Life, Living and Loving: Mrs. Fever’s September Song Project 2021: “I Gave to You”

This is a 1970’s song by The Delphonics that is so nice and was “the song” for me and my then-girlfriend; we both heard it for the first time at a house party we had attended and as we danced to it, wow – it conveyed our feelings to and for each other way better than either of us could say.

It’s one of those songs that you could actually use to let your beloved know how much you really loved them… and without saying a word yourself. It was our song but musically and lyrically, it just touched me; it’s soulful in that classic R&B way that, today, R&B has a hard time duplicating. The band I was in also covered this song in one of our “slow dance” sets and as the group’s drummer, whew, the song meant so much to me that I had to make sure that I was playing the music instead of just listening to it; sometimes, during rehearsals, my bandmates would have to remind me to pay attention… and giving me a bunch of shit about my lack of attention or, as our bassist once said, “You can go get that pussy after we finish!”

It’s not one of those “timeless” songs and I’m not sure if there are many folks today who even heard of The Delphonics or any of their other songs although they have one song that is more well-known than this one is: “La-la Means I Love You.” For this song, it wasn’t just about dancing to it; it was also about singing it as you danced, too; R&B in the 1970s had a lot of slow songs that were like this where you could dance – we called it grinding and for a pretty obvious reason – and even if you couldn’t carry a tune if it had a handle, if the song meant something to you, you sang it anyway.

The song talks about being in love, from the joy of it to the pain of it; it’s… a sexy piece of music and even when I listen to it today – because it lives on my R&B playlist – it brings back so many memories of being young and in love and not much else mattered in the world other than that. I have, admittedly, found myself crying listening to it because the song just touches me that way.

I’m gonna give y’all the URL to the lyrics which also appears to have a link to the song itself: https://genius.com/The-delfonics-i-gave-to-you-lyrics

The musician in me loves the simplicity of the song although, personally, there are some spots where I think the drummer is… sloppy with his rolls – I wouldn’t do them that way and when my band played the song, I just didn’t but I understood that’s how it was written for the drummer at the time. The guitar parts are… melodious and fluid; the lead singer’s tenor just gets to you, not so much in the way Eddie Kendrick’s voice did or even Philip Bailey’s (lead singer for Earth, Wind and Fire if ya didn’t know that); the harmonies are… raw in their simplicity and that’s not a bad thing; they’re not overdone and, overall, it’s one of those songs that you can just sit and listen to… and think about being in love.

And it reminds me of being in love in a time where the rest of the world was going to shit and the messages to “Make love, not war!” were very prevalent. Back then, songs had messages; they told a story or expressed feelings of love and pain like music today, while okay, just doesn’t do like it used to. This song, every time I listen to it, takes me right back to the exact moment I heard it; I know where I was, who I was with, what we were doing and even that “wondering” feeling I had when the party’s hostess said, “I got this new song y’all just gotta hear! It’s a slow song so grab your man or lady and get your asses up and dance!”

And we did… and it became our song. The joy of it; the sadness in it. A reminder that love feels good and not so much and, strangely, it’s not a bad thing that love can hurt so bad in that sense. It’s one of those songs where you would have had to been there to be a part of how it not only affected me but everyone else who was there and heard this song that night. You just didn’t hear the song: You felt it. One of those songs that, the next day, had me hauling ass to The Record Museum to get the 45 and one that I had to replace a few times because I’d play it so much that I literally destroyed the grooves in it. The other side, which had the song, “When You Get Right Down To It” was an okay song but didn’t get played all that much and was more in pristine condition.

Thank goodness for MP3s…

There are a lot of songs done by The Delphonics that are more memorable and chart-toppers… but while being good, they didn’t mean as much to me as this one song did… and still does.