The “Golden Hits Of The 60s”
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GARLAND GREEN
“JEALOUS KIND OF FELLA”
(Josephine Armstead, GARLAND GREEN, Maurice Dollison, Rudolph Browner)
Uni 55143
No. 20 November 1, 1969
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Garland Green, the 10th in a brood of 11, was born on June 24, 1942, in Dunleath, Mississippi.
When he was 16, he moved to Chicago to attend Englewood High, and later worked at the Argo
Corn Starch plant. Garland had been singing and swinging since his early years in the Mississippi
Delta region. While performing at a community recreation center, he was discovered by one of
Chicago’s barbecue kings, Argia B. Collins. Argia, who had a mess of barbecue houses and
marketed Mambo Bar-B-Que Sauce, sponsored Garland, sending him to the Chicago Conservatory
of Music.
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While attending the Conservatory, Green worked the black club scene on the South Side. One night
while he was singing in Chicago’s Sutherland Lounge, Melvin Collins and Josie Jo Armstead–the
husband-and-wife owners of the Gamma/Giant labels–happened to be in the audience. “I really
liked Garland’s voice,” Armstead, a one-time Ikette, explained to Soul Survivor’s Robert Pruter.
“There was that pleading quality that I knew that women would just love. I was with Melvin and I
told him, ‘I believe I can get a hit on him.”‘
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“Jealous Kind of Pella” was a telephone talkie tune: Garland calls his girl and apologizes for the
jealous rage that caused him to “hit that guy last night.” Droves of females snapped up the record.
About a third as many went for his follow-up, which mined the same vein–“Don’t Think That I’m a
Violent Guy” (R&B: #42, 1970). Though none of his successive singles made the Hot 100, eight of
them (nine if you count the re-release of 1974’s “Let the Good Times Roll” in 1975) charted on the
Billboard R & B listings, right up through 1983.