Jean Knight, the New Orleans soul singer whose chart-topping 1971 single “Mr. Big Stuff” endured as a cultural touchstone, died Nov. 22 of natural causes in Tampa, where she was living with her adult son. She was 80.
Born Jean Caliste, she assumed the stage name “Jean Knight” in the late 1960s as she tried to launch a music career following her graduation from Joseph S. Clark High School. A series of recording sessions and releases on small, regional record labels didn’t make much noise.
Then, in 1970, she traveled to Malaco Records’ recording studio in Jackson, Mississippi, to record “Mr. Big Stuff.” Fellow New Orleanian Wardell Quezergue produced and arranged the song; Knight added her own flair and attitude.
The result was a strutting, sassy, soul/funk anthem of female empowerment, with the singer challenging a man’s inflated ego with a refrain of “Mr. Big Stuff, who do you think you are?”
Something was in the air at the Malaco studio that day, as singer King Floyd also recorded his hit “Groove Me,” with Quezergue arranging.
Malaco shopped Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff” to bigger record companies. Eventually Stax Records, the Memphis-based soul music powerhouse, released “Mr. Big Stuff” on an album of Knight recordings with the same title.
A vintage mid-1970s picture of New Orleans singer Jean Knight, from the Stax Records web site.
The “Mr. Big Stuff” single was a smash, hitting No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and No. 2 on Billboard 200 pop chart. It received a Grammy nomination for best female R&B vocal performance, eventually losing out to Aretha Franklin’s recording of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
Beyond its initial chart run, “Mr. Big Stuff” continued to turn up over the decades onscreen and as a sample in hip-hop recordings.
In the 1980s, the song was featured prominently in a commercial for the Oreo Big Stuff cookie. As colorfully attired young people danced happily, a female voice sang, “Oreo Big Stuff, who do you think you are?”
The rapper Heavy D created his own hit version of “Mr. Big Stuff” in 1987. Recordings that sampled Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff” included “Switch,” by 1990s girl group TLC; the rock band Everclear’s “AM Radio”; the Beastie Boys’ “Johnny Ryall”; and John Legend’s “Who Do We Think We Are.”
Knight’s subsequent recordings for Stax did not match the success of “Mr. Big Stuff” and she parted ways with the label.
After signing to producer Isaac Bolden’s Soulin’ Records, she scored a minor hit with “You Got the Papers But I Got the Man,” an “answer song” to Richard “Dimples” Fields’ “She’s Got Papers On Me.”
Her 1985 album “My Toot Toot” contained a cover of the Rockin’ Sidney zydeco novelty hit of the same name as well as a new recording of “Mr. Big Stuff.” Knight’s “My Toot Toot” single cracked the national charts and led to an appearance on the TV show “Solid Gold,” even as it competed with singer Denise LaSalle’s version of the song.
In the 1980s, Knight realized a longtime ambition outside of the music business: she graduated from nursing school. She worked for many years as a nurse even as she continued to sing.
As recently as the mid-2010s, she was featured at the French Quarter Festival and at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, either fronting her own band or as part of a revue-style package with other singers. She also continued to collect royalties from the many uses of “Mr. Big Stuff.”
Survivors include a son, Dr. Emile Commedore, of Tampa; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.
