A key figure in the soul movement of the 1960s, Don Covay wrote music recorded by Aretha Franklin, Chubby Checker, Gladys Knight & the Pips and The Rolling Stones. Covay died on this day (Jan. 31) in 2015 in Franklin Square, New York. The Grammy winner had suffered a stroke at age 78.
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Born Donald James Randolph on March 24, 1938, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Covay lost his father, a Baptist preacher, at age eight. The family then moved to Washington, D.C., in the early ’50s. There, Covay sang with his family’s gospel quartet, the Cherry Keys.
Veering into more secular music territory as a teen, he joined a doo-wop group called the Rainbows, which at certain points also included other D.C.-area future stars, Marvin Gaye and Billy Stewart. It was at this point that he adopted the stage name Don Covay, according to his brother Thomas Randolph.
“He just made up the name,” Thomas told the New York Times following his brother’s death. “He felt his name was not right for a singer.”
Don Covay Wrote Songs For Aretha Franklin, Chubby Checker, and More
Covay got his professional start backing Little Richard in 1957. Then, he bounced from label to label before signing with Columbia Records in 1961. That same year, he found moderate success with “Pony Time,” a song he’d written with fellow Rainbows member John Berry.
That version—credited to his group, the Goodtimers—reached No. 60 on the pop chart. Rock-and-roll Chubby Checker covered “Pony Time” the following year, taking the song to No. 1 on the Hot 100.
Don Covay would write hits for Solomon Burke, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Wilson Pickett before finding success as a solo artist. In 1964, he released the bluesy “Mercy, Mercy”—one of Jimi Hendrix’s earliest recordings as a session musician.
Covay would land other pop hits with “See-Saw” (1965) and “It’s Better to Have (and Don’t Need)” (1974). However, he found much of his success writing songs for other artists, like Etta James, Otis Redding, and Little Richard. Aretha Franklin won a Grammy Award in 1969 for “Chain of Fools,” a song Covay had penned more than a decade earlier.
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“Singing is my first love, but I like to express my thoughts in the songs I write as well as in the way I sing them,” he said in a 1967 interview with the UK music publication Record Mirror. “I am always looking for experiences we all know and try to relate them through both my writing and my singing.”
Featured image by Ebet Roberts/Redferns
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