4085 | |||||
| 1974 | "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" (New version) b/w "Last of the Red Hot Lovers" | Playboy 6017 | |||||
| 1975 | "Sweeter as the Days Go By" (New version) b/w "Wild and Free" | Playboy 6020 | |||||
| "You're Everything I Need" b/w "You're Everything I Need" (Instrumental) | Osiris 001 | ||||||
| "I've Got a Right to Cry" b/w "You Keep Me Coming to You" | Osiris 002 | ||||||
| 1977 | "Come On, Have Yourself a Good Time" b/w "Come What May" | Columbia 10488 | |||||
| 1978 | "I Never Thought I'd Be Losing You" b/w "Chicago Disco" | Soul 35123 | Now Arriving | ||||
| 1982 | "I Wanna Go Home" b/w "I Wanna Go Home" (Instrumental) | Kat Family 3024 | The Major's Back | ||||
| "Are You Leaving Me" b/w "I Wanna Go Home" | Kat Family 4182 | ||||||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart or were not released in that territory. | |||||||
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