Tainted Love

The 1981 hit, Tainted Love, by Soft Cell has always been a THC favorite and the band is a classic one-hit wonder.  Because it had such a distinctive early 80s sound, THC always assumed it had been composed at that time but recently he learned that it was the cover of a 1964 single by a singer he'd never heard of, Gloria Jones, and what a great vocal performance she gives coupled with a pounding arrangement that doesn't sound like much else from that year.

But before there was Gloria Jones, there was Ed Cobb.  From 1956 to 1966, Cobb was a member of The Four Preps, a singing quartet that had eight gold singles.  The group's mild, soothing pop thrived in that period of the late 1950s and early 1960s when rock was at an ebb between the mid-50s pioneers (Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly) and the coming of The Beatles.  Cobb moved into songwriting and producing.  Among the songs he wrote were Dirty Water, recorded by The Standells in 1966, and Tainted Love.(Cobb)

In 1964, Ed Cobb met Gloria Jones in Los Angeles.  Gloria, born in 1945, grew up in Cincinnati, at 14 forming a gospel trio which also included Billy Preston who later went on to record with The Beatles and have his own successful recording career including the #1 hit Nothing From Nothing.  Gloria signed with Cobb's production company and began recording, under his direction, with a subsidiary of Capital Records.  Neither Tainted Love nor the three followup singles were successful and by 1966 Gloria was moving on to the next part of her career.

A UK disc jockey from Northern England purchased the single on a 1973 trip to the U.S. and started playing it at clubs back in England.  Apparently in the 70s there was a Northern Soul scene in England and eventually members of Soft Cell heard it and made their version which reached #1 in seventeen countries.

This is the Gloria Jones original.

The rest of the story is also interesting.  After leaving Cobb productions, Gloria studied classical piano and began appearing in musicals, including the Los Angeles version of Hair.  She met Pam Sawyer and together they began writing songs for Motown Records.  Most of their works were for the albums, not for singles, and were recorded by Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, The Supremes and Diana Ross among others and they had one big hit, If I Were Your Woman, by Gladys Knight and The Pips.

In 1972 she began singing backup vocals for Marc Bolan of T Rex and moved to England where they became a couple and had a son with Gloria doing backup vocals on the T Rex records (you can see them performing together here).  T Rex had a monster hit in the U.S. with Bang a Gong (which THC did not care for) and was very popular in the U.K. for several years.  Then in September 1977 as they returned from an evening out, with Gloria driving, they ran off the road hitting a chain link fence post and tree.  Neither were wearing seat belts.  Bolan was thrown from the car and died instantly while Gloria ended up on the hood of the car with a broken jaw and arm.Gloria returned to the U.S. to raise her son (Rolan Bolan), working as a music supervisor in films.  According to IMDb she currently resides in Sierra Leone where a music school in Marc Bolan's name is operating.

Here is a 2009 UK newspaper interview with Gloria with her remembrances in which she mentions that the accident that killed Bolan also damaged her voice.