Song of the Day 9/19: Darrell Banks, “Open the Door to Your Heart”

For entertainers, dying is supposedly a good career move, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes it’s just a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

Darrell Banks coulda been somebody. He had a soul hit in 1966 with a song he called “Open the Door to Your Heart” that reached No. 2 on the R&B chart and No. 27 on the Hot 100. He claimed sole songwriting credit, which led to a lawsuit, because the tune was really the work of a friend, songwriter Donnie Elbert, who called it “Baby Walk Right In” and gave it to Banks to record. Elbert eventually won half the royalties, which ticked him off because he wrote 100% of the song; all Banks did was speed up the tempo a little.

I learned about the record while researching some Northern soul collectible 45s, because the song’s release on the London label is rare and worth several hundred dollars.

Pissing off the guy who wrote a hit for him turned out to be a bad career move. Banks had one more minor hit among the seven singles and two albums he put out between 1966 and 1970, when he met his end in a dispute with an off-duty cop over a woman he had been seeing. He was waiting when the cop dropped her off and pulled out a gun. The cop shot him dead.

This was the last record Banks released before he died, part of a double A-side with “No One Blinder (Than a Man Who Won’t See).”