Arthur Foy

Daddy B. Nice's #120 ranked Southern Soul Artist

"Don't Stop My Party"

Arthur Foy

Composed by Arthur Foy & Carl Marshall

"Don't Stop My Party" is one of the greatest underground Southern Soul hits ever. Louisianan Arthur Foy hooked up with Carl Marshall when Marshall was at his country-funkified, "I've-Lived-It-All" best, and they recorded it for Lenny Lewis, the regionally-legendary owner of the late Suzie Q Records. (Suzie Q was the label that put David Brinston and O. B. Buchana, among others, on the map.)

Foy is a seventies soul singer whose rare soul 45 "Love Dreams" was listed by one auction site as having sold for $709.00 in 2009 (six bidders over a week). Coincidentally, "Get Up And Dance," another Foy-featured, disco-era oddity originally released on 7" and subsequently as a 12" "B"-side opposite Betty Padgett's "Sugar Daddy" on Luv N' Haight in 2010, is now on YouTube.

However, these museum pieces of South Florida soul history aren't relevant to the Southern Soul fan and don't hold a candle to "Don't Stop My Party," which oozes Gulf Coast southern r&b funkiness like garlic from its pores.

From Foy's lone solo album, I Like Kissing On You (2003, now out of print), the song has made Foy something of a de facto one-hit wonder and a celebrity amongst area deejays and avid fans. Nevertheless, Arthur Foy remains unknown to the great majority of Southern Soul lovers, somewhat analogous to the situation most of the now "known" Southern Soul stars were in less than a decade ago.

The song samples available on Amazon and All Music Guide don't begin to do justice to the song's loping momentum or to Foy's exquisitely grainy vocal. The song cries out for exposure on YouTube and a reprint.

The song is simple in theme and modest in its goals. Here's a sampling of the lyrics:

"I just want to dance
And be fancy free,
Because time
Don't matter to me.

I just got out here
On this dance floor
With my baby.

And she's looking
So beautiful.

I want to dance with her
All night long.

Please, Mister Deejay,
Don't stop the music
Until I'm soaking wet."

Then the chorus kicks in:

"I'm not ready,
I'm not ready to go home.
I'm not ready,
I'm not ready to leave this place.
Everybody here
Is partying with you."

Then back to another simple verse:

I'm not ready to leave.
I don't want to be
Home alone.

Just like Marvin Gaye,
I want to get it on.

Can I jingle my bell
With some of that Carl Marshall?

Me and my baby
Want to dance.

We want to keep on dancing.

I'm not ready
To go home. . . "

I first heard "Don't Stop My Party" on Southern Soul radio in 2005, and it really began to be played in the Deep South in 2006. At first I was unaware of the singer and knew the song only as "I'm Not Ready (To Go Home)," the opening phrase of the chorus.

In an on-air conversation with DJ Chico of Mobile, Alabama-based Chico's Radio in 2006, Chico asked me what song of all the Southern Soul songs available I'd like to hear. I told him I'd like to hear Arthur Foy's "I'm Not Ready," and he knew exactly what I was talking about and shared my excitement.

And in a 2009 interview with Carl Marshall, in which among other things I pressed him to reprint his own forgotten underground classic from the same era, "I Lived It All," I asked him about the phrase Arthur Foy utters mid-way through "Don't Stop The Party": "Can I jingle your bell like Carl Marshall?"

The exchange never made the final cut for the posted interview (see Daddy B. Nice's Artist Guide to Carl Marshall), nor did your Daddy B. Nice and Carl Marshall ever get into Marshall's arrangement and production of the number.

In fact, in spite of all the evidence within the song which might have pointed to Marshall's involvement, and despite my lengthy infatuation with the song's sound, I never put the two together--that is, never consciously associated Carl Marshall's production with the pure Southern Soul vibe emanating from the record.

Shortly after that interview with Daddy B. Nice in 2009, Carl Marshall joined California-based CDS Records as its resident producer, beginning a prolific but wildly erratic stint producing literally dozens of albums by an across-the-board spectrum of Southern Soul artists.

Much of Marshall's output has come in for criticism here at SouthernSoulRnB as being more urban than Southern Soul, incorporating electro-funk phrasings, Funkadelic-via-Meters urban tempos and house music-style chants, heavy-handed, vibrato-less keyboard runs and slick, ostentatious, female background singing.

Marshall's work for CDS has, in a word, frequently been self-indulgent, slipping into "bad" funk rather than towing the fine line of singer-dominant Southern Soul.

But there have been exceptions. The uptempo tracks on the Captain Jack Watson album were perfect for Marshall, who (despite the success of his ballad "Good Lovin' Will Make You Cry") excels with masculine-oriented, uptempo, funky tracks. And Marshall's solo albums, despite being outside the Southern Soul mainstream, have worked because Marshall does his own brand of funk best himself.

Arthur Foy's "Don't Stop My Party" is a reminder of just how much of a genius Carl Marshall can be when he hits that perfect groove. The song has all of earmarks of Marshall's production, but they're all firmly placed within the context of the song.

The guitar hook and the guitar solos are identifiably Carl Marshall, but they don't draw attention to themselves the way they do on his more recent work. The female background singing is likewise identifiably the same in tone and register, but it has none of the overbearing and distracting slickness of the recent work. Both elements--guitar and background singing--are things of utter beauty.

To oversimplify, there's a "good" Carl Marshall and a "bad" Carl Marshall. There's "good funky" and there's "bad funky." Marshall would do well to revisit not only the incredible peaks he scales in "I Lived It All"--his masterpiece--but the pinnacle he reaches in Arthur Foy's "Don't Stop My Party."

"Don't Stop My Party" hits the heart of Southern Soul with unerring accuracy and reminds us of what Marshall can do when he's on his game, and it brings up the tremendous opportunities that might arise from Marshall moving away from the northern-funk influence and collaborating with other bayou-bleeding, Gulf-Coast writer/performers such as Unckle Eddie.

Foy's and Marshall's I Like Kissing On You CD doesn't contain another track even close to "Don't Stop My Party," but you can bet it will eventually be a collector's item as rare and sought-after as Foy's vintage "Love Dreams."

This is the grown-folks, dance-floor opus supreme of the Southern Soul Gulf Coast.

--Daddy B. Nice

About Arthur Foy

Arthur Foy is a Louisiana native. Foy still tours Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, most recently and prominently in the autumn of 2011 at the 20th Annual Mississippi Gulf Coast Blues and Heritage Festival on a bill with Bobby Rush, O. B. Buchana, Karen Wolfe and Nathaniel Kimble.

Song's Transcendent Moment

"I just might be here
Until the sun comes up.
Mister DJ,
Don't stop the music.
We're still dancing.
I'm not ready
To go home.
Don't try to stop my party."

If You Liked. . . You'll Love

If you liked Wilson Pickett's "Mustang Sally," you'll love Arthur Foy's "Don't Stop The Music."




EDITOR'S NOTE

Over the last year I've been dropping hints to the younger musicians.

"Be watching because there's going to be something coming on the site that'll be a real blessing for the younger people."

And I've also been telling a lot of deserving new artists to bide their time, that their day to be featured in a Daddy B. Nice Artist Guide was coming, and long overdue.

Now, at last, the day has come.

The great Southern Soul stars are mostly gone. There's a new generation clamoring to be heard.

Rather than waiting years to go online as I did with the original Top 100, this chart will be a work-in-progress.

Each month five new and never-before-featured artists will be showcased, starting at #100 and counting down to #1.

I estimate 50-75 new Artist Guides will be created by the time I finish. The other 25-50 Guides will feature artists from the old chart who are holding their own or scaling the peaks in the 21st Century.

Absent will be the masters who have wandered off to Soul Heaven. And missing will be the older artists who for one reason or another have slowed down, become inactive or left the scene.

The older generation's contributions to Southern Soul music, however, will not be forgotten.

That is why it was so important to your Daddy B. Nice to maintain the integrity of the original Top 100 and not continue updating it indefinitely.

(Daddy B. Nice's original Top 100 Southern Soul covered the period from 1990-2010. Daddy B. Nice's new 21st Century Southern Soul will cover the period from 2000-2020.)

When I constructed the first chart, I wanted to preserve a piece of musical history. I heard a cultural phenomenon I was afraid might be lost forever unless I wrote about it.

There will be no more changes to the original chart. Those performers' place in Southern Soul music will stand.

But I see a new scene today, a scene just as starved for publicity and definition, a scene missing only a mirror to reflect back its reality.

The prospect of a grueling schedule of five new artist pages a month will be daunting, and I hope readers will bear with me as I gradually fill out what may seem at first inadequate Artist Guides.

Information from readers will always be welcome. That's how I learn. That's how I add to the data.

I'm excited to get started. I have been thinking about this for a long time. I've already done the bulk of the drawings.

In a funny way, the most rewarding thing has been getting back to doing the drawings, and imagining what recording artists are going to feel like when they see their mugs in a black and white cartoon. Hopefully----high! An artist hasn't really "made it" until he or she's been caricatured by Daddy B. Nice.

In the beginning months, the suspense will be in what new stars make the chart. In the final months, the suspense will be in who amongst the big dogs and the new stars is in the top twenty, the top ten, and finally. . . the top spot.

I'm not tellin'.

Not yet.

--Daddy B. Nice

Go to Top 100 Countdown: 21st Century Southern Soul

Honorary "B" Side

"Ride My Horse"

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