Don Covay wrote "Pony Time", a US number 1 hit for Chubby Checker, and "Chain of Fools", a Grammy-winning song for Aretha Franklin.
15 Facts About Don Covay
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Don Covay received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1994.
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Don Covay resettled in Washington, DC, with his mother Helen Zimmerman Randolph and his siblings in the early 1950s and initially sang in the Cherry Keys, his family's gospel quartet.
4.
Don Covay crossed over to secular music as a member of the Rainbows and made his first recordings with that group in 1956.
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In 1962, Don Covay had his first hit on Cameo-Parkway Records under his own name, "The Popeye Waddle", a dance-oriented track.
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Don Covay started writing songs for Roosevelt Music in the Brill Building in New York City, writing a hit for Solomon Burke, "I'm Hanging Up My Heart for You".
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Don Covay's singing career continued to falter until 1964, when he had one of his biggest pop hits on the small, Atlantic-distributed Rosemart label with "Mercy, Mercy".
8.
Don Covay thinks in different areas and he was kind of driving people bananas.
9.
On "See-Saw", Don Covay "achieved an even more powerfully soulful edge;" but he did not maintain momentum as a performer, and most of his later recordings for Atlantic failed to chart.
10.
However, his songwriting continued to be successful, as he wrote songs for Etta James, Otis Redding, Little Richard, and notably Aretha Franklin, who had a hit in 1968 with "Chain of Fools", a song Covay had written some fifteen years earlier.
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Don Covay followed up with two more successful singles, "It's Better to Have " in 1973, his only hit as a performer in the UK, followed by "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974, inspired by the boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
12.
Don Covay was presented with a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1994.
13.
Don Covay released the album Adlib in 2000 on the Cannonball label, his first album in 23 years.
14.
Donald Covay died after a stroke on January 31,2015, at the age of 78 at a hospital in Franklin Square, New York.
15.
Don Covay was survived by his four children, three brothers, and five grandchildren.