Marva Whitney – The First Lady Of Funk by Charles Waring

"When it comes to feisty femme funk or sassy sock-it-to-‘em soul, mighty Marva Whitney has no equal.
Blessed with a lithe yet powerful church-raised voice, she first made her mark with the James Brown Revue in the late-1960s. Such was her impact during that time that she earned the titles “Marvellous Marva” and “Miss Excitement” for her dynamic stage performances. James Brown even went so far as to proclaim her “Soul Sister #1.” Many of the records she cut while she was the Godfather Of Soul’s protégé are now extremely rare and eagerly sought after by Rare Groove disciples, who regard Marva as the funkiest of all James Brown’s female singers.



Marva was born Marva Ann Manning on May 1st 1944 in Kansas City, Kansas. She was the eldest of seven children belonging to Ray Manning, a worker for the Santa Fe railway, and his wife, Willa Mae. Interested in music at an early age, Marva sang her first solo in her local church when she was only three years old. Later, during the1950s, she began singing and playing piano alongside her younger brothers in the Manning Gospel Singers, and toured the USA.
In 1960, when she was 16, Marva joined another Kansas gospel group, the Alma Whitney Singers, and ended up marrying Harry Whitney, the brother-in-law of the group’s leader. Now going by her married name, Marva Whitney, she also started playing piano for a local all-girl harmony group. Eventually they disbanded and Marva, who had elected to embark on a solo career, began studying voice and composition with the legendary jazz pianist and big band leader, Willie Rice, at the Kansas City Conservatory Of Music.



After Marva left school at 18, she got a job working at Fashion Built Garments, where she sewed fur collars to coats. She did this for two years, before getting an office job and doing clerical work.
But what she really dreamed of becoming was a professional singer. At weekends she performed in nightclubs and took part in talent competitions. By the mid-‘60s she had became lead singer for a local R&B group called Tommy and The Derbys, led by Tommy Gadson, brother of legendary drummer James Gadson (who rose to fame with Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band). When the group moved to California, Marva stayed behind.
Continuing to perform in Kansas clubs, she eventually caught the ear of Clarence Cooper, a local music entrepreneur who became her manager. In 1966 Cooper set up a meeting with Ben Bart, owner of Universal Attractions, James Brown's booking agency. Bart was going to Kansas with Brown, who was scheduled to play there. However, a riot broke out at the concert, which unfortunately prevented the meeting from taking place.



At the end of April 1967, James Brown visited Kansas again to play at the Memorial Hall. Cooper went along and discovered that the self-proclaimed “Hardest Working Man In Show Business” was seeking a new female vocalist for his Revue to replace the departing Vicki Anderson. Cooper persuaded Brown to grant Marva an audition. After the gig ended and the hall had cleared, Brown’s bandleader, Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis, brought Marva onto the stage and went through some songs with her. He was evidently impressed by her audition and strongly urged The Godfather to hire the 23-year-old singer.
By May, Marva was riding on the Brown tour bus. She also signed to the funk meister’s record company, the Cincinnati-based King label, and in early summer began cutting tracks. James Brown was actually absent from her first studio session, which yielded the debut single, Your Love Was Good To Me, a searing soul ballad penned and produced by Motown singer, J.J. Barnes, with Walter Whisenhunt. The Detroit-based duo also helmed the record's flipside, Saving My Love For My Baby, a driving uptempo soul tune, which is now popular on the UK's Northern Soul scene,
In June 1967, Marva joined Brown and his entourage at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theatre, where Soul Brother #1 recorded his second landmark in-concert album, Live At The Apollo Volume II. She duetted with Brown on the album's energetic opener, Think.
Marva then went with the Revue to Europe in September 1967, appearing in England, Germany, Denmark and France. Around this time, her second single, If You Love Me, a plaintive country-tinged ballad - and her first record featuring the input of James Brown - was released on King.
After it failed to chart, Brown decided to take Marva in a radically different direction and masterminded her recording of a tune called Unwind Yourself. A ferocious, highly charged chunk of funk characterised by manic horn lines and heavy rhythmic syncopations, the record featured an intense, strident vocal from Marva. Although it didn’t chart when it was released in January 1968, Unwind Yourself heralded Marva’s new funk-oriented sound.
Marva toured incessantly with James Brown throughout 1968. In March, she ventured as far as Africa’s Ivory Coast before embarking on a tour of the Far East in June, where after stops in Korea and Japan, a smaller version of Brown's group was allowed to play for US servicemen in war-torn Vietnam. Attired in combat fatigues and ferried by airplane, helicopter and armour-plated buses to various military bases within Vietnam, Brown and his group played to thousands of appreciative soldiers. But their adventure wasn’t without risk – while travelling by helicopter, the Viet Cong actually fired at them.
Further singles in 1968 by Marva (including I’m Tired I’m Tired I’m Tired and What Do I Have To Do To Prove My Love To You) heightened her profile, though sadly, national chart action still proved elusive. In January 1969, Marva performed with James Brown at President Richard Nixon's inaugural ball alongside Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Barbara McNair. Four months later she was rewarded with her first R&B hit, It's My Thing, co-written by Marva with James Brown and intended as an answer song to The Isley Brothers’ It’s Your Thing. The record spent seven weeks in Billboard's US R&B Hot 100, peaking at #19 in the summer of 1969 (#82 Pop).
Cover features on Marva followed in the US press – the prestigious magazines Jet and The Scene both included in-depth profiles. Marva also made numerous appearances on national television, performing on The Merv Griffin Show, Dick Clark's American Bandstand, the Mike Douglas Show, Playboy After Dark and many other TV programmes.
Further funk 45s, Things Got To Get Better and I Made A Mistake Because It's Only You, also made their presence felt on the US R&B Top 40. This prompted James Brown to consolidate Marva's success by releasing a long-playing record. She had already recorded an album of jazz standards for King with the Dee Felice Trio at the beginning of the year. Entitled I Sing Soul and assigned a record company catalogue number, the LP never came out, though test pressings were made. It is thought that King decided to shelve the album and release the harder hitting It's My Thing to capitalise on Marva’s newfound success as a funky diva.
Despite having some hit singles under her belt, the album It’s My Thing didn't experience any chart action. Even so, Marva scooped a “Golden Mike Award” from the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers that year. But by the end of 1969, Marva decided it was time to leave the James Brown camp. Her final engagement with Mr. Dynamite was at The Apollo Theatre just before Christmas in December 1969.
King issued a second LP, Live & Lowdown At The Apollo, in early 1970, by which time Marva was at home in Kansas waiting to make her next move. She wasn't inactive for long and cut a tremendous funk 45 called Giving It Up on Love, which was released on the Isley Brother's T-Neck imprint. But the record was poorly promoted and Marva withdrew from the music industry for a while.
In November 1970, she married Ellis Taylor, who began his own independent label called Forte based in Kansas. After a year's respite from the music business, Marva began recording for Forte and between the years 1972-74 released a clutch of strong but poorly promoted 45s – among them were Daddy Don’t Know About Sugar Bear and Live & Let Live, both of which were picked up for national distribution by Nashboro’s Excello subsidiary.
During the rest of the ‘70s Marva kept a low profile but in the early 1980s she briefly performed as part of a trio called Coffee, Cream & Sugar. In 1988, Marva’s career was revitalised by the release of James Brown’s Funky People, a CD showcasing the work of Marva and other members of The Godfather of Soul’s Revue. The success of that album (and a second volume released later the same year) resulted in several successful European tours as a member of the JBs Allstars alongside Bobby Byrd, Vicki Anderson, Lyn Collins, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis.
Marva’s music also provided some of hip-hop’s hardest working samples during that time. DJ Mark The 45 King famously looped the intro to Unwind Yourself on the dance hit, The 900 Number, in 1989 and introduced Marva to a new generation of listeners. In 1997, seven of Marva’s songs were featured on a Universal 2-CD retrospective called James Brown’s Original Funky Divas, while in 2000, Britain’s Soul Brother label reissued the in-demand It’s My Thing on CD for the first time.
In 2004, Marva’s career gained new impetus when she joined forces with DJ Pari and the Hanover-based Soulpower organisation. Recent high voltage performances in England, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland, attest that Marva is enjoying a new lease of life on the road. More importantly they confirmed that Marva Whitney is still the voice of funk."