Changin' Ms. Sharon Ridley the ultimate morning music song

  Refreshed links from a 2009 blog post.  Enjoy!







In 1978 Ms. Sharon Ridley's Full Moon l.p. was released. Just the fact that Sharon required the Ms. in her name proves that extra attention was deserved. She's been getting it from vinyl collector's and Garage heads ever since.


Clearly there was no official 12" release but the song found it's way onto many important dj playlists especially those who embraced the sleaze, morning music genre such as Larry Levan, Lary Sanders and Robbie Leslie just to name a few.

The dates for the actual 12" presses are unclear. But in 1979 the Canadian label Singles, Ep's and eX-Hits release a 12" backed with the sublime Jean Carne song Was That All it Was. Kinda of a sleaze double whammy.


Then there are these test pressing promo's which don't have any writing on them and a black cover sleeve. Sort of like the one that John Davis Bourgie' Bourgie' white labels had but without writing on the black sleeve.


So some dj's hand wrote the title on the label. My copy was clean and fetched a respectable $181.00 on Ebay. Though there is a vendor who has it slapped up in his store for something like six months now at over $500.00 with clearly no bites. Probably works well for him though cause when you have a hot record in your store it brings in clicks and those people may peruse your wares.

Anyway for some unknown reason CHANGES is inscribed on the outgroove. Some clown on discogs actually went to the effort of making a post for the song calling it incorrectly Changes. Have you ever tried to post on that site? If they could be any more picky you could tear your hair out. But then they post stuff with errors and those stay up.

So then Tabu realizing they had a hot one on their hands that should have been pressed on a 12" in the first place pressed one to their Mixed Masters re-issue series on CBS.


Then in 1984 Hot Tracks had the great taste to do their own take on this sleaze classic.
HOT TRACKS MIX

So now we've got several different pressings and several different lengths. Course you want them all and that's why I've put them in a zip here.


BIG SHARON ZIP


Finally in 1987 Columbia Records put out the Compilation, Let's Dance! and had the good taste to include Changin' this one a mix by F. Byron Clark running 6:18, probably the shortest version yet.


A Mel Cheron favorite which Larry Levan often played just to please his buddy. In fact Larry was known to simply slip it into a set and dramatically change the tone. But The Paradise Garage was Larry's home and he didn't have to play by the rules

More recently it was brought to the attention of Linda Clifford. Logically Linda flipped over it and it became a release on the newly incarnated West End label in 2001. Given all sorts of mixes by Blaze and even the remix king Tom Moulton it didn't really create that much of a stir. But then again you can't improve perfection. Here below are the Pound Boys (more traditional house) and Tom Moulton's (lavish, dramatic) mixes of Linda Clifford.


LINDA CLIFFORD VERSION