Stax songwriter Bettye Crutcher remembered for her energy, creativity and perspective

Bettye Crutcher, one of the distinctive songwriters of soul music’s golden era, has died.

A staff writer at Stax Records, Crutcher helped pen hits and classics for the label’s stars including Johnnie Taylor, The Staple Singers, Sam & Dave, and Albert King, among others. Crutcher died in Nashville on Thursday, following a series of health issues. She was83.

Beyond her Stax success, Crutcher also saw her songs covered by a diverse array of artists from folkie Joan Baez to bluesman Buddy Guy, punk performer Paul Weller to pop crooner Sammy Davis Jr., while her work was sampled by numerous rap and hip-hop acts including Wu-Tang Clan, Mary J. Blige and Diddy.

"Bettye had an eye for the universal hook, like a great songwriter does. She saw from a woman’s perspective what could touch everybody," said Robert Gordon, author of "Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion." "Bettye had a strong presence, I felt it right away when I first met her and every time after. She was really elegant and also spiritual."

Crutcher's fellow writers at Stax also understood her unique value. "Her perspective was powerful and necessary for the company because we were all male songwriters." said David Porter, Stax's hall of fame songwriter and producer. "She brought that feminine view and understanding, and helped us understand as well."

Crutcher was born in Memphis in 1939 and began writing at a young age. "I guess I was writing, when I was about seven or eight. I wrote little poems, and that was kind of an outlet for me,” Crutcher told Soul Express magazine. “As I got older, I wrote just as a hobby. A friend of mine came by one day and said, ‘I can't believe you're writing like this and you're not doing anything with it.’”

Eventually Crutcher would turn her poems into songs, but she would have to fight to have them heard. By the mid-'60s, Crutcher was working full time as a nurse and raising a family of three children on her own, while trying to break into the music business.

After beating on the doors of several local studios — including Hi Records, which was uninterested in her — she ultimately landed an audition at Stax in 1966. “Bettye Crutcher came in when Stax was in the formative steps of building its publishing company," said Porter. "I was taking the lead on building it, and I was looking for writers."

“When Bettye came into the building, there was a confidence and a comfort in who she was that was amazing to me," said Porter. "She hadn’t been doing records anywhere or anything like that I was aware of. But just listening to her, in our first conversation, I could tell that she could write, she had incredibly creative ideas. There was an energy about her — she was looking for somebody to give her a chance."

In 1967, Crutcher would become a cog in the growing Stax machine, as the label developed writing teams to provide material for its stable of artists. Crutcher, working primarily as a lyricist, joined forces with Homer Banks and Raymond Jackson, a pair of former gospel/doo-wop singers, who had turned to songwriting. The trio would become known as We Three.

Lone female in male-dominated industry

Although she was part of a team, Crutcher was on her own as well. While female artists like Carla Thomas and female executives like Deanie Parker had written songs for Stax, Crutcher was the lone female staffer in a male-dominated writing department.

“To be the only female songwriter for Stax was quite an event,” Crutcher recalled in a 2019 interview. “You’re talking about the sexist ‘60s, and I really think the guys thought the girls couldn't do it.”

Crutcher would soon silence any doubts as she began writing hits, including a 1967 single for Johnnie Taylor, “Somebody’s Sleeping in My Bed” — the idea for which came to Crutcher while reading the tale of Goldilocks to her children. The song would crack the Top 40 of the R&B charts. But it would be another Taylor track, “Who’s Making Love,” released the following year, that would top the R&B charts, reach the pop Top 5 and become Stax’s biggest smash to that point.

The track, written by We Three and producer Don Davis, was a cheating song with a twist, as Johnnie Taylor warned the philandering men that their women might be up to the same thing.

Crutcher recalled that it was Banks who initiated the song’s hook line. “Homer would say, ‘Well, who’s making love to your old lady, while you’re out making love over there,'” she said. “Well, there we go — we started to write.”

'Who's Making Love'

The song’s unique perspective however was informed deeply by Crutcher. “I love thinking about women and how they feel about something. So this is kind of the context in which the song was written — thinking about women,” said Crutcher. “‘Cause you know men at that time felt like they had the freedom to go and do whatever they want, whenever they want. And the girls would stay back, be cool, don’t make up a lot noise about it.”

The song’s warning to men to consider what their women might be up to, would register with listeners. “I have had so many guys tell me, ‘Girl, you had me going home for real to check on [my woman],'” Crutcher said.

Released in late 1968, the song — which became the lead single and title track to Taylor’s album — was an instant smash. “Once it was out there it just took off like hotcakes,” recalled Crutcher. “Within a four-week period it had done a million [in sales].”

“Who’s Making Love” would go on to earn numerous honors including a Grammy nomination for Best R&B song. Attending a BMI awards ceremony in New York in 1969, where the song was being recognized as one of the year’s top sellers, Crutcher crossed paths with The Beatles’ John Lennon, who was accepting an award for “Hey Jude.”

“I wanted so much to meet him, but I found out that he wanted to meet me,” Crutcher told author Robert Gordon. The two songwriters, along with Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, chatted as Lennon enthused over “Who’s Making Love.” “I bet I was standing ten feet tall when I left that presentation,” said Crutcher. “It said that somebody was listening to what I wrote.”

Crutcher expands beyond the Stax world

As Stax entered into its second era, one of greater Black consciousness, Crutcher evolved her work as well, working with different co-writers, including Marvell Thomas, Bobby Manuel and Mack Rice.

Crutcher would become a reliable source of material for spiritual-soul group The Staple Singers, writing topical numbers including “The Ghetto” and “We’ll Get Over,” and “The Challenge.”

It was also Crutcher who suggested that the Rice/Luther Ingram song “Respect Yourself” would be a fit for the Staples, who cut it and turned it into an anthem for the era. "Bettye did a lot of things with a lot of folks to give them ideas and creative slants and she didn’t ask for credit on the songs," said Porter. "She was free spirited and always giving of herself."

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Crutcher would go on to expand beyond the Stax world, writing songs for Hi stars Ann Peebles and Otis Clay, and see her work reinterpreted by artists like R&B belter Joe Cocker and blues ace Freddie King.

She often sang on her songwriting demos, and Crutcher eventually recorded a solo album for Stax. She co-produced her lone LP, “Long As You Love Me,” with Mack Rice. Released quietly in 1974, it’s since been hailed as a lost classic by soul fans; an expanded version of the disc was reissued in 2013.

Life after Stax

In later years, after Stax closed its doors, Crutcher would get into the antiques business, and hand make her own distinctive jewelry pieces. She would also continue to write — moving to Nashville in the 1980s — and saw her songs recorded by R&B giants like B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland. By the '90s, her songs were being rediscovered by a new generation of crate digging hip-hop producers and artists.

Despite living in Nashville, Crutcher continued to be a regular presence in Memphis. In 2014 she taught a summer songwriting class to the students of the Stax Music Academy, and in 2019 she celebrated her 80th birthday with an event at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. Last year, Concord — the company that owns the Stax catalog — announced it would be funding a series of scholarships to the Stax Music Academy in the name of various label artists, writers and executives, including Crutcher.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Bettye Crutcher, Stax Records songwriter, dies