Garnet Mimms -

Garnet Mimms is an American soul singer who emerged in The Gainors, a doo-wop combo with Sam Bell and Howard Tate. Mimms and Bell formed The Enchanters, which charted with the 1963–64 singles “Cry Baby,” “For Your Precious Love” (a Jerry Butler-era Impressions cover), and “Tell Me Baby.”

Mimms went solo with a 1964–66 string of UA/Veep singles, including the US hit “I’ll Take Good Care of You” and the Northern Soul classic “It Was Easier to Hurt Her.” UA issued two studio albums and a singles compilation by Mimms, who also cut a 1967 UK-only live album.

After rounds of non-album singles on Verve and GSF (1968–72), Mimms disappeared until his 1977 Arista album Has It All, a modernized funk set represented by “What It Is,” a UK dance-floor hit with mildly risque lyrics.

Background

He was born Garnet Edward Mimms on November 16, 1933, in Ashland, West Virginia; one of seven children borne to Fannie Mae (nee Blackwell) and Eugene Mimms. As a child, Garnet’s family moved to Beckley, West Virginia, where he sang in the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir and joined the Evening Stars, a local gospel group. After his 1951 graduation from Stratton High School, his family moved to Philadelphia, where he sang with the Norfolk Four.

In 1954, Mimms enlisted in the US Army and formed The Deltones, a doo-wop combo with fellow servicemen. After his 1958 discharge, he formed The Gainors, a Philly doo-wop quintet with Sam Bell, Willie Combo, John Jefferson, and Howard Tate. They scored a regional hit with their first single, “The Secret,” in September 1958 on Cameo, which issued their Christmas followup “You Must Be an Angel,” a Bell original.^> The Gainors cut three subsequent singles on Mercury and two on Tally-Ho, including the Mimms originals “She’s Gone” and “Nothing Means More to Me.”

Garnet Mimms & the Enchanters

In 1961, Mimms and Bell teamed with Charles Boyer and Zola Pearnell in a new soul combo, Garnet Mimms & the Enchanters. In 1963, they moved to New York and linked with the writer/producer team of Bert Russell Berns and Jerry Ragovoy (aka Norman Meade). The team co-wrote “Cry Baby,” the first Enchanters a-side (b/w Bells’ “Don’t Change Your Heart”) for United Artists.

A soul ballad (in B), “Cry Baby” features compound piano meters (3/4) across a slow tempo in common time. The chorus features gritty high-pitched harmonies by The Gospelaires, a group of session vocalists, including Dionne Warwick, Dee Dee Warwick, and Estelle Brown. “Cry Baby” reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 4 on the Hot 100.

Mimms and the Enchanters followed up with two Top 30 hits: the Impressions cover “For Your Precious Love” (b/w “Baby Don’t You Weep”) and “Tell Me Baby” (b/w “Anytime You Want Me”). UA gathered all sides (barring “Tell Me Baby”) on Cry Baby and 11 Other Hits, which also features “A Quiet Place,” a subsequent Bell/Meade a-side. After Mimms’ departure, Bell led the Enchanters on the 1964 Warner single “I Wanna Thank You.”

1964–66 UA Solo Output

Garnet Mimms made his solo debut with the April 1964 UA single “One Girl,” a Top 70 Berns/Meade number followed in September with “Look Away” (b/w “One Woman Man”). All three appear on Mimms first album, As Long As I Have You, along with his third single, “A Little Bit of Soap,” a Berns song first recorded as a 1961 doo-wop a-side by The Jarmels.

Mimms cut five further UA singles between March 1965 and February 1966, mostly Berns/Meade songs, including the No. 15 R&B hit “I’ll Take Good Care of You,” which reached No. 30 on the Hot 100 and later gained cult status on the British Northern Soul circuit. Its namesake parent album also features the a-sides “It Was Easier To Hurt Her,” “Welcome Home,” “That Goes To Show You,” “Looking For You,” and the b-sides “More Than a Miracle” and “Prove It to Me.”

Warm and Soulful

In October 1966, United Artists issued Warm and Soulful, a British compilation of Mimms’ two-year UA tenure. It features eleven singles sides and three deep-cuts (“As Long as I Have You,” “There Goes My Baby,” “It’s Just a Matter of Time”) from his 1964 album As Long As I Have You.

A1. “I’ll Take Good Care of You” (Berns/Meade) Feb ’66.
A2. “Looking for You” (Meade) Oct ’65.
A3. “It Won’t Hurt (Half As Much)” (Berns) Sep ’66.
A4. “It Was Easier to Hurt Her” (Berns/Meade) Mar ’65.
A5. “Thinkin'” (C. Taylor/Meade) June ’66.
A6. “Prove It to Me” (E. Marshall/Meade) Feb ’66.
A7. “More Than a Miracle” (D. Pomus/Meade) Oct ’65.

B1. “As Long as I Have You” (B. Elgin/Meade)
B2. “One Girl” (Berns/Meade) April ’64.
B3. “There Goes My Baby” (Nelson/Treadwell/Patterson)
B4. “It’s Just a Matter of Time” (Hendricks/Benton/Otis)
B5. “A Little Bit of Soap” (Berns) Nov ’64.
B6. “Look Away” (Berns/Meade) Sept ’64.
B7. “I’ll Make It Up to You” (B. Raleigh/Meade) Nov ’64.

1966–67 Veep Singles/ UK Tour

For his next three singles (June–December 1966), Garnet Mimms moved to Veep, UA’s R&B-centric division.

A. “It’s Been Such a Long Way Home”
B. “Thinkin'”

A. “My Baby”
B. “Keep On Smilin'”

A. “All About Love”
B. “The Truth Hurts”

In 1967, Mimms embarked on a UK tour with Scottish beaters The Senate, who backed him on the rare UK-only United Artists release Live. It features renditions of “As Long as I Have You,” “I’ll Take Good Care of You,” “It Was Easier to Hurt Her,” and the Enchanters chestnuts “Cry Baby” and “For Your Precious Love,” plus covers of Sam Cooke (“Twistin’ the Night Away”) and The Beatles (“Yesterday”). (Senate drummer Robbie McIntosh later surfaced in the Average White Band).

“My Baby” became a staple of the 1968 late-period Yardbirds live set and carried over to the early shows of their followup act, Led Zeppelin, which also performed elongated renditions of “As Long as I Have You” on their early transatlantic tours. A 1970 version of “My Baby” by Janis Joplin appears on Pearl, her 1971 posthumous album.

1968–70 Verve Singles

Between May 1968 and April 1970, Garnet Mimms released four non-album singles on Verve.

A. “I Can Hear My Baby Crying”
B. “Stop and Think It Over”

A. “Can You Top This”
B. “We Can Find That Love”

A. “Take Me”
B. “Happy Landing”

A. “Sad Song”
B. “Get It While You Can”

1972 GSF Singles

In 1972, Garnet Mimms surfaced briefly on GSF, a short-lived music venture of the film company run by David Gil, Robert S. Sinn, and Paul Frankenberg. The liaison generated two singles.

A. “Somebody, Someplace”
B. “I’ll Keep Loving You”

A. “Stop and Check Yourself”
B. “Another Place, Another Time”

After the June release of “Stop and Check Yourself,” Mimms went quiet for five years. He earned one instrumental credit (percussion) on For Those Who Chant, a 1972 Latin/jazz-funk album by trumpeter Luis Gasca, recorded with members of Santana and Return to Forever and released on Blue Thumb Records.

Has It All

Garnet Mimms released his third and final studio album, Has It All, in 1977 on Arista. He recorded the album with Brass Construction producer Jeff Lane, who co-produced the sexually-charged disco single “What It Is” with BC keyboardist Randy Muller.