Your Three Words: 'I'm So Happy Now' by Willie Wright

May 7, 2011 — -- This week's "Your Three Words" features the song "I'm So Happy Now" by Willie Wright.

Never heard of him? Not surprising.

Wright was a journeyman soul singer who spent most of his career performing in obscurity singing covers at clubs in the 1960s and '70s.

In 1976, he made his way to Nantucket, Mass., to make some easy money at the island's clubs that catered to wealthy tourists.

After that summer season, he found himself stuck on the island with fewer gigs and a lot of time on his hands. So he started writing original songs -- deeply personal songs about his attitude on life, the women he'd loved and the four children he'd fathered and then abandoned.

In 1977, he went to New York and, in one day, he recorded the songs, including "I'm So Happy Now," on his second album, "Telling the Truth."

Wright released the album himself on his own Hotel Records label, so it was sold mainly at his shows and it garnered little attention. It would have languished forgotten on the dusty shelves of those who bought it from the trunk of his car in the late '70s had it not been for another song Wright had recorded earlier in his career.

In the early '70s, Wright released just one single from his first album, a cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Right on for the Darkness." Decades later, soul collectors rediscovered Wright's single, and that sparked a renewed interest in his entire body of work.

In January, a new edition of "Telling the Truth" was released and the world is getting to hear Willie Wright once again.

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