I
N 1960, A 25-YEAR-OLD
performer-songwriter named
Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson
— then of the guitar-and-vo-
cal duo Mickey & Sylvia,
known for their million-sell-
ing “Love Is Strange” —
walked into a recording
studio in Manhattan to work
with a New Orleans artist
named Joe Jones on a tune he
called “You Talk Too Much.”
Sylvia Robinson walked out a re-
cord producer.
She did not receive credit for the
session, one she claimed that she had
run on behalf of Jones’ label, Morris
Levy’s Roulette Records. If she had,
it might have cemented her as the
first-ever black and female indepen-
dent record producer to have a top 10
pop hit. (The song peaked at No. 3 on
the Billboard Hot 100.)
Instead, Sylvia would become
famous for another breakthrough:
conceiving and producing the first
successful rap record. Forty years
ago, in the summer of 1979, “Rapper’s
Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang trans-
formed the street culture of hip-hop
into a commercially viable art form. It
was not only the first rap single to con-
quer the radio and the charts — top-
ping Billboard’s R&B tally and reaching
No. 37 on the Hot 100 — but the first
to sell over a million. After facing
criticism from hip-hop’s pioneers for
fabricating The Sugarhill Gang from
three wannabe rappers, Robinson
filled out her roster with genuine acts:
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious
Five, The Funky 4 + 1, The Treacher-
ous Three. Within a few years, she had
built one of the top independent labels
in America, Sugar Hill Records, along
with her husband, Joe Robinson.
Her success with Sugar Hill was
historic. She’s arguably one of the
most consequential producers and
label owners of all time. Her business
opened the doors for all the indepen-
dents that followed from Def Jam to
Top Dawg, and her music pioneered
distinct concepts that set the template
for hip-hop’s entire creative arc. From
party rocking, to the DJ as musician,
to social consciousness, Sugar Hill
made everything possible for today’s
hip-hop stars.
She was celebrated as “the Queen
of Rap,” but success did not erase the
slighting of her earliest production
work, which included “It’s Gonna
Work Out Fine,” the 1961 hit that
earned Ike & Tina Turner their first
Grammy Award nomination. “I paid
for the session, taught Tina the song;
that’s me playing guitar,” she said in
a 1981 interview with trade magazine
Black Radio Exclusive. Production
credit went instead to Sue Records
owner Juggy Murray.
The erasure of women’s work re-
mains a less-explored injustice of the
rough-and-tumble early history of
the record business. “It got covered
up a lot,” says Leah Branstetter, cre-
ator of the Women in Rock and Roll’s
First Wave website. “They would just
get called a ‘secretary.’ A lot of wom-
en did the A&R-type work. They
would be the ones building the rela-
tionships and doing all this adminis-
trative work that is an important part
of producing but isn’t always the part
that gets credited.”
Thus, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry
Wexler are lauded for the glories
of Atlantic Records, not Miriam
Abramson, whose accounting and
collection kept the company sol-
vent; Jim Stewart is celebrated as
a pioneer of Memphis soul, less so
Estelle Axton, without whose money
and ear there would have been no
Stax; Elvis Presley’s discovery is
ascribed to Sam Phillips when it
was his assistant, Marion Keisker,
who initially recorded Presley and
pushed Phillips to call him back in
for the session that began his mete-
oric ascent at Sun. A black woman,
Vivian Carter Bracken, was the first
to license The Beatles for American
distribution at her label, Vee-Jay,
when Capitol Records passed. John-
nie Mae Matthews founded North-
ern Recording Company in Detroit
and introduced a young Berry Gordy
to the DJs and distributors he would
draw on in building Motown. And
Sylvia Robinson, as she and Joe tell
the story, was behind the boards
to record major hits for Ike & Tina
Turner and Jones.
Sylvia Rhone, who in May was
named chairman of Epic Records —
only the second time in history that
a black woman has attained that
title at a major label, the first being
Rhone herself at Elektra in 1994 —
began her own journey by following
the paths of three female executives.
“There was Florence Greenberg of
Scepter/Wand Records,” says Rhone.
“Ruth Bowen, who owned Queen
booking [and] had Sammy Davis Jr.,
Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Dinah
Washington and Dionne Warwick.
And Sylvia Robinson, who should be
honored as one of the first black fe-
male creatives and businesswomen.”
FROM THE FIRST RAP SINGLE TO SELL A MILLION TO THE FIRST SCRATCHING ON RECORD,
SYLVIA ROBINSON CREATED THE TEMPLATE FOR HIP-HOP’S WORLD DOMINATION. HER
GENIUS FOR PRODUCTION BUILT AN EMPIRE. HER BAD BUSINESS BURNED IT DOWN
BY DAN CHARNAS
RAP’S
FIRST
RULER
OCTOBER 19, 2019 • WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 7 5
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