Tune Musings: “Music Turns Me On” — Les Parson (1973)
A tale of never giving up on that one obscure single
Tune Musings is a regular series where a lifelong audiophile shares, dissects, and reviews lesser-known, beautiful music
It’s a warm spring Saturday in State College, PA, 1998. I am stuck inside my off campus apartment, scrambling to squeeze out two immediately due research papers before the weekend concludes. My roommate Rob has friends over for an auto racing watch party. Their Molson Ice-infused revelry interferes with my cram session so I close the bedroom door and flip on Penn State University’s radio station to calm my nerves.
My boombox speakers immediately bleed with the sounds of WKPS’s student-run weekly funk and soul program. Horn-soaked, bass slapping tracks from obscure artists fill the one hour playlist and the each killer jam fills my bedroom with just enough swing and pop to effectively symphonize my coursework.
About midway through the show….I hear it: a fuzzy, midtempo, needle scratched anthem to boogeying that halts all neuron-flexing, researching and typing. The unrecognized singer, his exhortations echoing with the slightest of reverb, starts the track lambasting street drugs and the fools that use them. “But me? I don’t need that kind of action at all / I get high just bein’ my self” he declares over a funked-up backbeat.
“Interesitng summation” I muse and as I let the rhythm sink itself into my consciousness. Just as turn the volume knob right the song’s thematic chorus blasts straight through my skull and into my bones:
I get my high listening to music / Music’s all I need to turn me on
The entire song was a life stopper; a term I have utilized in previous articles that describe certain rare pieces of music that slay all thought and action, prompting my brain to reallocate all energies towards focused, appreciative listening. There was something about that repeated line and the funky backdrop supporting it that breathlessly took up residence in whatever section of my college aged soul that worshiped sound. I was too young and self-unrealized to recognize it then but the song’s chorus would become fundamental to my entire state of being.
As the song wound to its conclusion, buoyed by background musicians/singers ebulliently analyzing their efforts with “Yeah!” and “Ah man that was out of sight!” I knew I had to remember this track so I grabbed an index card and pen in preparation for the show host to ID the station’s block of music (younger folks please note: Shazam, Youtube and Google were a long way from being invented and I had no university computer in 1998).
When the DJ returned he ran through the lineup of previously played jams a little too quickly for my pen to follow. So, as it stood, my new recently discovered favorite song turned out to be called “Music Makes Me High” by a fella named Les Harmon. I smoothed out the index card and gave it a drum tap with my ballpoint. “I can’t wait to find you and add you to my record collection” I said to the hastily scribbled song name.
Bad luck decided it would take me 25 whole years to find this song and hear it again.
The first mistake I made was getting the song title and artist name completely wrong. Of course, at the time…I didn’t know that. I was 100% positive I properly identified all details of the track.
Armed with my index card I went to downtown State College the next day hoping one of the several record stores in the area stocked any type of version of “Music Makes Me High”. Even if the 7" / cassette / CD weren’t available perhaps I could special order it. Or maybe my treasure hunt would lead me to information that could eventually get the song in my hands.
“Les Harmon? Never heard of him.”
“That’s an actual song? Sounds….made up.”
“We have a funk section over there but that’s not something or someone I recognize.”
No record store in Happy Valley possessed a sell-able copy of an old funk song that actually never existed? Big surprise.
Dejected, I held onto that index card and promised myself to keep trying. State College, after all, is not the record store capital of the world.
After transferring from Penn State University and finishing college closer to my Philly roots I would always make sure to un-holster that sacred index card when visiting the myriad of indie record stores in the Delaware Valley region. “Philly’s gotta know of this song” I confidently told myself. But again….not even the “coolest” old vinyl shops in Philadelphia, Newark, Princeton or Bryn Mawr heard of my beloved, mistitled funky White Whale.
The years would pass….and my index card would yellow…then brown…then eventually vanish. I never found my jam. And I’d probably never will.
Even when online search engines and Discogs evolved to become optimal discovery tools for archaic music I was still left without my prize.
By the mid 2000s I sometimes would think “Music Makes Me High” might have been nothing more than a college junior’s stress-invoked fever dream and that I was wasting valuable record store time digging crates for phantom wax.
I never forgot the song but I stopped actively looking for it many years ago.
Unceremoniously. I found it in 2023. On Youtube, of all places.
While putting together a obscure funk soul playlist (watch this column in the future) I suddenly recalled Mr Harmon and his elusive single. YT naturally didn’t have give me any search hits. Then it dawned on me to look for possible variations of the title.
After an untold number of misfires I finally got it right: after 25 years the song I was longing for was actually titled “Music Turns Me On” and the songwriter/performer’s surname was Parson, not Harmon. I couldn’t believe my dumb luck. Despite the years and distance, “Music Turns Me On” sounded even better then it did back in that stuffy college apartment in 1998. I immediately began finding out everything I could on Les Parson.
It turns out part of the reason this song was almost impossible to find (aside from yours truly not being equipped with the correct information) is that Mr Parson apparently only recorded two songs in his entire life: “Music Turns Me On” / Do You Take Time” was released on Monmore Records in 1973. That’s it. That is Les’ entire recording career.
No biographical info exists anywhere on the web for Les Parson or Monmore Records. And as far as I can tell the 7" single is the limit to the song’s reproduction. So for the time being YouTube remains the only digital method for anyone to enjoy the track (and damn right it’s a favorited YT URL)
I share this link because perhaps Les Parson’s ode to the uplifting (and cleaner) buzz of music will seduce you, too. Music remains my emotional salve, stronger than any narcotic and higher than any religious movement. There’s a reason I was compelled to never stop looking for this one song.
Mr Parson may not have created a deep catalog. He has already suffered the fate of all extremely obscure, musicians. But he gave me enough to remain turned on for years and years.
Thanks, Les.
