Barbara Mason

Barbara Mason is the founding high-priestess of the Philadelphia soul movement and its "Sweet Soul" sound. She was unique in the 1960s music industry as a creative force who wrote and sang her own songs, a norm-breaking role she began as a teenager. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Barbara Mason began her career composing original melodies and lyrics for no one in particular. Unbeknownst to her, she was developing a sophisticated musical vocabulary that allowed her to bypass the standard "singer-for-hire" model, arriving at the studio with a notebook full of self-penned material that would soon revolutionize the sound of her city. Her third single on Arctic Records, "Yes, I'm Ready," didn't just peak at #2 on the Billboard R&B chart and #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, it served as the blueprint for the lush, sophisticated orchestration that came to define the "Philly Sound." Barbara found further success in the 1960s with a string of self-penned hits that captured the nuances of heartbreak with surgical precision, including "Oh, How It Hurts" (#11 R&B) and the poignant "Sad, Sad Girl" (#12 R&B). After leaving Arctic Records, her original label, Mason continued releasing hits, charting with various releases through the intervening decades. Today, Barbara is reaching new audiences through her own legacy catalog and releases, rap artists’ sampling of her music, and through the recent virality of her Motown cover “Forever.”