Honey Cone

Honey Cone was an American R&B and soul all-girl vocal group, who are best remembered for their Billboard #1 hit single, "Want Ads". They were the premier female group for Hot Wax Records, operated by Holland–Dozier–Holland after they had departed from Motown Records.

Career

Honey Cone was formed by lead singer Edna Wright (sister of Darlene Love) with Carolyn Willis and Shelly Clark in 1969. They were the newly created Hot Wax Records' first signing to the fledgling label. The trio had previous musical experience with Willis a member of Girlfriends, Clark an ex-member of the Ikettes, and Wright a member of a gospel group, the Cogics. Wright and Willis were also "part-time" members of Love's group, The Blossoms. They had been singing together for a short while when they were spotted by Eddie Holland in 1969 who had recently left Motown Records along with Brian Holland, and Lamont Dozier to form their own music organization Holland-Dozier-Holland. Holland named the act "Honey Cone" for a favorite flavor of ice cream. At first, group members rejected the name, but Holland prevailed and the ladies soon embraced its distinctiveness.

Want Ads

"Want Ads" was a million-selling Number 1 pop and R&B hit recorded by female group, Honey Cone for their third album Sweet Replies and also appears on their fourth album Soulful Tapestry (both 1971 releases). The song on the Detroit-based Hot Wax label was written by Greg Perry, General Norman Johnson and Barney Perkins. It was produced by staff producer, Greg Perry, and features a young Ray Parker, Jr. ("Ghostbusters") on rhythm guitar.

"Want Ads" was released as the first single from Soulful Tapestry in the United States in the spring of 1971 (see 1971 in music). It reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for one week and topped the R&B singles chart for three weeks in the United States, becoming the group's most successful single and their only number one placement on the pop charts.

Song information

Initially, Perry and Johnson had written a song for a female singer called "Stick Up",but the two decided that the song wasn't substantial enough so they re-wrote it with a change in chord progressions and new lyrics. With the catchy opening line of "Wanted, young man, single and free," "Want Ads" was born.

Honey

Honey /ˈhʌni/ is a sweet food made by bees foraging nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees (the genus Apis) is the one most commonly referred to, as it is the type of honey collected by most beekeepers and consumed by people. Honeys are also produced by bumblebees, stingless bees, and other hymenopteran insects such as honey wasps, though the quantity is generally lower and they have slightly different properties compared to honey from the genus Apis. Honey bees convert nectar into honey by a process of regurgitation and evaporation. They store it as a primary food source in wax honeycombs inside the beehive.

Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and has about the same relative sweetness as granulated sugar. It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor that leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey because of its low water activity of 0.6. However, honey sometimes contains dormant endospores of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which can be dangerous to infants, as the endospores can transform into toxin-producing bacteria in infants' immature intestinal tracts, leading to illness and even death.

Cone

A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex.

More precisely, it is the solid figure bounded by a base in a plane and by a surface (called the lateral surface) formed by the locus of all straight line segments joining the apex to the perimeter of the base. The term "cone" sometimes refers just to the surface of this solid figure, or just to the lateral surface.

The axis of a cone is the straight line (if any), passing through the apex, about which the base (and the whole cone) has a circular symmetry.

In common usage in elementary geometry, cones are assumed to be right circular, where circular means that the base is a circle and right means that the axis passes through the centre of the base at right angles to its plane. Contrasted with right cones are oblique cones, in which the axis does not pass perpendicularly through the centre of the base. In general, however, the base may be any shape and the apex may lie anywhere (though it is usually assumed that the base is bounded and therefore has finite area, and that the apex lies outside the plane of the base).