R Dean Taylor
Musician whose hits included There’s a Ghost in My House, which became a Northern Soul classic
RDEAN TAYLOR, who has died aged 82, was a singer, songwriter and record producer best known in the UK for two big hits, Indiana Wants Me in 1970 and There’s a Ghost in My House in 1974; the latter became one of the best-loved songs on the Northern Soul circuit that gathered at venues like the Wigan Casino.
Richard Dean Taylor was born in Toronto, Ontario, on May 11 1939, and set out on a musical career in the early 1960s, singing and playing piano for local country bands. He had modest hits with At the High School Dance and I’ll Remember before decamping to Detroit to boost his career.
The move paid off, and in 1964 he was signed as a singer and songwriter with the VIP label, a Motown subsidiary, and began working with the crack triumvirate of Holland-dozier-holland.
They had a regional success with Let’s Go Somewhere in 1965. The follow-up, There’s a Ghost in My House, made few waves at the time, but he did have a UK Top 20 hit with
Gotta See Jane in 1968. He began working mainly as a writer and producer, having hits with the Four Tops’ I’ll Turn to Stone and the Temptations’ All I Need.
When Lamont Dozier and the Holland
brothers, Brian and Eddie, left Motown, Taylor began working with another team – Frank Wilson, Pam Sawyer and Deke Richards – known as “the Clan”. Among other hits, they gave the Supremes a US No 1 with Love Child.
Taylor returned to performing in 1970, joining another Motown label, Rare Earth, dedicated to white artists. His debut album, I Think, Therefore I Am, barely penetrated the US Top 200, but he struck solo paydirt with his first single for the label, Indiana Wants Me – originally cut as a demo for the Four Tops – his tale of a fugitive, the killer of a man who had insulted his girlfriend.
At the song’s climax he sings “Red lights are flashin’ around me / Yeah, love, it looks like they found me,” and a police voice is heard over a loudhailer urging him to give himself up – followed by a burst of gunfire that suggests he has declined the offer.
The song, inspired by Taylor’s witnessing a police stand-off across the road from his Detroit hotel, made him the first white Motown singer to go to No 1 in the US, as well as giving him a UK No 2.
Over in Britain, when the DJ Russ Winstanley started to put on all-nighters at the Wigan Casino, Northern Soul was born, its existence dependent on mining a rich but hitherto largely forgotten seam of 1960s soul hits – one of which was Taylor’s 1967 flop There’s a Ghost in My House, which depicts the misery of a man taunted by the memories of the woman who left him for someone new.
It became one of the movement’s best-loved hits, and when it was re-released on the Tamla Motown label in 1974 it went to No 3 in the UK. As Winstanley put it, the record “possessed everything a Northern stomper could need – brilliant opening, catchy words, places for hand-clapping.”
In the wake of its success Winstanley booked Taylor for a gig at the Casino. He was not there on the night, but received a call at home from the club’s manager Gerry Marshall: “Russ, R Dean Taylor’s arrived. There must be some mistake – he’s not black.”
Ghost in My House went on to be covered by several bands, most notably in 1987, when it gave the Fall their only Top 30 single. Taylor continued writing and recording, working with Rare Earth until Motown pulled the plug in 1976, but without further notable success, except in Canada.
“Most of my work was bigger in England,” he said in 2019. “Thank God for the English people who embraced me.”
R Dean Taylor is survived by his wife of 52 years, Janee.