In order to broaden the listening base of a rising young talent, whose musical grounding up to that point had been in the gospel field, A&R producer and Flying Dutchman founder, Bob Thiele, flexed his marketing muscle in the following idiosyncratic manner:
Billboard
Oct. 18, 1969
Ad text:
Esther Marrow cannot be labeled. Music is so wide. Esther sings r. and b., gospel. Right? At Fillmore East they’d say, “Oh, she sings psychedelic.” So, like the man said, you can’t put a tag on it. Esther sings r. and b., gospel, rock — the whole bit!
“Esther sings what she feels, so categorizing is no use. Blues, jazz, rock, gospel – Esther Marrow is everything. Accented by rhythmic movements of her lithe body, she sings, she groans, she howls, she preaches.”
– Pauline Rivelli, Jazz & Pop Magazine
Just dig her first album, that’s all brother!
In an “industry service message” Thiele published in Billboard’s October 19, 1969 issue, the new label owner was said to be “very excited about the reaction he is getting from Europe over singer Esther Marrow. Thiele enthused to Billboard, “The people in Europe consider Esther to have great potential. We are going to take her over there in January and give her the full promotion treatment — television, radio, personal appearances.”
Marrow’s Flying Dutchman debut LP – entitled Newport News, Virginia – includes Gene Page‘s fresh arrangement of “What A Wonderful World,” a song co-written by Bob Thiele and first recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1967. The album’s first single release – “Mama” b/w “He Don’t Appreciate It” – enjoyed distribution in the US, UK, Canada, Chile, France, Netherlands, Australia, and Turkey. A promo 45 consisting of “Money Honey” b/w “What A Wonderful World” would also be issued by Thiele.
“Mama” b/w “He Don’t Appreciate It“
France
45 picture sleeve
[Future Shock typeface in popular music]
Chile
45 picture sleeve
Netherlands
45 picture sleeve
Billboard
Channel 2 of Swedish TV showed a Finnish program starring American singer Esther Marrow, Dec. 15. Philips is hoping that her album, Newport News, Virginia, will take off, sales-wise, as a result of the TV spot.
Robert Christgau‘s Consumer Guide review includes considerable praise for Marrow’s first full-length effort:
The opening cut, “He Don’t Appreciate It,” is such an exceptional example of hard soul (with fantastic arrangement and production by Bob Thiele) that I recommend the whole album to devotees of the genre.
Marrow’s 1969 debut solo album on Flying Dutchman, however, was not the singer’s inaugural vinyl appearance. Four years earlier, the twenty-four-year-old vocalist, incredibly, had voiced three songs on Duke Ellington‘s Concert Of Sacred Music recorded live at New York City’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church on Boxing Day — all of side one, essentially, save for the opening track:
- “Come Sunday” (from the suite, Black, Brown And Beige)
Duke Ellington‘s Concert Of Sacred Music
featuring vocalists Esther Marrow, Brock Peters & Jimmy McPhail
released 1966
One year after this album’s release, Esther Marrow collaborated with Joe Zawinul and James Rein on “Walk Tall” – first recorded by The Cannonball Adderley Quintet as the “secondary” title track of 1967 LP, 74 Miles Away / Walk Tall. Leonard Feather‘s liner notes helpfully inform us how that songwriting collaboration came to pass:
“Walk Tall,” by Joe Zawinul, has a history not unlike that of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” The latter grew out of a background theme he had developed for Esther Marrow, a singer he was coaching. Miss Marrow, whose background clearly goes back to church music, has appeared with Duke Ellington’s band at various houses of worship, performing in Duke’s program of sacred music. “Walk Tall,” which has the same sanctified feeling as “Mercy,” was a collaboration between Zawinul, Miss Marrow and J. Rein. Again, we have a candidate for vocal treatments, under the alternative title, “Baby, That’s What I Need.”
Fellow Capitol recording artists Lottie Jo Jones (1967), Howard Roberts (1967), and Willie Tee (1970) would record their own arrangements of “Walk Tall,” while Faron Young saw fit to interpret the song on 1982 LP, A Man For All Seasons.
“Walk Tall“
Written by Joe Zawinul, Esther Marrow & James Rein
In 1995, “Walk Tall” found itself sampled by The Pharcyde for “She Said” (included on the ‘alternative’ hip hop group’s second album, LabCabinCalifornia), while more recently, Beyonce would kick off her 2025 “Cowboy Carter Tour” performances with a visual interlude that incorporated the lyrical refrain from Esther Marrow’s own 1969 recording of “Walk Tall,” just prior to the song, “Texas Hold ’em“:
Walk tall, when you move out
Walk tall, and there’s no doubt
That no one can make you small
Not when you’re walking tall
In a remarkable turn of events, “Queen” Esther Marrow ended up being flown to the subsequent July 13, 2025 Atlanta performance by Queen Bey herself, in response to a viral video clip that showed Marrow in disbelief, upon viewing footage of the song’s cameo appearance during the July 4th Washington, DC stop of the “Cowboy Carter Tour” at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland.
“Walk Tall“
Esther Marrow
(1969)
On 1972’s full-length release, Sister Woman — issued on Fantasy, though, not Flying Dutchman — Esther Marrow received musical backing from such top session talent as Bernard Purdie, Idris Muhammad, and Jimmy Johnson (drums); Chuck Rainey and Gordon Edwards (bass); Ralph MacDonald (percussion); Cornel Dupree and Keith Loving (guitar); Richard Tee, Paul Griffen, and Bobby Scott (keyboards).
IN HINDSIGHT
Duke Ellington’s Consecration of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral
Historic moment not without controversy
In 2015, Esther Marrow was invited to participate in a reprise performance of Duke Ellington’s “Concert of Sacred Music” for the 50th anniversary commemoration of Grace Cathedral’s opening in 1965. Ellington’s consecration of Grace Cathedral, notes KQED‘s Gabe Meline, while today considered a landmark moment, back in its time, was viewed, by some, as sacrilegious.
“From the Club to the Cathedral:
Revisiting Duke Ellington’s Controversial ‘Sacred Concert‘”
By Gabe Meline
Sep. 14, 2015
Updated Jan. 11, 2024
EXCERPT
Ellington padded the program with music from his previous piece Black, Brown & Beige (what he described as “a tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America”), and battling what he admitted was “a certain amount of trepidation,” composed new material for Grace Cathedral drawing on the Bible, starting with its first four words. The six-syllable phrase “In the Beginning God” was woven throughout the concert, either sung by the Herman McCoy choir or played; Bunny Briggs tap-danced to a composition titled “David Danced Before the Lord With All His Might;” Jon Hendricks delivered hip spoken word; Ellington sidemen Paul Gonsalves, “Cat” Anderson and Johnny Hodges shined; and a young singer named Esther Marrow sang the Ellington composition “Come Sunday.”
Marrow returns for the 50th anniversary concert this week, a little more seasoned than she was in 1965. After being discovered by Ellington, she went on to sing alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., meet multiple U.S. Presidents [Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton] and lead the highly regarded Harlem Gospel Choir [1994’s Queen Esther Marrow & The Harlem Gospel Singers; 1999’s Live In Paris; 2002’s God Cares]. But at Grace Cathedral, after warming up with the band in Lake Tahoe, she arrived with the jitters.
“Ooh, I was really nervous,” Marrow tells me recently, on the phone from the East Coast. “Because you gotta remember, this was my first time performing, period! I had only sang in church. And to be singing with Duke Ellington and his orchestra? Oh my God.”
Ellington had his troubles the day of the concert as well. “Duke had on a white suit, and the pants had not arrived,” Marrow recalls. “I’ve never seen Duke get upset, but he was a little perturbed about that.”
Ellington was so taken with Marrow that he asked her to stay on with the band for the Monterey Jazz Festival the next night, and for an upcoming Midwest tour; she eventually sang with Ellington for the next few years. She has only revisited Grace Cathedral once, in the late ’80s, and is excited to return for Ellington’s groundbreaking program.
“You know, Duke was a jazz man, but he had a connection also with God,” Marrow says. “And I think that he wanted to show that being a jazz musician did not make him separate and apart from believing in and knowing God.”
Meline points out that the nearly one-hour live performance was filmed for television by KQED “in partnership with producer and Chronicle jazz critic, Ralph Gleason“:
A Concert of Sacred Music
Duke Ellington Orchestra –
featuring Esther Marrow
San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral
Sep. 17, 1965
LINK:
