Lost Soul: Patrice Holloway

The fourth in a series of soul classics that have fallen through the floorboards









Patrice Holloway, one of the finest of all soul singers, has never had a career retrospective issued: this is not just an oversight, it’s both an insult to her legacy and an injustice for music fans.

Her trio of singles for Capitol in 1966/7 - Stolen Hours / Lucky My Boy; Love And Desire / Ecstasy; Stay With Your Own Kind / That's All You Got To Do – is one of the greatest runs of three singles by anyone, ever.

Patrice’s year of birth is a matter of dispute, but what’s clear is that she was a teenager when she made these records. Before her Capitol soul classics, she made a great double-sider with her older sister, Motown star Brenda Holloway, and Sherlie Matthews as The Belles, the storming Don’t Pretend/Words Can’t Explain (1966) and a couple of singles for Motown’s VIP label, the second of which, 1964’s For The Love Of Mike, was criminally shelved.

With her sister and their cousin, Patty Hunt, they released two singles as The Wooden Nickels. Nobody But You gets the Northern crowd excited, but it’s 1965's Should I Give My Love (never reissued, sadly) that I’m uploading. Channelling the teen melodrama of the Shangri-La’s, the sexual trepidation of The Shirelles and the symphonic bliss of Spector (yes, that is Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto you can hear), Should I Give My Love is, like almost everything Patrice Holloway recorded, brilliant.

Patrice Holloway recorded her final solo single in 1972 and continued her music career in the background as a session singer. She died in 2006 of a heart attack. The Rev Frank Wilson (yes, that Frank Wilson) delivered her funeral eulogy.