“Don’t Leave Me This Way” may well be the greatest disco song ever recorded. Thelma Houston’s signature hit topped the U.S. charts in 1977, landed in the Top Ten in more than a dozen other countries, and earned the first Grammy ever awarded to a solo female Motown Records artist. The track also has all the hallmarks of a disco-era floor-filler: lush orchestration over a classic drum beat, a killer bass line, and a diva’s voice on an explosive chorus. More than that, though, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” has achieved something few songs do: it has become a cultural touchstone, with a meaning and resonance that extend far beyond its moment in the limelight. Though Houston may be forever remembered for just one song, that song will be remembered forever.
The daughter of sharecroppers, Thelma Houston was born Thelma Jackson in Leland, Miss. From the age of three, Thelma mimicked the songs on her grandmother’s transistor radio, much to the astonishment of her family. Thelma’s babysitter was the pianist in their church choir, where the power of her voice was first realized. As she recalls on cable network TV One’s documentary series Unsung, “My thing was, I never wanted to sing with the little kids’ choir. I always wanted to sing with adults. And I wanted solos.”
When Thelma was 10, the family moved to Long Beach, Calif., where she first got a taste of the recording business, cutting an album with her junior high school choir. She knew then she wanted to sing professionally, but she had no idea how to go about it. “I thought if I just went around singing all the time somebody’s gonna hear me. So I’d be singing in the grocery stores, I’d be singing in the street. I thought somebody would hear me and give me a record deal. I thought that’s how it worked.”
While Houston was waiting to be discovered, life intervened and she found herself pregnant at 17. At 18 she married the baby’s father, S.E. Houston, and took his surname. In 1964, after the birth of her second child, she joined the gospel group the Art Reynolds Singers. There Houston met Fifth Dimension manager Marc Gordon, who helped her secure a solo deal with Capitol Records, and in 1966, the 20-year-old released two singles, “Baby Mine” and “Don’t Cry My Soldier Boy.”
After an amicable split from Capitol in 1967, Houston signed with Dunhill Records, where Gordon introduced her to legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb, author of the Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away,” which won six Grammy Awards in 1968, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. “I had a production deal at ABC/Dunhill, and I could do anything I wanted,” says Webb in the Unsung episode. “I heard her sing for half an hour and it was like, ‘I’m not working with anybody but her.’” The resulting album, Sunshower, was released on Dunhill in 1969 to critical acclaim, but sales were lackluster. Webb believes his acrimonious relationship with a label executive may have prevented the record from receiving a proper promotional push.
Houston parted ways with ABC/Dunhill in 1970, but kept busy with a run of lounge shows at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It was there she caught the eye and ear of Suzanne de Passe, then a creative assistant at Motown. “I went in, and here comes Thelma, a ball of energy, barefooted,” says De Passe, “and killed it.” De Passe wanted Houston to sign with Motown, but even though Gordon had helmed Motown’s west coast office before starting his own management company, he was adamantly against the move. As was almost everybody in Houston’s orbit. “They felt that Motown would not be a good label for me,” recalls Houston, “because all the attention was going to Diana Ross, and I would get lost in the mix.” Gordon’s worries were prescient, as Houston’s fortunes would be intertwined with Ross’ for years to come.
Undeterred, Houston inked a deal with Motown’s California subsidiary, MoWest. She hoped if she were under the same parent label as stars like Ross, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, she could finally get a hit. Her 1972 eponymous album, like Sunshower, was hard to categorize: MoWest’s catalog was more experimental, and didn’t always showcase the R&B people came to expect from Motown. The lack of a strong single further ensured the LP went largely unnoticed, and when Berry Gordy Jr. moved the entire Motown operation to Los Angeles in summer of 1972, making MoWest redundant, Houston switched to Motown proper. She finally got her hit song with “You’ve Been Doing Wrong for So Long,” a non-album single, which peaked at number 64 on the R&B chart in summer 1974. The 45, Houston’s second for the label, earned her a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female. Though Houston would not collect the trophy that year, her career started to pick up at last.
Houston’s next chance at a hit song was with “Do You Know Where You’re Going To,” the Michael Masser and Gerry Goffin-penned ballad that she recorded in 1973. But it was released exclusively in New Zealand, on the Tamla Motown imprint. “We did it with just the basic background,” Houston is quoted in The Motown Encyclopedia. “It was never finished off properly and I guess was hidden away.” Two years later, in a meeting at Motown’s offices, Houston saw a poster for the new Diana Ross movie Mahogany. The placard advertised the film’s featured song, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To.” Houston was surprised to learn they’d used her song. “Then it clicked,” she tells Unsung. “They were using ‘Do You Know Where You’re Going To’ [later rechristened ‘Theme from Mahogany’] as the title song for the album, recorded by Diana Ross. It was heartbreaking because the song was not changed. Everything was done the way I had done it.”
While still trying to carve out an identity at Motown, Houston worked as a session singer and actor, appearing on the soundtrack to the Motown-produced sports film The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings and providing backing vocals for Jermaine Jackson’s solo debut. However, things were about to change in a way she might never have dreamed possible. As before, Suzanne De Passe intervened, and yet again, Diana Ross would play a spectral role.
“I was driving in L.A. and this record came on,” De Passe tells Unsung. “It was Teddy Pendergrass singing ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way.’” The song De Passe heard on the radio was the original recording by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, from their 1975 album Wake Up Everybody. Written by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff with lyricist Cary Gilbert, the song epitomizes the Philadelphia soul sound for which Gamble and Huff became famous. However, De Passe felt something was off. “It struck me that a big handsome man begging someone to stay was not as resonant as a woman begging her man to stay. I called [Motown producer] Hal Davis and I said, ‘You’ve got to go get this record.’ And within two days, we were in the studio cutting the record.”
De Passe’s gendered assessment of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” may have been accurate, or at least beneficial to Houston’s rendition, though with lyrics like “I can’t survive, I can’t stay alive without your love,” anyone — male, female or otherwise — would sound melodramatic, if not at risk for self-harm. Even so, Houston sells it, first with the soulful, insistent humming that opens the song. “It has the slow start to get people out to the dance floor,” she describes in Unsung, “then once you get there, the rhythm will pick up a little bit… and then there’s an explosion” — i.e., Henry E. Davis’ pumping bass, which dances around the vocal as Houston sings her urgent plea. The key changes from minor to major on the chorus, and in a matter of seconds the tone goes from codependent to carnal, with Houston no longer pleading for her man to stay, but demanding he satisfy her.
While most disco arrangements would stay at a fever pitch from here on out, Arthur G. Wright brings things back to a simmer. Even though the “Don’t Leave Me This Way” strings stay fairly low in the mix, they provide a dramatic underpinning: solo the track in KORD and you’ll hear a score worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Wright lets the bass come to the front, where Davis practically steals the show — it’s as if Wright asked the bassist “How many different ways can you play this progression?” and Davis simply answered “Yes.” Mirroring the insistence of the lyrics, Davis’ melodic riff propels the song forward so effectively that you can’t imagine “Ahh, baby!” without his sixteenth notes immediately following. Houston varies her delivery on each chorus, creating interest and building momentum. Along with the song’s dynamics, Houston’s nuanced vocal makes every “explosion” all the more rewarding. No matter how many times you hear the “ahh” ramp up, the “baby!” feels like a reward. Then, just when it seems things can’t get any more intense, a funky Clavinet and a gospel tambourine join in at the 2:50 mark, where Davis’ walking octaves send the song to ecstatic heights in a breathless race to the finish.
In an interview with fellow bassist Steve Wexler published posthumously in 2013, Davis cites Larry Graham (member of Sly and the Family Stone and inventor of the slap bass technique) as a major influence. “The Graham-influenced style of playing was first explored with my own group, L.T.D., then ‘immortalized’ first with Diana Ross’ ‘Love Hangover,’ and then on Thelma Houston’s record.” Indeed, Davis’ bass rhythm on “Love Hangover” is nearly identical to the one on Houston’s track, though it’s not the driving force it is on “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” But that’s not where the Diana Ross association ends.
Rumor has it that “Don’t Leave Me This Way” was originally intended for Ross, but later given to Houston, even suggesting Ross’ name was on the original test pressing. KORD was unable to corroborate this speculation, although several details appear to refute it. First, there’s Suzanne De Passe’s account of how the recording came to be. Secondly, Motown rarely recorded anything by outside songwriters; the label’s in-house team wrote the songs, which were then assigned to the artist after the fact. Lastly, when Houston is asked about the rumor on RuPaul’s podcast What’s the Tee?, she answers “I was not there when they cut the track. When they cut the rhythm track for ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way,’ they also cut ‘Love Hangover.’ Both produced by Hal Davis. It could have been that it was going to go to (Ross), I don’t know.” Houston seems unbothered by the conjecture, perhaps because she beat out Ross for the Grammy that year.
Motown fast-tracked Houston’s next two albums in an attempt to capitalize on the success of “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” The follow-up, The Devil in Me, leads with “I’m Here Again,” a feeble copy of its predecessor. The lyric “I don’t know why, but I’m here again” inadvertently reflects Houston’s frustration at the label’s plan to cast her as a leading lady of disco. “What I thought was a gift — being able to do all different genres of music — in the record industry turned out not to be such a gift,” she tells Unsung. “To continually repeat what you’ve just done, to me, is almost torture.” After four solo LPs, plus two duet albums with Chicago soul giant Jerry Butler, Houston left Motown for RCA. There she was reunited with Jimmy Webb for Breakwater Cat, released in 1980. Like Sunshower, it received critical acclaim but suffered from low sales. On subsequent albums with MCA and Reprise, Houston worked with producers such as Lenny Kravitz, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Glen Ballard and Dennis Lambert.
Houston later joined with Phoebe Snow, Chaka Khan and CeCe Peniston under the moniker Sisters of Glory. With the addition of Mavis Staples and Lois Walden (and without Khan), the gospel troupe performed at Woodstock ’94. At the turn of the millennium, Houston toured Australia as a cast member in the musical production of Fame, followed in 2007 by her first studio album in 17 years, A Woman’s Touch, which featured her take on various songs made famous by male artists. In 2012, Houston began incorporating Morrissey’s “Suedehead” into her live set, which led to an appearance on his 2020 album I Am Not a Dog on a Chain.
The Morrissey collaboration may have brought Houston to a new generation of admirers, but there was one fanbase that stuck with her throughout. “After the ‘fall’ of the disco period,” Houston told online LGBT magazine Xtra, “I was still supported by the gay community, and I continued to work as much as I had before.” In the early Nineties, the gay community adopted “Don’t Leave Me This Way” as something of a theme song during the AIDS epidemic. In response to a commission from The American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR), New York-born artist Nayland Blake created a delicate illustration of flowers, their roots exposed, with the words “Don’t Leave Me This Way” bisecting the image. “Blake’s imagery was a powerful statement of art as mourning,” The Independent noted. “The flowers, at once romantic and funereal, were turned into a celebration of love, suffering and grief.” In 1994, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra mounted a multi-disciplinary exhibition titled “Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS,” using Blake’s design for the exhibit’s poster and accompanying catalog.
The transformative power of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” mirrors the resilience of the gay community in the face of AIDS. Turning yearning into strength and strength into celebration, changing a minor key to major, the song encapsulated the struggle, demanding to be seen at a time when most would rather look away. “To have my song associated with that movement, especially in terms of making people more knowledgeable about the AIDS crisis, I’m proud,” Houston told Xtra. “And so my gratitude to that community is there, and will always be there.”
Though Houston never again attained the heights afforded by her signature song, few artists can claim a hit as anthemic as “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” Across generations listeners have imbued the song with their own interpretations and significance, happily following Houston on a 3:40-minute emotional rollercoaster ride, one that’s punctuated by an arrangement as technically brilliant as it is funky. Houston’s career has likewise been full of ups and downs, and though she was unjustly pigeonholed as a disco act, she nevertheless kept dancing. “I used to see success in a whole different light but, you know what? I’m really blessed because I never stop working and I truly love what I do. I can truly say that I appreciate my career now more than ever. Sometimes, it feels like I’m just getting started.”
Don’t Leave Me This Way (KORD-0067)
