Clean Up Woman is one of the greatest soul songs of all time, recorded by Betty Wright when she was only 17. I’m amazed I’ve not posted it before.
It was in 1971 that Wright released the song – written and produced by Clarence Reid and Willie Clarke, with that distinctive guitar lick played by Willie “Little Beaver” Hale.
A lifelong Miami native, Bessie Regina Norris had an octave-spanning vocal range that encompassed her childhood background in a gospel group called Echoes Of Joy – she joined at the age of two! – and, after switching to secular music at 13, powerfully emotive soul music – including the spectacular “whistle register” popularised by Minnie Riperton.
Her first two singles, Good Lovin’ and Mr Lucky, were released just a year later in 1967, the latter written by the same songwriting team of Reid (later known as Blowfly) and Clarke.
Wright’s first hit, another Reid/Clarke composition, came in 1968 with the wisdom-dispensing Girls Can’t Do What the Guys Do, followed by debut album My First Time Around.
The million-selling Clean Up Woman soon followed, reaching No.6 on the pop chart in America and earning Wright a Grammy nomination and a gold disc, but her follow-up Baby Sitter (one of her first compositions) failed to match its success.
In 1973 she introduced her shrill whistle register on Let Me Be Your Love Maker, followed by the Grammy-winning proto-disco number Where Is The Love, co-written by Wright with producers Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch from KC & The Sunshine Band.
Another proto-disco number was the Allen Toussaint-penned Shoorah! Shoorah!, which appeared – alongside Where Is The Love – on the 1974 album Danger High Voltage.
One of the most popular of the seven albums Wright released over the course of the Seventies, it also included the smooth soul ballad Tonight Is the Night, which Wright wrote about her first sexual experiences.
It gave her her tenth Top 20 hit in a live version including a characteristic monologue (and portions of one of her earlier hits, Pure Love).
A songwriter in her own right, in a recording career spanning 40 years she also produced and arranged material for herself and other artists.
Towards the end of the decade she co-wrote and produced All This Love That I’m Givin’ for Gwen McCrae, whom she had discovered (along with George McCrae) the previous decade.
She recorded a duet with Alice Cooper (No Tricks), collaborated with Stevie Wonder on What Are You Going To Do With It, and opened for Bob Marley on his Survival tour in 1979.
Wright had her last hit in 1988 with No Pain, No Gain – followed by After The Pain – but found her songs increasingly sampled as hip-hop gained traction, most prominently Tonight’s The Night on both I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd and Candyman’s Knockin’ Boots.
She released her final album in 2011, backed by The Roots, but her work continued to be heard up to her death in 2020, on huge albums by artists including Joss Stone, Lil Wayne, Angie Stone, Rick Ross and DJ Khaled, who all credited her as their musical mentor.
Here’s Betty performing an incendiary version of Clean Up Woman years after its release, with an insanely funky backing band, showing she’d lost none of her power.