So Sweet & Fine…Doris & Kelley’s “You Don’t Have To Worry”

Doris & Kelley – You Don’t Have To Worry

In exactly a couple of weeks, I’m gonna be turning 45. As such, 45s are definitely on my mind right now. I’m highly likely to put together a mix of 45 45s for my 45th, and I can all but guarantee that this devastingly sweet soul boulder will be in the mix. I feel like I first heard this at a Rappcats pop-up, but I also feel like I heard it from Oliver Wang at Soul-Sides.com, or maybe from David Ma at Nerdtorius…it’s a bit odd for me, because I normally have very distinct memories of when/where I hear music for the first time, but not here. It’s almost as if I feel like I’ve always known this song, even though I know that’s not true. It just has this tremendous beauty and sweetness to it that is so utterly amazing that I think my mind convinces itself that every moment I hear it, it’s the first time I’m hearing it, all over again.

While I don’t know anything about “Doris,” I was surprised to find out that “Kelley,” refers to Herman Kelley of Herman Kelly & Life’s “Dance To The Drummer’s Beat,” fame. Despite having such a influential song to Hip-Hop generation folks ((if you do want a deep dive into that classic and its legacy in Hip-Hop, click here), there still isn’t a whole lot of information about Herman Kelley. Given the relatively large gap between this single’s release in 1967 and that b-boy/b-girl classic’s release in 1978, what I now wonder is what other music Doris & Kelley might have been up to in the years in between. Hopefully one day there will be a collection that fills in all the gaps and gives us more of this pairing, but for now, I just have so much gratitude, no matter how it actually happened, that this song came into my life at a time where I definitely and desperately needed more sweetness.