Take Yo' Praise (Camille Yarbrough, 1975)

"When we returned from places like Spain, France and Germany, I became an actress in plays on Broadway. As a singer, too, I sang in all kinds of places, from the New York Playboy Club to the Village Gate. But I gradually became discouraged with the business until I appeared in a play in the sixties called To Be Young, Gifted And Black. That inspired me to write my own material, my own monologues, poems, songs, and music, all with a political consciousness - something I think Fatboy Slim has picked up on.



That material became the basis for The Iron Pot Cooker, but although the album got very good reviews, including one in Billboard, it came out during a period of great political change. Nixon was gone; it was the end of the civil rights movement . . . and at that time people didn't want music with a political message anymore, they just wanted to dance . . . boogie, boogie, disco.
I toured my music just before the album came out, and around that time some of my shows on campuses were actually cancelled. Take Yo' Praise was written for all the people who had come through the black civil rights movement, who had stood up for truth and righteousness and justice, because human beings need to praise and respect one another more than they do.
It was also written for one particular young man I was interested in, that I was involved with then."
Camille Yarbrough



Fatboy Slim's version from 1999:



- photograph via
- more about Nana Camille Yarbrough: LINK