Fontella Bass (born July 3, 1940) is an American soul singer, who is best known for the 1965 R&B hit "Rescue Me", which she also co-wrote.

Fontella Bass was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of gospel singer Martha Bass (a member of the Clara Ward Singers). At an early age, Fontella showed great musical talent – at five years old she was providing the piano accompaniment for her grandmother's singing at funeral services, she was singing in her church's choir at six years old and by the time she was nine she was accompanying her mother on tours throughout the American South and Southwest.

Fontella continued touring with her mother until the age of sixteen. As a teenager, Bass was attracted by more secular music. Throughout high school she began singing R&B songs at local contests and fairs. At seventeen, she started her professional career working at the Showboat Club near Chain of Rocks, Missouri. In 1961, she auditioned on a dare for the Leon Claxton carnival show and was hired to play piano and sing in the chorus for two weeks, making $175 per week for the two weeks it was in town. She wanted to go on tour with Claxton but her mother refused and according to Bass "... she literally dragged me off the train". It was during this brief stint with Claxton that she was heard by vocalist Little Milton and his bandleader Oliver Sain who hired her to back Little Milton on piano for concerts and recording.

Bobby McClure (April 21, 1942, Chicago, Illinois – November 13, 1992, Los Angeles, California) was an American soul singer. McClure was raised in St. Louis and sang in church and gospel groups in his youth. He sang with The Soul Stirrers (then led by Sam Cooke) in the 1950s, and moved into secular music soon after, singing with Bobby & the Vocals, Big Daddy Jenkins, and Oliver Sain. McClure, who recorded for Checker, a subsidiary of Chess Records, scored two hit singles in the U.S. in 1965, and thereafter helped launch the careers of Little Milton and Fontella Bass; during this time he also played with Otis Clay and Shirley Brown. Perhaps his most powerful record is "Peak of Love," a soul hit that barely scraped the pop charts in late 1966.

McClure moved on from music in the 1970s, working in an Illinois jail as a corrections officer, though he recorded some singles in the 1980s. McClure suffered a brain aneurysm in 1992, and died of complications from a stroke soon after.

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.