Born Esther Mae Jones in Galveston, Texas, when she was an adolescent, her parents divorced, and she was forced to divide her time between her father in Houston and her mother in the Watts area of Los Angeles. Because she was brought up singing in church, she was hesitant to enter a talent contest at a local blues club, but her sister insisted and she complied. A mature singer at age fourteen, she won the amateur talent contest in 1949 at the Barrelhouse Club owned by Johnny Otis. Otis was so impressed that he recorded her for Modern Records and added her to his traveling revue, the California Rhythm and Blues Caravan, billed as 'Little Esther Phillips' (she reportedly took the surname from a gas station sign).
Her first hit record was Double Crossing Blues, recorded in 1950 for Savoy Records. After several hit records with Savoy, including her duet with Mel Walker on Mistrusting Blues, which went to number one that year, as did "Cupid Boogie". Other Phillips records that made it onto the U.S. Billboard R&B chart in 1950 include "Misery" (number 9), "Deceivin' Blues" (number 4), "Wedding Boogie" (number 6), and "Faraway Blues" (number 6). Few female artists, R&B or otherwise, had ever enjoyed such success in their debut year. Phillips left Otis and the Savoy label at the end of 1950 and signed with Federal Records.
But just as quickly as the hits had started, they stopped. Although she recorded more than thirty sides for Federal, only one, Ring-a-Ding-Doo, charted; the song made it to number 8 in 1952. Not working with Otis was part of her problem; the other part was her drug usage. By the middle of the decade Phillips was chronically addicted to drugs.
In 1954, she returned to Houston to live with her father to recuperate. Short on money, she worked in small nightclubs around the South, punctuated by periodic hospital stays in Lexington, Kentucky, stemming from her addiction. In 1962, Kenny Rogers re-discovered her while singing at a Houston club and got her signed to his brother Lelan’s Lenox label.
Phillips ultimately got well enough to launch a comeback in 1962. Now billed as Esther Phillips instead of Little Esther, she recorded a country tune, Release Me, with producer Bob Gans. This went to number 1 R&B and number 8 on the pop listings. After several other minor R&B hits on Lenox, she was signed by Atlantic Records. Her cover of The Beatles' song And I Love Him nearly made the R&B Top Ten in 1965 and the Beatles flew her to the UK for her first overseas performances.
She had other hits in the 1960s on the label, but no more chart toppers, and she waged a battle with heroin dependency. With her addiction worsening, Phillips checked into a rehab facility. While undergoing treatment, she cut some sides for Roulette in 1969, mostly produced by Lelan Rogers. On her release, she moved back to Los Angeles and re-signed with the Atlantic label. A late 1969 gig at Freddie Jett's Pied Piper club produced the album Burnin'. She performed with the Johnny Otis Show at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1970.
One of her biggest post-1950s triumphs was in 1972 with her first album for Kudu Records. The song penned by Gil Scott-Heron, Home Is Where the Hatred Is, - an account of drug use — was lead track on From a Whisper to a Scream which went on to be nominated for a Grammy Award. When Phillips lost to Aretha Franklin, the latter presented the trophy to Phillips, saying she should have won it instead.
Taylor continued to cut albums with her until in 1975, she scored her biggest hit single since "Release Me" with a disco-style update of Dinah Washington's What a Diff'rence a Day Makes. It reached a high of a Top 20 chart appearance in the U.S., and Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. On November 8, 1975 she performed the song on an episode of NBC's Saturday Night hosted by Candice Bergen. The accompanying album of the same name became her biggest seller yet, with arranger Joe Beck on guitar, Michael Brecker on tenor sax, David Sanborn on alto sax, and Randy Brecker on trumpet to Steve Khan on guitar and Don Grolnick on keyboards.
She continued to record and perform throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, completing a total of seven albums on Kudu and four with Mercury Records, for whom she signed in 1977. In 1983, she charted for the final time on a tiny independent label, Winning with Turn Me Out, which reached #85 R&B. She completed recording her final album a few months before her death, but it was not until 1986 that the label (Muse) released the record.
Phillips died at UCLA Medical Center in Carson, California in 1984, at the age of 48 from liver and kidney failure due to drug use. Her funeral services were conducted by Johnny Otis, and she was buried in the Morning Light section, at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. The bronze marker recognizes her career achievements, as well as quoting a Bible passage, "In My Father's House Are Many Mansions" - St. John 14:2
From a Whisper to a Scream
Esther Phillips Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
To a loud scream
The message came
That I'd lost you
To the warmth of another man
I've seen more tears fall from your eyes
Than all the showers of April
As if it came with the wallpaper
So inconsiderate of how much you cared
For some stupid reason, I just thought you had to be there
Oh my love
Oh my love
Oh my love
Oh my love
I simply must have been crazy
Or I must have been out of my mind
For me to overlook the need in you
Tell me, how could I have been so blind
Never giving thoughts to your wants and needs
Now I'm begging you please
Oh my love
Oh my love
So inconsiderate of how much you cared
For some stupid reason, I just thought you had to be there
Oh my love
Oh my love
Oh my love
Esther Phillips's "From a Whisper to a Scream" is a tale of love lost due to neglect and inconsideration. The song begins with the singer describing the stark contrast between the quiet whispers of love and the loud screams of heartache she experiences when discovering that her lover has left her for someone else. She reflects on the many tears shed by her lover, whom she took for granted and neglected to notice their needs and wants. She acknowledges the love that her partner had given her, which she did not reciprocate, and now she is left with regret and desperation, begging for forgiveness.
The song's lyrics capture the feeling of being blindsided by a breakup, forcing the singer to come to terms with the mistakes that led to the end of the relationship. The use of imagery, such as tears falling like showers of April, creates a vivid picture of the pain and sorrow that her lover experienced. The song's poignant lyrics and Esther Phillips's soulful delivery make it a timeless classic that is still relevant and relatable today.
Line by Line Meaning
From a whisper in the wind
The message about losing you came to me slowly and quietly
To a loud scream
Over time, the message became clear and painfully loud
The message came
I found out that I had lost you
That I'd lost you
You are no longer mine
To the warmth of another man
You have found comfort and love in someone else's arms
I've seen more tears fall from your eyes
I have witnessed your heartbreak and pain
Than all the showers of April
Your tears have been continuous and unending
I took kindness for granted
I did not appreciate your love and affection
As if it came with the wallpaper
I treated your kindness as if it were something commonplace and expected
So inconsiderate of how much you cared
I was thoughtless and did not realize how much you loved me
For some stupid reason, I just thought you had to be there
I foolishly assumed that you would always be around, regardless of how I treated you
Oh my love
Expressing my deep feelings of love for you
I simply must have been crazy
Realizing now that I was acting foolishly and not thinking clearly
Or I must have been out of my mind
I must have been irrational and not in control of my thoughts and actions
For me to overlook the need in you
Realizing that I did not pay attention to your emotional and physical needs
Tell me, how could I have been so blind
Asking myself how I could have ignored your suffering and ignored your love
Never giving thoughts to your wants and needs
Realizing that I did not care about what you truly desired and needed
Now I'm begging you, please
Asking for your forgiveness and a chance to make it right
Oh my love
The expression of my deeply felt emotions of love for you, now that I truly understand their significance
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: ALLEN TOUSSAINT
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
ulpana
The Allen Toussaint vinyl album that carries this title tune was found at Down Home Music in El Cerrito and worn out by me by the time I got my first CD player while working in a small indie electronics shop on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley in the 90's. I was late to owning a PC or having internet access too. Yet here I am now having turned 60 years old, part-timed and de-professionalized doing manual labor at work reliving the Dobie Gillis phase of my teen years watching reruns on TV waiting for the grocery big box chain I pick and shlep online orders for to call me back in cuz of the crazed mass mediated demand, even if it takes me over the 20 hour minimum work at sub-minimum wage that UFCW our union local 555 negotiated our luxurious contract to help us add ourselves to the WORKING HOMELESS that much faster.
No one but the homeless is going outside these days as everyone is spooked and quarantined by this Symptom In Chief and his hollowed out CDC and shrunken Big formerly First World Wall Street oriented Government cuz of the latest virus (Corona Virus 19) making the global rounds. That apparently we humans don't have any immunity built up to fight off just yet, cuz our bean-counter serial corporate bankruptcy-seeking CEO\President went and undid the boosting of CDC's budget and believed this virus like journalistic fact-checked facts and empirical peer-reviewed science can all be dismissed as a hoax. Until the Prez Investor In Chief's personal investments like that Scottish coast ritzy golf club needs special permission to move inland to avoid the rising tides forecast by the same hoaxers the Prez pulls out to scoff at any PUBLIC INTEREST infrastructure needs. Well, his "Shovel Ready" reform-rhetoric predecessor in the Off White House was scarcely any better at masking the Privatization of Profits and Socializing of Costs\Risks Neo-Lib\Neo-Con E-CONomic policy doctrine of the flim-flam kings and queens.
I'm looking up artists here on U. of Tube, especially West Coast jazz and soul, that have interpreted some of my favorite songs and this 1971 album by Esther Phillips and some stunning session musicians and production muse Creed Taylor that made Aretha Franklin want to give her Grammy to Esther Phillips is my first recalled exposure to this masterpiece title track. Pee Wee Ellis's arrangements and session work here are masterly in his own unique way. Don't lump this in with the earlier Chicago studio sound at Cadet Records (subsidiary of Chess) pioneered with orchestrated arrangements of Soul\R&B\Rock by producer-innovator Charles Stepney whose recordings for Minnie Riperton, Rotary Connection and many others came to be referred to as Chamber Soul or Psychedelica Acid Jazz with a side of R&B.
Slow learner surely beats never learning nothing t'all. Esther Phillips gets way inside and inhabits this Allen Toussaint Sea-Saint Studios composition. May these artists spirits have ascended to be closer to Maker. May we be blessed by feeling their presence in our midst during troubling times like these along with providing each of us listeners sobering gravity for our God-willing more footloose and fancy-free days then nights that occasionally come as a relief to living through this vale or valley of tears (not just Lebanon's Bekaa Valley or Emeq ha'Bekhi in Hebe and the region's Mother Tongue and template Semitic language of Aramaic).
Another stand-out track is Gil Scott-Heron's "Home Is Where the Hatred Is" that Ms Phillips and her accompanists treat with such delicacy and nuance is worth setting beside the Scott-Heron and Toussaint discs on yer home library shelf. Track for track this album is even more than the sum of its illustrious players, producer and parts.
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Shifters and Song Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa
Media Discussion List
Albert Brancato
A masterpiece. I saw her perform the piece in Philly at the "Just Jazz" club back in October 1974. Got her autograph too :-)
Art Sanchez
A great rendition from one of the best vocalists of all time! Her phrasing if remarkable - like no other female singer to this day!
James Lacey
+Art Sanchez try Jill Scott
Steve Anthony
Came across a box of 8 tracks and this album stood out. But I don't have an 8-track player so I decided to pull it up on YouTube because the title was really interesting and I never have heard of this singer. Anyways I'm glad I pulled her up because she's got such a nice beautiful sultry voice kind of a mixture of Ella fitzgerald, Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin all wrapped up in one. I'm surprised that she didn't become just as famous as some of the other divas of her time. Because she's really got a sensational voice.
imbees2
Pull it up!!
Steve Anthony
@imbees2 huh
imbees2
one of favorites songs and favorite artists. This song was the epitome of the early 70's. Soul, sorta jazz, just enough.
Sactified Mission
She should have the same stature in music as Aretha , Diannah and Dionne
11th String
Oh Beautiful Esther! Damn that guitar sound is gorgeous!
Abdul halim
The late great Cornell Dupree on guitar oh my goodness!
Other notable performances include 1.Rainy Night in Georgia
2. Live at The Bitter End (Donny Hathaway.)
3. Live at Fillmore West (Aretha Franklin)