‘Put Me In Your Mix’: Barry White Glides Into The 1990s
A star who defined R&B in the 1970s moved into the 1990s with ‘Put Me In Your Mix.’
One of the biggest soul stars of the 1970s was forging ahead into the 1990s on October 8, 1991. Barry White was already on the R&B chart with the title track of his new release when the Put Me In Your Mix album hit the streets.
The album followed White’s final release of the 1980s, The Man Is Back!, and was co-produced by Barry, Jack Perry and Howard Johnson, himself a well-known soul star in the early 1980s, notably with the R&B No.1 “So Fine.”
In addition to a typically seductive selection of slow jams, and a sound subtly updated for the next soul generation, Put Me In Your Mix was a record that also offered the combination of two great “love men.” The final track, “Dark and Lovely (You Over There),” was a collaboration between White and one of the men who had preceded him as a master of “bedroom soul,” Isaac Hayes. In the great tradition of both, it ran for a full ten minutes.
Barry and Glodean’s unlimited teamwork
Put Me In Your Mix also featured the backing vocals of a key figure in Barry’s professional and personal lives, his wife Glodean, whom he had mentored simultaneously with his own emergence, in the trio Love Unlimited.
The album’s title song, co-written with Johnson, didn’t cross over to the pop market, but became yet another huge R&B hit for White, peaking at No.2. The video for the track emphasises how Barry was modernizing himself without betraying his ultra-romantic sound and style.
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As word spread about what was widely seen as a return to form for the artist-producer, Put Me In Your Mix climbed to No.8 on the soul album chart, in a lengthy 28-week chart stay. It was his highest peak on that survey for fully 13 years, since Barry White The Man hit No.1 in 1978.
