Sylvia Robinson: Hitmaker who co-founded Sugar Hill Records and became known as ‘the mother of hip-hop’

By Pierre Perrone

Sylvia Robinson was a formidable figure in the music industry. In her teens she recorded as Little Sylvia for the legendary R&B and jazz labels Savoy and Jubilee. In 1954, she joined the guitarist Mickey Baker and, as Mickey & Sylvia, they topped the US charts with the infectious and much-covered "Love Is Strange". In 1968, she and her husband Joseph Robinson started All Platinum Records Enterprises and scored a succession of R&B and crossover hits, notably with The Moments, whose single, the gorgeous "Love On A Two-Way Street", she co-wrote and produced.

In 1973, she returned to the charts in her own right as Sylvia with "Pillow Talk", a slinky, proto-disco single that prefigured the more suggestive records of Donna Summer. The following year, she penned and produced another classic of the disco era, the irresistible "Shame, Shame, Shame" for Shirley & Company. Yet Robinson bettered all these achievements in 1979 when she, Joseph and the infamous, mob-connected, Morris Levy launched Sugar Hill Records, and she masterminded the label's debut release, "Rapper's Delight" by The Sugarhill Gang.

Considered a novelty hit at the time, "Rapper's Delight" sold 14 million copies and helped establish a new genre. During the early 1980s the Sugar Hill imprint defined hip-hop with groups like Funky 4 + 1, The Treacherous Three and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Robinson oversaw the ground-breaking 12-inch "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel" (1981), the first record to feature quick mixing and scratching, as well as "The Message" (1982) and "White Lines (Don't Do It)" (1983), the two arresting singles featuring Melle Mel that took rap into a socially conscious direction and paved the way for its current popularity.

However, those seminal records featured samples or rerecordings of tracks that hadn't been cleared or properly credited, while Grandmaster Flash was edged out of his own group in 1982 and sued the Robinsons for non-payment of royalties, along with other acts. These lawsuits stretched Sugar Hill, while an ill-fated distribution and marketing alliance with MCA Records resulted in another legal case that eventually lost them the Chess catalogue they had acquired for $1 million, and effectively did for the label in 1986.

She was born Sylvia Vanterpool in New York in 1936 and made her recording debut at the age of 14 with the trumpeter Hot Lips Page. In 1953, she co-wrote her first song, "Blue Heaven", and teamed up with Baker, a session musician who had been her guitar teacher. The duo often cut their own compositions, though the million-selling "Love Is Strange" was credited to Ethel Smith, Bo Diddley's wife.

They also charted with "There Ought To Be A Law" in 1957, and "Baby You're So Fine" in 1961, the year they played on Ike & Tina Turner's R&B smash "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" and started their own publishing company and Willow label. - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sylvia-robinson-hitmaker-who-cofounded-sugar-hill-records-and-became-known-as-lsquothe-mother-of-hiphoprsquo-2365098.html