PATTI JO: YOU GOT TO BELIEVE

Patti Jo was a teenager from Nashville when Curtis Mayfield first discovered her circa 1972.¹ At this point, Mayfield had already left The Impressions to embark on his solo career and manage his label, Curtom. It’s unknown why Mayfield didn’t sign Jo directly to Curtom but instead, she ended up recording with New York’s Scepter and its subsidiary, Wand.

Jo’s first single came out in ’72: “Ain’t No Love Lost/Stay Away From Me.” However, it would be her next single, “Make Me Believe In You,” in 1973 that would help immortalize her (with some help from Tom Moulton). Mayfield both wrote and produced the song (and his frequently collaborated, Rich Tufo, arranged it) and it’s worth noting how the string arrangements and steady backbeat are such mainstays of disco’s conventions but this was cut half a decade before disco’s mainstream dominance.²

Here’s that original 7″ version:

Patti Jo: Make Me Believe In You (Scepter, 1973)

The single was a minor hit but its true ascension into the disco canon came two years later when pioneering remix guru, Tom Moulton, was given access to a slew of Scepter songs to help produce the Disco Gold compilation of 1975.

Patti Jo: Make Me Believe In You (Tom Moulton Remix)
Disco Gold (Scepter, 1975)

Mouton’s remix is a masterpiece of extending a song’s best elements without radically altering it. The biggest change he makes, right off the bat, is taking the original’s 12 bar intro and extending it six-fold. That instrumental build, which takes up the first 2/5ths of the entire song, folds in different elements from other parts of the song and it’s a masterful slow-burn build where the listener – and really, dancer – already has undergone a journey of sorts before Patti Jo’s vocals even enter the picture.

Moulton also stripped down the tracks behind the first vocal verse. If you go back to the original, Mayfield brings in strings almost immediately but Moulton muted those stems in favor of just the drums, bass line and light flute track. He waits instead to bring in the full string arrangement on the hook, which feels like a reward for the listener/dancer’s patience. From here on out, he adds more layers back into the mix as well as extends the song’s bridge in what we now would think of as a conventional disco edit fashion. All in the all, an unqualified classic remix of the era.

Notably, Mayfield himself recorded a version of the song for his 1974 album, Sweet Exorcist. Melba Moore also covered the song in 1976 on This Is it, with a take that songs like it was definitely influenced by the Moulton remix rather than strictly the original. Both versions sound less…urgent than Jo’s original, partially because neither has as strong of a back beat. In 2007, Amerie covered the song – rather loyally – on her 2007 album Because I Love It and I don’t think it’s harsh to say that it’s not exactly essential.

As I mentioned in that first footnote…it’s surprising how difficult it is to find much information on Patti Jo herself. After those first two singles, she disappeared from the scene and then came back, years, later, to record a couple of new songs but I’ve yet to find a single interview with her available anywhere on the interwebs. If someone knows something I don’t, holler.