Me and Mrs. Jones (1972)

Performer: Billy Paul                                            Writer: Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff
Highest US Chart Position: #1                             Label: Philadelphia International
Musicians: Bobby Eli, Bunny Sigler, Eddie Green, Anthony Jackson and Earl Young

My associations with “Me and Mrs. Jones” were actually two-fold. I was first introduced to it via a compilation LP from K-Tel that I purchased in 1974 called The Now Explosion. Though the song was on the album I don’t remember it making much of an impression on me at the time except that it familiarized me with the tune. It was later, probably the following year, when someone in town opened a store selling designer jeans, Britannia and the like, that it became a permanent part of me. I was in there with my mom looking around and the song began playing from overhead speakers and it was as if I was hearing it for the very first time. Of course the lyrics gave me a frisson of the sexually illicit, but it was the delivery of Billy Paul, alternately tender and pained, that finally captured my ear. The interplay of the strings with the rest of the band, something that had drawn me to “Brother Louie” by The Stories, was another major factor in my attentiveness that day. Of course, I had no idea about Gamble and Huff and their Philadelphia International record label at the time--that would come later with The O’Jays and Lou Rawls--all I knew is that it was a one of a kind record and, unfortunately for Billy Paul, it was.

The song begins on the downbeat with a wash of strings and a soft guitar riff doubling the bass. The piano tinkles while the drums keep a steady, spacious beat, followed by a saxophone playing the melody of Doris Day’s “Secret Love.” When the vocals begin the strings drop out. Paul whispers the title and then climbs up to “we got a thing,” holding the last syllable for a whole measure before descending into “going on.” The strings play a catchy series of descending, the ascending two-note phrases in the middle of every verse. All the while the piano and saxophone fade in and out around the vocals as Paul sings of meeting “every day at the same café” with someone else’s wife. The entire band hits and holds near the end of the verse, then hits triplets for two bars as Paul’s emotional delivery builds into the stunning chorus. Here everything stops but his soaring vocals, simultaneously frustrated and passionate, as though he can’t stand keeping the secret and wants to yell it out for all to hear. Then the band is back into the intro riff, with the horns joining the guitar and bass this time, and with each new chorus the orchestration becomes thicker with instruments, the drums becoming more intricate. After the final chorus Paul improvises for nearly a minute before the song gradually fades out.

It’s ironic that on 360 Degrees of Billy Paul, the album that made Billy Paul a star, Gamble and Huff took the singer in the absolute wrong direction, trying to make his voice one of protest rather than what it was: a sexy balladeer whose void would quickly be filled by Barry White. Songs like “Am I Black Enough for You?” and “Black Wonders of the World” would have been great for another singer, but they essentially ended his career as a number one artist, as he only cracked the top forty once more with "Thanks for Saving My Life" which only reached number thirty-seven. To be fair, they had been trying for a while. This was something like the fourth album of Paul’s and none had done very well. The two got the idea for this song when they used to see a well-dressed man meeting a woman at the same time every day at a coffee shop they frequented. The song was released in late 1972 and debuted at number seventy-four in early November. Six weeks later the song was number one, and stayed atop the charts for three weeks in December before taking another two months to fall off the charts. The B-side seems like something of a throw-away, a cover of Elton John’s “Your Song” done slightly up-tempo with a fairly dense arrangement. Nevertheless, “Me and Mrs. Jones” will forever be Billy Paul’s shining moment, and one of the greatest songs of the early seventies.