Who recorded it first
If You Don't Know Me by Now
Not a Simply Red original — a 1972 Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes single
For anyone who met the song through Simply Red’s 1989 global No. 1, the record is seventeen years older than it sounds: Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes released it as a Philadelphia International single on 11 September 1972 ↗, with Teddy Pendergrass on lead. It was written and produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, who had first intended it for Labelle — a group that never recorded it. The original was a substantial hit in its own right: No. 1 on the US R&B chart, No. 3 on the Hot 100 and No. 9 in the UK.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued as a single on Philadelphia International Records on 11 September 1972, backed with “Let Me Into Your World”, and carried on the album I Miss You (US, August 1972, catalogue KZ 31648). Recorded at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia.
Charted A major hit on release: No. 1 on the US R&B chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was the group’s breakthrough single.
Hear The 1972 Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes recording, featuring Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocal. www.youtube.com · Posted by the official HaroldMelvinVEVO artist channel. The upload runs 3:30 against the 3:26 logged for the 1972 recording at MusicBrainz and the 3:27 given both in the single’s Wikipedia infobox and on the MusicBrainz I Miss You tracklisting — a match within normal encoding padding, not a later re-recording.How to check it yourself
The single’s release date, label, B-side, Sigma Sound recording location and chart peaks are all set out on the song’s Wikipedia entry ↗, which also records that the song was written for Labelle and never recorded by them.
The 1972 US pressing of I Miss You on Philadelphia International, catalogue KZ 31648, is catalogued at MusicBrainz ↗ with the song at track four and “Let Me Into Your World” at track six.
That the 1990 Grammy for Best R&B Song went to Gamble and Huff — not to the performers — is confirmed in the award’s winners list ↗, which states the award goes to the songwriter.
Wikipedia: “If You Don’t Know Me by Now” — original and cover versionsKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Right song, wrong origin
For listeners who arrived with the 1989 single, Simply Red’s version reads as the original. It was already a hit record before that band existed.
Simply Red wrote and originated it
Their version was released on 27 March 1989 on WEA and Elektra, from the album A New Flame. It is a cover, and a hugely successful one — No. 1 in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, 1972
Released as a Philadelphia International single on 11 September 1972, recorded at Sigma Sound with Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocal. It reached No. 1 R&B and No. 3 on the Hot 100.
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff
They wrote and produced it, and their names are on both records. The song was first intended for Labelle, who never recorded it.
Simply Red made it famous a second time. Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes made it famous first.
Context
Why 1989 is the version most people know
This is not a rescue story. The 1972 single was a No. 1 R&B record, a top-three pop hit and a UK top ten — the song that broke Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes nationally and announced Teddy Pendergrass. Simply Red did not find a forgotten record; they out-sold a famous one.
What happened is a generational handover of scale. Simply Red’s A New Flame arrived in 1989 into a radio and music-video economy of far wider reach, and the single went to No. 1 in the US, Australia and New Zealand and charted across Europe — territories where the 1972 record had never appeared on a chart at all. For everyone who came to pop music after that, the newer record is simply the one that was playing. A songwriting Grammy attached to it in 1990 finished the job of making it feel definitive. The credit line on the sleeve always said Gamble and Huff; most people simply never read it.
The chronology, plainly
- Gamble and Huff write the song, intending it for Labelle. Labelle never record it.
- The song goes instead to Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, with Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocal, recorded at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia.
- 11 September 1972 — released as a Philadelphia International single, backed with “Let Me Into Your World”, and carried on the album I Miss You.
- The single reaches No. 1 on the US R&B chart and No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
- Patti LaBelle — for whose group the song was originally written — performs a live version on her 1985 album Patti.
- 27 March 1989 — Simply Red release their version, from A New Flame, on WEA and Elektra; it reaches No. 1 in the US, Australia and New Zealand and No. 2 in the UK.
- At the 1990 Grammy ceremony the song wins Best R&B Song. The award goes to the songwriters, Gamble and Huff.
- Later readings include Seal on Soul (2008) and Martina McBride on Everlasting (2014).
The original wasn’t forgotten. It was outshouted.