‘Doin’ Things’: Madeline Bell’s Succulent Soul Banquet

Best known as a member of the multi-racial British pop band Blue Mink, with whom she scored four UK Top 10 hits between 1969 and 1973, including “Melting Pot” and “Good Morning Freedom,” Madeline Bell is also a prolific and in-demand background vocalist, working with everyone from Joe Cocker and Elton John to Serge Gainsbourg and Giorgio Moroder. Less well-known is her solo career, which produced a US hit version of the Gamble & Huff-written “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” which rose to No. 26 in the Hot 100 in 1968, outperforming Dee Dee Warwick’s original. She also made several notable solo albums, including Doin’ Things, her second album for the Philips label, recorded in London in 1968. Though ignored at the time of its release, it later became an underground soul classic.

A church-reared singer blessed with a pliable and highly expressive voice, Madeline Bell was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1942. She set foot on British soil twenty years later as a member of the Alex Bradford Singers in a production of the Langston Hughes-written gospel stage show Black Nativity. After the show’s 18-month European sojourn ended, she decided to stay in the UK, where she was offered a recording deal with EMI, resulting in three singles. When her solo career didn’t take flight, she began doing studio session work in London, quickly earning renown for backing up Dusty Springfield and Scott Walker, then both signed to the Philips label. Impressing the A&R executives at Philips, Bell signed with the Dutch-owned company in 1966, recording her debut album Bell’s A Poppin’ under the supervision of the British arranger Arthur Greenslade, whose credits ranged from PJ Proby to Serge Gainsbourg. Despite earning critical plaudits, the album, released in 1967, didn’t take off in the UK, but in Bell’s homeland yielded a surprise US Top 30 hit with “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.”

Madeline Bell’s Doin’ Things is available on vinyl via the Black Story initiative. Order it now.

Scoring a US hit was enough for Philips to bankroll a second Bell album, Doin’ Things. Arthur Greenslade returned to oversee the arrangement of four tracks with the remaining eight supervised by Keith Mansfield, Ian Green, and Derek Wadsworth, all top-notch British composers/arrangers. According to the album’s liner notes writer, Peter Jones, the set’s first four cuts “came as a result of searching round American publishing houses.” The opener, “Help Yourself,” was an infectious soul music stomper with a hint of Motown. A similar vibe inhabited “After All Is Said And Done,” co-written by Teddy Randazzo, an Italian-American singer/songwriter who penned the 1965 hit “Goin’ Out Of My Head” for R&B group Little Anthony & The Imperials. Exquisitely arranged by Keith Mansfield, the track began as a ballad that built into a driving number with an anthemic chorus.

The folky “Gotta Get Away From Here” offered a change of mood while “Ain’t Gonna Cry And More” exuded more of a jazzy dance vibe. Bell wrote both tunes with session bassist John Paul Jones, the godfather of her two children, Tammy and Cindy. Jones also contributed a slice of soulful pop called “Hold It.” Interestingly, the bassist was only a few months away from finding fame as a member of the British hard rock group Led Zeppelin.

Another noted British musician, Georgie Fame, was the writer of the storytelling ballad, “For Your Pleasure,” which was Bell’s version of the B-side to the Lancashire singer’s 1968 cover of the Jimmy Webb-composed Glen Campbell hit “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.” Bell also gave a soulful makeover to “Step Inside Love,” the Lennon and McCartney song that the Beatle pair wrote for fellow Liverpudlian Cilla Black, as the theme tune of her 1967 TV show. Bell’s performance embodied what the album’s liner note writer called “vocal courage,” by her taking “a song already well-known by another artist and still managing to rejig it into something completely personal.”

Doin’ Things may have appeared on the radar of discerning pop pickers but clearly bypassed a mainstream listening audience at the time of its release. But as a portrait of an artist blessed with exquisite vocal skills, it more than succeeded. It showed that Madeline Bell was a versatile, multi-faceted performer who could also write her own material as well as offer unique interpretations of other people’s songs. Though largely underappreciated, the much-overlooked Doin’ Things is a succulent soul banquet that hasn’t lost its freshness over time. It remains a forgotten soul classic that deserves a much bigger audience.

Madeline Bell’s Doin’ Things is available on vinyl via the Black Story initiative. Order it now.