“O-o-h Child” by THE FIVE STAIRSTEPS
It takes a lot for a song to make you believe things are gonna get easier.
When the world is much brighter
They were The First Family of Soul and might still be remembered that way, instead of a one hit wonder, if not for The Jackson Five. The five children of a bass-playing Chicago Police detective won a talent show at the Regal Theater, Chicago’s answer to the Apollo, and thanks to an introduction by neighbor Fred Cash of The Impressions, signed to Curtis Mayfield’s Windy C label. Before being supplanted by the Jacksons, they had a run of R&B chart hits from 1965-70. “O-o-h Child” was the last and biggest of these and sounds little like the songs that came before it. This singular pop moment, imbued with both the hopefulness at the dawn of a new decade and the weariness from the turbulent one that came before, feels like a small miracle. The intervention wasn’t divine; it was by the session drummer.
When Bernard “Pretty” Purdie set up his drums for a recording session, he would place signs behind him. Lettered like those touting grocery store weekly specials, the signs would read Bing Bam Boom. Pretty Purdie. At It Again. The Hit Maker and Did It Again! and The Little Old Hit Maker “Pretty Purdie.” Or he would flank his drums on either side with You done it and You Done Hired the Hit Maker, Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. This was not mere bravado. Purdie’s lists of credits runs from James Brown, Miles Davis, Bob Marley, and Frank Sinatra to Robert Palmer’s “Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley,” Gil Scott Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and Aretha Franklin’s “Rock Steady.” He was Franklin’s music director from 1970-75. He also anchored her opening act, King Curtis and The King Pins — that’s him on both Curtis’ Live At The Fillmore West and Aretha Live at the Fillmore West, recorded during the same run of early 1971 shows.
What Purdie brings to a recording session is an ineffable sense of timing and groove. It could be the “funky and low-down beat”1 of “Rock Steady” or the Purdie Shuffle, his signature use of triplets against a half-time backbeat. (For a rock version, listen to his influence on Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham on “Fool In the Rain.”) He also brings the boldness of someone who set up signs to the recording studio to remind producers how easily they could have fucked up by not hiring him. If a song wasn’t working, he would put down his sticks and use his “big mouth.” After trying “everything you’ve ever heard,” “O-o-h Child”2 wasn’t working. Purdie, whose sense of diplomacy was a work in progress, spoke up. “In the last twenty minutes of the session, [songwriter Stan Vincent3] gave me my head,” Purdie told WFMU’s Michael Shelley in 20104, “Bam! Fifteen minutes later, we have “O-o-h Child.” My way.”
“O-o-h Child” takes Chicago soul by way of Hair. It wasn’t so far to go, but the path was tricky. The Five Stairsteps’ lush harmonies were perfect for the smoother, orchestrated sound of Chicago soul, which when compared to, say, Memphis, was considered “soft soul.” Lead singer Clarence Burke, Jr. had the sweet trill of Smokey Robinson, and the group’s run of R&B hits were mainly romantic ballads. (in 1967, The Stairsteps released a single of Robinson’s 1965 hit with the Miracles, “Ooh Baby Baby,” the song that won them that talent show.) The group’s multipart harmonies also weren’t that far away from The Fifth Dimension, who jammed together Hair’s opening and closing numbers, “Age of Aquarius” and “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In),” into a medley that topped the pop charts for six weeks in 1969.
Ooh child
Things are gonna get easier
Ooh child
Things'll get brighter
Some day, some day, some day, some day yeah
We'll put it together and we'll get it undone
Some day
When your head is much lighter
The first voice you hear, after a trumpet fanfare, is older sister Alohe. Her warm contralto softly singing those opening words is so disarming. As a song slowly builds around her, you feel like a child being tucked into bed. The leads on most of the group’s hits went to Clarence Jr.’s supple tenor, but part of the chills-inducing power of “O-o-h Child” is that all the Stairsteps — Dennis, James, and Kenneth/Keni, along with their two older siblings — share in lead vocals. You hear a family. Even if you know nothing of the Burkes of Chicago’s South Side, you can feel it in the timbre. Keni5, the youngest, takes the second chorus; his teenager voice cracks in the middle “brighter,” adding an extra syllable. When those five voices come together around him in the second chorus, not in their seamless soft-soul harmonies, but sounding a bit more naïve and ingenuous through the words “we’ll put it together and we’ll get it undone”... If you’re the type who cries at pop songs, this is where the tears begin to well.
The song plays on your emotions throughout its steady build towards its exultant choruses, and much of that comes down to Purdie. Listen to how he subtly emphasizes the key changes or cracks the beat on the snare as the song nears its climax. Two-thirds of the way through, just after a bridge of “la-la-la-la-las” and under a gospel flourish, Purdie opens his high-hat for three sharp hits. From that moment on, there’s nothing soft about this soul. You’re not just listening; you’re swept along in something.
(Right now) and you just wait and see how things are gonna be
(Right now) if you just wait and see how things are gonna be
(Right now) if you just wait and wait and see
Uplifting music that isn’t sappy is so very hard to do; it’s no wonder that the song wasn’t working in the studio. We don’t know what specific changes Purdie made when he got the nod to do the song his way, but you can hear how his drumming pulls this song’s potentially ungainly mix of pop, soul, and gospel in its wake. All the performances are phenomenal, and the driving sound takes you to a place where the possibility of “right now,” sung in glorious harmony by voices whose similarities outweigh their differences, seems very real.
“O-o-h Child” was originally the B-side to a funky cover of The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence,” but it was the song 1970 needed, crossing over to the pop charts and selling over a million copies. A half century on, it can still bring chills and prise tears; its bravely exuberant hope isn’t needed any less.
30 Song Playlist
Some choice Five Stairsteps cuts bookending a couple dozen tracks featuring Bernard “Pretty” Purdie.
The Purdie Shuffle
Some great Purdie footage here from the Classic Albums series on Steely Dan’s Aja.
Rare Personal Note
I am one of those people that cries at pop songs. This song does it for me. I’ve also long been obsessed with the open high-hat in “O-o-h Child,” well before I knew it was Bernard Purdie. This continues my pattern of loving Purdie before I knew it was him behind the drums (see the Steely Dan Purdie Shuffle video above).
Thank You
Thanks for reading, sharing, and clicking the little ‘like’ heart above. All these things are very much appreciated.
Things’ll get brighter,
Scott
Some sources credit Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey for the “O-o-h Child” session; others cite Purdie. Purdie takes credit for the track in the Michael Shelley interview, and while the memory of “The World’s Most Recorded Drummer” may be imperfect, there are too many details for him to have made it up out of whole cloth.
Stan Vincent was an an in-house producer for Buddah Record who was given the Five Stairsteps once Curtis Mayfield got too busy doing Curtis Mayfield music. He was born Stanley Grochowski and was a child actor under that name, playing Jimmy in the NBC children’s series, Watch Mr. Wizard.
Listen to the full radio interview, plus some excellent Purdie song selections here. There’s lots of great stuff, including Purdie’s experience recording the first two Bob Marley albums how he traveled with his drum kit between Manhattan recording sessions.
Keni Burke went on to have the longest music career of The Five Stairsteps, working as bassist and guitarist and co-producing three tracks on Bill Withers’ Menagerie album. “Risin’ to the Top,” from his third solo album, Changes, had a robust life as a popular hip-hop/R&B sample, notably with Big Daddy Kane “Smooth Operator”), LL Cool J (“Round the Way Girl”), and Mary J. Blige (“Love No Limit”).