“Give Me Just a Little More Time” (Chairmen of the Board)

Your classic 1970 soul song of the day is “Give Me Just a Little More Time” by the Chairmen of the Board. The single was released in January of 1970 and it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 on March 21st. It was the group’s highest-charting single, selling more than one million copies in the U.S. alone.

Just like yesterday’s classic song of the day, Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold,” “Give Me Just a Little More Time” was written by the legendary Motown songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland (AKA H-D-H), along with Ron Dunbar. It was released on H-D-H’s relatively new Invictus Records label, the one they launched after leaving Motown a few years before. The period from 1969 to 1971 was a good one for H-D-H and Invictus, with hits by Glass House (“Crumbs Off the Table”), the 8th Day (“She’s Not Just Another Woman”), Freda Payne (“Band of Gold” and “Bring the Boys Home”), and, of course, Chairmen of the Board (“Pay to the Piper,” “(You’ve Got Me) Dangling on a String,” “Everything’s Tuesday,” and “Give Me Just a Little More Time”). During that period, Invictus and its sister label, Hot Wax, were distributed by Capitol Records. After that, H-D-H switched to Columbia Records for distribution and the hits pretty much dried up.

The rhythm section on “Give Me Just a Little More Time” were the same cats who played on all of Motown’s big hits. The Funk Brothers on this track included Dennis Coffey, Eddie Willis, and Ray Monette on guitars; Johnny Griffith on keyboards; Bob Babbitt on bass; Jack Ashford on percussion, and Richard “Pistol” Allen on drums. H-D-H obviously had no compunction about using their former Motown compatriots to back up their new non-Motown artists.

The Chairmen of the Board were formed by H-D-H in 1967 after the trio left Motown over a contract dispute. Dozier and the Holland brothers recruited General Johnson, formerly with the Showmen (they had a big hit with the Carolina beach music classic, “This Will Stand”) to sing lead, and paired him up with fellow vocalists Eddie Custis, Danny Woods, and Harrison Kennedy. The group stayed together through 1976 when everyone left to pursue solo careers.

Johnson reformed the group (with mainly new members) in 1978 and shifted to performing Carolina beach music, which was what he had played before joining the H-D-H machine. This new version of the group was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 1999. The reconstituted Chairmen of the Board, minus General Johnson, who died of lung cancer in 2010, continue to perform on the beach music and oldies circuits today.