Arranger, conductor, keyboardist, producer and songwriter from Englewood, New Jersey, who started out playing in the Dwight Morrow High School orchestra and marching band and singing in the DMHS vocal group, The Chansoneers. He graduated in 1961 and matriculated to Howard University in the nation’s capital. Here he earned a music education degree and put it to work by teaching high school, conducting Jerry Butler’s road band, and tickling the ivories for Chubby Checker.
In 1968, Freddie and his college chum, Fonce Mizell, decided to make the great egress to California. It was here they hooked up with Deke Richards, who already had Motown Records on his resume. The threesome collaborated on a song called “I Wanna Be Free” and hoped to have it recorded by Gladys Knight or Diana Ross. Motown boss Berry Gordy liked the song—well, except for the subject, and the title—and it morphed into “I Want You Back”, and became The Jackson 5’s breakout hit. It was included on the album, Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, and topped both the pop and R&B charts.
From here on in, the songwriting trio, plus Berry Gordy, became known as “The Corporation”, and they were the brain trust of the Motown hit-making machine, churning out hits for the aforementioned quintet. They followed “I Want You Back” up with “ABC”, which also ascended the pop and R&B charts. Its eponymous album reached the top five on the Billboard Top 200 in the summer of 1970, which also saw “The Love You Save” top the pop chart. It was a banner year for Freddie, who wed his girlfriend of three years, Christine Yarian.
More hits followed: “Mama’s Pearl” peaked at #2 on the pop and R&B charts and “Never Can Say Goodbye” went to #1 on the R&B chart and #2 on the pop chart. When Michael struck out on his own, The Corporation was also responsible for his first #1 hit, “Ben”, the theme song to the horror film, Willard.
Freddie struck out on his own, as well, as The Jackson 5 became The Jacksons and The Corporation shut its doors. One of his first projects, with Fonce Mizell, was working in music production on the Fred Williamson film, Hell up in Harlem. He wrote some hits for The Miracles, including “Do It Baby” and “Don’t Cha Love It”, both of which went to #4 on the R&B chart. In 1975, he dabbled in film again, this time contributing the song, “It’sSo Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”, to the soundtrack of Cooley High.
He produced a string of successful singles in 1975 and 1976: “Boogie Fever”, “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel”, “High School Dance”, “Hot Line”, and “Love Machine (Part I)”. In 1978, Freddie inked a deal with his friend, Herb Fame, and Linda “Peaches” Greene, and co-produced their first album, 2 Hot, on Polydor Records. The album went platinum, and yielded two mega-hits, “Reunited” and “Shake Your Groove Thing”.
Freddie’s partner-in-crime was Dino Fekaris, who had built a similar resume as a producer, and the two of them became a formidable songwriting team. In October 1978, Polydor released “Substitute”, backed with “I Will Survive”, by Gloria Gaynor. DJs weren’t biting on the A side, but they flipped the record over and soon “I Will Survive” was getting so much airplay that Polydor did the same thing and re-issued the single with “I Will Survive” in its rightful place. The song became one of the biggest hits of the disco era and won the first and only Grammy award for Best Disco Recording in 1980. Freddie had been a recipient of the Grammy the previous year for his production work on the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever.
In 1991, Boyz II Men took “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” to the top of the R&B chart and #2 on the pop chart. The summer of the same year saw Naughty By Nature sampling “ABC” for their double-platinum single, “O.P.P.”
In 1993, Freddie had a stroke. Eleven years later, it claimed his life. He was only 61. Freddie is buried at Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.
It is hard to imagine the ‘70s without Freddie’s input. His songs continue to get airplay to this day and are frequently used in commercials and films. “Shake Your Groove Thing” was famously lip-synched by a chicken in an Amoco ad in 1999. “I Will Survive” was also lip-synched by a chicken, namely Chicken Little, and a pooch, Frank the Pug, in Men in Black II. It has recently been parodied in a commercial for cisco.com.
Billie Jo Spears recordings
I Will Survive (Dino Fekaris/Freddie Perren)
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