Mayer Hawthorne needs some Chicago soul

One day, California singer Mayer Hawthorne was listening to a bunch of beats sent to him by hip-hop producer Nottz. One particular beat stood out, he tells the Stones Throw website. “It had the same chord progression as [Otis Leavill's "I Need You"], so I just went with it.”

Indeed he did, rescuing a 41-year-old ballad from obscurity. Mayer Hawthorne’s cover version of “I Need You” is #nowplaying at 22tracks’ soul playlist.

It’s pretty stunning that hip-hop produce Nottz did not create the track with “I Need You” in mind, because the song fits perfectly. Here is the original, produced by Willie Henderson, a protégé of the great Chicago record man Carl Davis.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v1o_gLZeGY

“I Need You” was the B-side of “I Love You“, an R&B Top Ten hit in 1969 for Carl Davis’s assistant, Otis Leavill Cobb. He never released an album, but he certainly had good ears because according to Allmusic, Leavill discovered The Chi-Lites, Bohannon and also a group called Manchild, that included a teenage Babyface! (Apparently, he also passed on Chaka Khan, but I guess you can’t be right all the time.)

Otis Leavill died of a heart attack in 2002. Both “I Love You” and “I Need You” were reissued on CD in 1999, on the compilation The Class of Mayfield High, and unless Mayer Hawthorne is something of 45 collector, I guess that’s how “I Need You” wound up on his DJ mix album Soul With a Hole Vol. 1. (It’s funny how Otis Leavill’s name is spelled incorrectly, in two different ways even, on both the mix CD and the Stones Throw site.)

Dominick Lamb AKA Virginia producer Nottz is best known for his work with luminaries such as Busta Rhymes, Xzibit, Ghostface Killah, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West and The Game. Most of it is on album tracks rather than hit singles, though I guess this Nottz production did pretty well:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2q6yxYmUt4

If that video gets you in the mood for scantily clad ladies, Mayer Hawthorne has a new video out for one of his own compostitions, “Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin’”:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAxBdYM8opg