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This was recorded directly from the original 1961 Warwick Records 45 LITTLE ESTHER’s “WILD CHILD”

By the time 25 year-old Little Esther Phillips wailed her way all over this minor-key snapper, she was a show-biz veteran at a low point in a career that was jump-started by her Savoy Records million-seller “Double-Crossing Blues” (1950) – recorded over a decade before when she was only fourteen years old. By the mid-1950s, fast living, early stardom, and drug addiction moved the teen star back from Los Angeles to her father in Houston (where she was in the room with Johnny Ace when a game of Russian Roulette ended his life). By the late-1950s this prolific artist’s recorded output had reduced to a trickle as she she rambled around the southern chitlin circuit – putting the breaks on every now and then to bounce between her father in Houston and Lexington, Kentucky’s storied U.S. Public Health Service Hospital (which housed everyone from fictional characters like the narrator of William S. Burroughs’ “Junky” to real-life music heroes like MC5’s Wayne Kramer).

If you’re thinking this sounds like it it comes from a lonely desperate place, you may be right on point….

And for the few who witnessed the breathtaking performance leaping out of these fat 45rpm grooves in 1961, “Wild Child,” must’ve looked like a shooting star’s bright final fade before it disappearing below the horizon. Judging by there rarity of her first release for a couple of years, her lone Warwick record, this wax wasn’t promoted and must’ve only sold a handful of copies. But as it turns out with great talents like Esther Phillips, this darkness was just the dawning of a new heroic day. Not long after “Wild Child,” Kenny Rogers witnessed her act at a local Houston nightclub and got her a record deal with his brother Leland Rodgers’ Lenox label (yes! thee gambler himself Kenny Rogers years before his First Edition and, “Hold It,” thee Leland Rogers who helped create psychedelic music when he produced 13th Floor Elevators, Red Krayola, etc for his own International Artists Records imprint). So within one year of “Wild Child,” call it a comeback, Esther Phillips had her first-ever top-10 pop hit and yet another #1 r&b smash with her version of “Release Me” in 1962! This lead to a series of consecutive phases that saw this very hip performer wax legendary soul sides for Atlantic and Roulette in the mid-to—late-1960s and by the 1970s saw here having funky hits with Kudu Records (her version of Gil Scott-Heron’s “Home Is Where The Hatred Is” was bigger than the original), pop standards (her version of “What a Difference a Day Makes” became a Top 40 hit on both sides of the Atlantic). and by the late 1970s disco records on Mercury. She even found herself scratching the R&B charts again in 1983 with “Turn Me Out” – the last of literally four decades of hits before her early death in 1984 at the age of 48.

Little Esther was herself a wild child. Feel her cool, her depth, and her power!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Phillips

an interview with Ahmet Ertegun about Esther Phillips
http://www.soultracks.com/esther_phillips.htm