Mary Love - You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet

Mary Love sings her timeless Northern Soul anthem, "You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet". Both this song and "Lay This Burden Down" are considered to be two of the greatest 1960's pieces of storming Northern Soul to ever have existed. There were many great soul singers like Mary Love in the 1960's who made wonderful records but never got the acclaim they deserved. But the Northern Soul scene discovered these gems and gave the artists a chance. After doing some session work as a teenager in Los Angeles, Mary got her chance to cut half a dozen singles for the Modern label in the mid 60's. These included "You Turn My Bitter Into Sweet", "I've Got To Get You Back", "Let Me Know", "Lay This Burden Down", "Baby I'll Come", "Talking About My Man" and "Is That you?". These were decent commercial soul records, nothing more, nothing less. She managed to get hold of some material by noted writers Frank Wilson and Ashford & Simpson, but only managed one minor R&B hit for Modern, "Move a Little Closer", which made number 48 in 1966. Love had a minor top 50 R&B hit with "The Hurt Is Just Beginning" in 1968. Over the next decade she barely recorded at all. There was the single "Joy" which was a single for a film called Petey Wheatstraw. Also a single called "Turn Me, Turn Me, Turn Me" in 1979. In the early eighties there were two more singles "Liquid Fire" and "Save Me". She re-emerged as Mary Love Comer in the mid 80's and sang updated soul with a Christian centered message. It was at this time she released, arguably, her finest moment "Come Out Of The Sandbox", which appeared on the album "His Servant Am I". The U.K.'s Northern Soul scene ensured a tiny market for her (as it does for many other obscure soul singers). It was in England that a CD reissue of her work appeared in the mid 90's. The CD entitled "Now And Then" contained old material along with some material that had not seen the light of day with "Mr. Man" outstanding. Since that release, Comer has not recorded, although she made a brief appearance at London's Jazz Café in September 2000. In 2007, Mary absolutely brought the house down in front of 2000 people at Kent Records Twenty Fifth Anniversary Party. Back in early 1999 when filming for my massive DVD documentary "The Strange World Of Northern Soul", we tracked Mary down to make this fabulous performance especially it and I'm so glad we did.

Added 4 May 2026