O-o-h Child

"O-o-h Child"
Single by Five Stairsteps
from the album Stairsteps
B-side "Who Do You Belong To"
Released April 1970
Genre Chicago soul
Length 3:11
Label Buddah
Songwriter(s) Stan Vincent
Producer(s) Stan Vincent

"O-o-h Child" is a 1970 (jobs) single recorded by Chicago soul family group the Five Stairsteps and released on the Buddah label. Previously, the Five Stairsteps had had peripheral success recording in Chicago with Curtis Mayfield: when Mayfield's workload precluded his continuing to work with the group they were reassigned to Stan Vincent, an in-house producer for Buddah Records, who had recently scored a Top Ten hit with the Lou Christie single "I'm Gonna Make You Mine". Vincent wrote the song for his son, Chuck. The Five Stairsteps' debut collaboration with Vincent was originally formatted with the group's rendition of "Dear Prudence" as the A-side with Vincent's original composition "O-o-h Child" as B-side. However, "O-o-h Child" broke out in the key markets of Philadelphia and Detroit to rise as high as #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1970. The track's R&B chart impact was more muted with a #14 peak, although "O-o-h Child" is now regarded as a "soft soul" classic. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 21 song of 1970.

The Five Stairsteps' only pop Top 40 hit, "O-o-h Child" would be the group's last R&B top 40 hit (they had several top 40 R&B hits in the 1960s) until 1976's "From Us to You". Included on the band's The Stairsteps album from 1970, it has become the Stairsteps' signature song and has inspired more than twenty covers since its release. The song featured various members, including lone female member and eldest sister Alohe, brothers Keni, Dennis, James, lead singer Clarence Burke, Jr. singing in various parts of the song and also drummer Jerome Brailey on the original recording.

The lyrics tell the listener that "things are gonna get easier" in times of strife. The song's uplifting message helped it to become popular among pop and rhythm and blues audiences when it was released.

The song is ranked #402 on the Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Chart performance

Weekly charts

Chart (1970) Peak
position
Canada RPM [1] 3
U.S. Billboard Hot 100[2] 8
U.S. Billboard R&B 14
U.S. Cash Box Top 100 4

Year-end charts

Chart (1970) Rank
Canada [3] 57
U.S. Billboard Hot 100[4] 21
U.S. Cash Box[5] 40

Cover versions

Sampled

References

  1. RPM Top Singles, August 8, 1970
  2. Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-1990 - ISBN 0-89820-089-X
  3. "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". collectionscanada.gc.ca.
  4. "Top 100 Hits of 1970/Top 100 Songs of 1970". Musicoutfitters.com. Retrieved 2016-10-03.
  5. Archived March 3, 2014, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. "The Devil In The Dark - Defiance Wiki". En.defiance-wiki.com. 2014-03-25. Retrieved 2015-04-08.
  7. "Watch Saturday Night Live: Ooh Child Online". Hulu.com. Retrieved 2015-04-08.

The Five Stairsteps, 'O-o-h Child' - 500 GREATEST SONGS OF ALL TIME

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