Color Him Father

"Color Him Father"
Single by The Winstons
B-side	"Amen, Brother"
Released	May 1969[1]
Genre	R&B; soul; funk;
Length	3:06
Label	Metromedia
Songwriter(s)	Richard Lewis Spencer
Producer(s)	Don Carroll
The Winstons singles chronology

"Color Him Father" is a song released by funk and soul group the Winstons.

It was released in 1969, and reached number 2 on the R&B charts and number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 that same year. Its composer, Richard Lewis Spencer, won a Grammy Award for Best R&B song in 1970.[2]

"Color Him Father" is one of the best known songs by The Winstons. It was released as a single, and the B-side contained an instrumental track titled "Amen, Brother". "Amen, Brother" contains what has now become one of the most heavily sampled drum breaks in the history of electronic music, especially jungle and breakbeat hardcore. This break has become known as the Amen Break.

"Color Him Father" is an unabashedly sentimental song in which a boy expresses his love for his stepfather, a hardworking and generous man who married his widowed mother, who had seven children, and embraced them as his own after her first husband was "killed in the war". ("She said she thought that she could never love again/And then there he stood with that big, wide grin.") The song's lyrics resonated strongly with the public in 1969, the height of the Vietnam War. The word "color", in the song, means "label" or "call" and follows the 'color' motif set in Barbra Streisand's 1963 release of "My Coloring Book." The song served as a major musical inspiration for the 2016 track "Celebrate" by Anderson .Paak.

Amen break

The "Color Him Father" B-side is "Amen, Brother", an instrumental interpretation of the gospel standard "Amen".[3] The Winstons recorded it in early 1969 in Atlanta, Georgia.[4] With the rise of hip hop in the 1980s, the break was widely sampled and became a staple of drum and bass and jungle music. It has been used on thousands of tracks of many genres, making it one of the most sampled recordings of all time.[5]

Cover versions

Linda Martell had a Top 25 country hit in 1969 with her version of the song.
Lorene Mann released 'Color Him Father' on her 1969 RCA album 'A Mann Called Lorene'
O C Smith included the song on his 1969 Columbia album 'O.C. Smith at Home'
Bobby Womack recorded the song and released it on his 1994 album 'Resurrection'
Keb' Mo' covered the song on his 2001 album Big Wide Grin

References

"Record Details (MMS-117)". 45cat. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
Harrington, Richard: A Celebration of Home-Grown Soul, The Washington Post, June 30, 2006.
"Seven seconds of fire". The Economist. 17 December 2011. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 20 March 2019.
Otzen, Ellen (29 March 2015). "Six seconds that shaped 1,500 songs". BBC News. Retrieved 29 March 2015. 'It's not the worst thing that can happen to you. I'm a black man in America and the fact that someone wants to use something I created — that's flattering,' he says.
Goldenberg, David (2016-09-22). "It Only Takes Six Seconds To Hear The World's Most Sampled Song". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2020-01-13.

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[1] "Record Details (MMS-117)". 45cat. Retrieved 26 January 2018.

[2] Harrington, Richard: A Celebration of Home-Grown Soul, The Washington Post, June 30, 2006.

[:0-3] "Seven seconds of fire". The Economist. 17 December 2011. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 20 March 2019.

[BBC_six-4] Otzen, Ellen (29 March 2015). "Six seconds that shaped 1,500 songs". BBC News. Retrieved 29 March 2015. 'It's not the worst thing that can happen to you. I'm a black man in America and the fact that someone wants to use something I created — that's flattering,' he says.

[5] Goldenberg, David (2016-09-22). "It Only Takes Six Seconds To Hear The World's Most Sampled Song". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2020-01-13.