(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher
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“(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” | |||||
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Single by Jackie Wilson | |||||
B-side | "I'm the One To Do It" | ||||
Released | July 1967 | ||||
Format | 7" single | ||||
Recorded | 1967, Chicago, Illinois | ||||
Genre | Soul/Motown | ||||
Length | 2:49 | ||||
Label | Brunswick 55336 |
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Writer(s) | Gary Jackson, Raynard Miner and Carl Smith | ||||
Producer | Carl Davis | ||||
Jackie Wilson singles chronology | |||||
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"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" is a song performed by American R&B artist Jackie Wilson, from his 1967 album of the same name. It was written by Gary Jackson, Raynard Miner and Carl Smith, and produced by Carl Davis. The song spent 12 weeks on the U.S. Billboard Top 40 singles chart and peaked at #6.
Motown's in-house band The Funk Brothers and session singers The Andantes were asked to play on this track. This may be why the song has a Motown style to it.
Jackie Wilson's definitive version was ranked #246 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
A 1967 recording by Otis Redding was released in 1969, 18 months after Mr. Redding's death, as the B-side of his "Free Me" single (Atco single #6700). This version reached #30 on the R&B charts, and #103 on the pop charts. The Move covered the song in 1968. In 1970, the short lived Canadian band; Canada Goose, made up from members of The Esquires, which had disbanded, recorded the song as Higher & Higher. In 1977, Rita Coolidge recorded this song as "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher." Her version peaked at #2 on the Billboard singles chart, with strong appeal to good music and light rock stations (#5 easy listening). Dolly Parton also covered the song in 1977, including it on her New Harvest - First Gathering album. The song was a regular of Bobby Darin's shows in the 1970s.
"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" was featured in the final musical sequence in the 2002 dark comedy Death to Smoochy.
"(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" also featured in Ghostbusters 2. It was presented in its original form and in a new version performed by Howard Huntsberry.
To change their corporate image of their clothes being only for formal wear, the Arrow Shirt company commissioned an award winning television commercial campaign which uses this song. In this commercial, a male choir, all dressed in formal white shirt and tie, sings the song in tight harmony, but quickly changes a joyous gospel music ensemble singing the song freeform while wearing the company's colorful line of casual wear.
[edit] Credits
[edit] Jackie Wilson version
- Lead vocals by Jackie Wilson
- Background vocals by The Andantes: Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow and Louvain Demps
- Instrumentation by The Funk Brothers
- Produced by Carl Davis