Madeline Bell - Doin' things - Vinyl LP

2025

Best known as a member of the multi-racial British pop band Blue Mink, with whom she scored four UK Top 10 hits between 1969 and 1973, including “Melting Pot” and “Good Morning Freedom,” Madeline Bell is also a prolific and in-demand background vocalist, working with everyone from Joe Cocker and Elton John to Serge Gainsbourg and Giorgio Moroder. Less well-known is her solo career, which produced a US hit version of the Gamble & Huff-written “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” which rose to No. 26 in the Hot 100 in 1968, outperforming Dee Dee Warwick’s original. She also made several notable solo albums, including Doin’ Things, her second album for the Philips label, recorded in London in 1968. Though ignored at the time of its release, it later became an underground soul classic.

A church-reared singer blessed with a pliable and highly expressive voice, Madeline Bell was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1942. She set foot on British soil twenty years later as a member of the Alex Bradford Singers in a production of the Langston Hughes-written gospel stage show Black Nativity. After the show’s 18-month European sojourn ended, she decided to stay in the UK, where she was offered a recording deal with EMI, resulting in three singles. When her solo career didn’t take flight, she began doing studio session work in London, quickly earning renown for backing up Dusty Springfield and Scott Walker, then both signed to the Philips label. Impressing the A&R executives at Philips, Bell signed with the Dutch-owned company in 1966, recording her debut album Bell’s A Poppin’ under the supervision of the British arranger Arthur Greenslade, whose credits ranged from PJ Proby to Serge Gainsbourg. Despite earning critical plaudits, the album, released in 1967, didn’t take off in the UK, but in Bell’s homeland yielded a surprise US Top 30 hit with “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.”