Have You Been Good to Yourself

Audio Remasterer: John Baldwin .Liner Note Author: Andria Lisle.Johnnie Frierson may have been a somewhat minor player on the Memphis soul circuit, but this posthumous release of his early-'90s solo gospel recordings suggests a unique, if somewhat lonesome vision. Frierson's career dates back to the mid-'60s when he and his sister Mary enjoyed a brief run on the Stax roster as part of a vocal group called the Drapels. While their recordings quickly fell into obscurity, Mary went on to pursue a slightly more successful Stax solo career under the name Wendy Rene. Meanwhile, Frierson stuck around the Memphis scene into the late '60s doing session work, writing, gigging, and cobbling together work until joining the U.S. Army in 1970. By most accounts, that was end of his brief career as, like so many young men of his era, he returned home from Vietnam a changed man. A man of faith, Frierson had been involved with gospel music even before his time in the secular Drapels and, as he grappled