#7: Little By Little by Nappy Brown
City: Dauphin, MB
Radio Station: CKDM
Peak Month: March 1957
Peak Position in Dauphin ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #57
YouTube: “Little By Little”
Lyrics: “Little By Little”
Napoleon “Nappy” Brown Goodson Culp was born in 1929 in Charlotte, North Carolina. After his mother died, he was raised by family friends, Fred and Maggie Culp. He attended an AME Zion congregation. He later told a reporter, ” (I) just grew up religious. I got started singing when I was about nine years old in the choir at church. My dad was what you call a steward, and the bass singer in the choir.” In 1946, at the age of 16, he formed a gospel group with his cousins, the Golden Crowns, before moving on to the Golden Bell Quintet. From 1949 to 1954, Brown worked as a gospel singer with The Selah Jubilee Singers prior to switching to R&B. In 1954, he got a record deal with Savoy Records. His vocal style was recognizable, as Brown used a wide vibrato, melisma (singing a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession), and distinctive extra syllables, in particular, “li-li-li-li-li.”