Barbara Mason - The Ghetto (Expanded Edition) (2023)

R&B diva Barbara Mason scored a major success in 1965 when her song "Yes I'm Ready" rose to the Top Five of the Pop and R&B single charts, the first hit in a career that has kept her active for decades. Mason possessed a smooth, supple voice that was a great match for romantic tunes, though she also had the range and passion to connect with more forceful material, particularly on her classic sides for Arctic Records. Her mid-'70s Buddah records (including 1972's Give Me Your Love and 1974's Lady Love) boasted a richer sound, with the production and arrangements influenced by the Philly Soul hits of the day, and in the '80s, she eased into a deeper style, recording longer narrative songs with extended spoken word passages, such as "She's Got the Papers, But I Got My Man" and "Another Man," collected on the album Another Man.
Barbara Mason was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 9, 1947, and began performing at a young age, forming a singing group and competing in talent shows when she was 12. She also learned to play the piano, and began writing original songs. Mason lived in the same neighborhood as Bill Oxendine of the Philly vocal group the Larks (aka the Four Larks), and when he heard her sing, he helped her record a single, "Trouble Child" b/w "Dedicated to You," with the Larks providing backing vocals on the A-side. He next put her in touch with Jimmy Bishop, a disc jockey who ran a small record label, Arctic Records. Bishop signed Mason to a deal with Arctic, and in 1964, she released her second single, "Come to Me" b/w "Girls Have Feelings Too," two songs Mason herself wrote. Her next single, "Yes I'm Ready" b/w "Keep Him," again penned by Mason, became her breakthrough, rising to number five on the Top 200 Pop Singles chart, and to number two on the R&B survey. A few months later, Mason brought out a follow-up, "Sad Sad Girl" b/w "Come to Me," which was another success, peaking at number 27 Pop and number 12 R&B. Before the year was out, Mason had delivered her first album, Yes I'm Ready.
In 1967, Mason scored another R&B hit, "Oh, How It Hurts" b/w "Ain't Got Nobody," which went to number 11 on the R&B chart, and cracked the pop chart, topping out at number 59. This prompted a second album from Mason, Oh How It Hurts, which was issued by Arctic in 1968. Outside of Mason, Arctic had few successful artists, and by the end of 1969, the label was on its last legs. Mason left Arctic for National General Records, a newly founded offshoot of a film production company. Her biggest success for National General was "If You Knew Him Like I Do" b/w "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," which made it to number 38 on the R&B chart in 1970, though it only rose to a disappointing number 112 on the Pop listing. National General also released an album, 1970's If You Knew Him Like I Do, which unlike most of her previous work was dominated by covers of recent hits. National General proved no more stable than Arctic, and they stopped releasing product in 1971; Buddah, which distributed NGR, took up Mason's contract, and released the album Give Me Your Love in 1972. The title track was issued as a single and became Mason's biggest R&B hit since "Yes I'm Ready," where it rose to the number nine spot; it also cracked the Pop Top 40, topping out at number 31. Mason cut two more albums for Buddah, 1973's Lady Love and 1974's Transition, before 1975's Love's the Thing spawned two more hit singles, "From His Woman to You" (R&B number three, Pop number 28) and "Shackin' Up" (R&B number nine, Pop number 91). Despite the success of Love's the Thing, it proved to be Mason's last album for Buddah, and her next LP, 1977's Locked in This Position, was a collaboration with fellow Philly soul vocalist Bunny Sigler, released by Curtom Records.
The New York-based dance music label Prelude Records would release Mason's next album, 1978's I Am Your Woman, She Is Your Wife, that found her stretching out on longer songs with more emphatic grooves. In 1981, she teamed up with the Philly-based R&B imprint WMOT Records to release A Piece of My Life; the album was later reissued as Yes I'm Ready (it included a new version of her first hit) along with the single "She's Got the Papers (I Got the Man)," one of several answer songs that appeared after the success of Richard "Dimples" Fields' smash "She's Got Papers on Me." Mason would deliver another installment of the "Papers" saga with the single "Another Man," which appeared on the 1984 album Tied Up; like A Piece of My Life, it would also be reissued with additional material as Another Man. In the mid-'80s, Mason stepped away from performing, focusing on songwriting and running a publishing company before she briefly retired from the music business. After she was persuaded to play a comeback show in 1992, she booked occasional live gigs and in 2007, she returned to the recording studio to cut Feeling Blue for the Sunswept label. It would be Mason's final album of fresh material, but she continued to book concerts for her fans, and loyalists of classic soul and R&B snapped up reissues of her vintage recordings, including 2023's The Ghetto, assembled from rare and unreleased sessions of the '80s.