How British DJ Jamie xx found the hit in a forgotten Phoenix soul song

It was 1977 when Bobby Barnes entered Pantheon Studios in Paradise Valley and soulfully pleaded his case for getting high on loving you in a sensual slow jam called “Super High on Your Love.”

Barnes had moved to Phoenix to record for Raina Records, a label run by former Motown session drummer Lawrence Carroll, after meeting backstage while playing the Apollo Theater in New York City.

“Super High on Your Love” is a classic recording that wasn’t released until 40 years later when another Phoenix label, Fervor Records, included the song on a Barnes EP called “Keep it Funky.”

Then, last summer, British DJ Jamie xx of the xx started dropping a remix of the song into his live sets, re-contextualizing bits of Barnes’ pitched-up vocal over a propulsive house beat.

Earlier this week, as xx was about to launch a tour that kicks off at Coachella, he released his reimagining of Barnes’ song as “Let’s Do It Again.”

How Jamie xx reimagined Bobby Barnes’ slow jam

As the first new music from xx in two years, “Let’s Do It Again” has been getting a lot of attention, which is pretty much the whole idea behind Fervor Records, which acquired the Raina catalog from Carroll in 2010.

Paste Magazine praised the “clear house influence that runs throughout the song,” proclaiming it “a surefire dance floor filler.” Fader declared it “a four-minute pep rally” while Mixmag called it “a roaring return for the producer.”

In three days, the songs has been streamed more 88,000 times on Spotify and earned more than 66,000 views on YouTube for its lyric video.

About six months ago, xx’s UK label, Beggars, reached out to secure the rights from Fervor to commercially release the DJ’s reinvention of the song under a different title.

By that point, Fervor had already licensed Barnes’ songs to several TV shows, including “NCIS,” “Snowfall,” “Chicago PD” and “Preacher,” and partnered with the UK label Diggin’ Deep and Spanish label Soul4Real Records to issue Barnes’ songs on vinyl.

David Hilker, who founded Fervor with a group of friends in 1989, says Beggars sent a watermarked recording of the single to review.

“We did some negotiating with them and a little negotiating with Universal on the publishing side,” Hilker says. “Our goal is always to perpetuate the legacies of our artists and to get this music out there. So we wanted to make it happen. And we did.”

Hilker’s partner at Fervor, Jeff Freundlich, says, “We were lucky enough to have Jamie xx doing some crate digging. He found the music and I guess he was inspired by it and did his thing.”

Freundlich has nothing but praises for what xx has done with the record, isolating and repeating key lines, from “I want to get high on love” to “Let’s do it again.”

“The thing that works about is that he didn’t just take the song and put, like, a new beat behind it,” Freundlich says.

“He really reimagined some of the elements of that original source material and turned it into something entirely different. That’s why it’s special. And that’s why it works.”

Helping the music find a bigger audience

The original recording also works — artistically, at least. But Raina’s catalog is chock-full of soul songs that sound like they should’ve been much bigger records than they were.

“Before Lawrence Carroll died, I remember him telling me the problem what there just wasn’t a market in the 1970s for soul, funk and R&B in Phoenix,” Freundlich says.

“They’re great records, but nothing really happened. And we at Fervor felt it was our job to revive this music, to get it exposed and get it out there to a larger audience because it’s so good.”

At a certain point, Carroll gave up on the label and became a school bus driver.

But Barnes never stopped making music until the day he died.

“It’s tough because these guys are journeymen who didn’t necessarily live the easiest lives,” Freundlich says.

“It’s always heartbreaking that sometimes these guys just don’t get their due while they’re alive.”

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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