Courtesy of GRT Records.
By 1969, 22-year-old Minnie Riperton was known as the angelic voice of Chicago’s experimental soul outfit Rotary Connection. She had a five-octave range and a background singing backup for Chess Records greats, but mainstream success eluded her band—Enter Charles Stepney—the classically-trained arranger behind Rotary Connection’s “richly orchestrated psychedelic soul.” Stepney “discovered” Riperton (then a secretary at Chess) a few years prior, and he recognized the potential of centering her operatic yet intimate vocals in more sophisticated settings. When Rotary Connection wound down after a string of adventurous albums, Riperton and Stepney began crafting her first solo project together. Riperton later said she aspired to evoke the elegant pop-soul of Dionne Warwick’s Burt Bacharach collaborations on this album—and indeed Come to My Garden, recorded over a few days in late 1969 at Chess’s Ter Mar Studios, exudes that kind of timeless, orchestrated grace.
Stepney marshaled an all-star ensemble for the sessions that would do justice to his elaborate charts. The core band was drawn from pianist Ramsey Lewis’s jazz trio—Lewis himself on piano, Cleveland Eaton on bass, and a young Maurice White (future Earth, Wind & Fire founder) on drums. Guitarist Phil Upchurch and a host of string and horn players (reportedly including members of the Chicago Symphony) filled out the ranks. Over ten songs, Stepney “arranged and conducted” this orchestra in service of Riperton’s voice, crafting what can only be described as soul music as symphonic art. The heavy psychedelic rock edges of Rotary Connection were stripped away, replaced by “lush, orchestral soundscapes” that let Riperton’s vocals take center stage. It was an ambitious vision: call Stepney’s singular approach “chamber soul”—nimble melodies and insistent grooves swathed in strings and horns, while jazz-inspired rhythms (courtesy of Lewis’s group) at times evoke the intimate, free-flowing feel of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. In Stepney’s hands, romantic melodrama is always balanced with sensual understatement. He creates an ideal backdrop for Riperton’s singing—ornate but never overbearing, grand yet deeply tender.
Nowhere is this balance more apparent than on the opening track, “Les Fleurs.” Often considered the album’s signature song, “Les Fleurs” (co-written by Stepney and Riperton’s husband Richard Rudolph) is a three-minute epic that encapsulates the album’s haunting fusion of majesty and intimacy. It begins quietly, “like the sonic embodiment of a bubbling brook,” with a gentle guitar figure and Riperton’s delicate soprano floating in, soft as morning dew. In the first verse, she sings in sweet, pure tones about a humble flower longing to be noticed—”Will somebody wear me to the fair?… Will a lady pin me in her hair?” The lyrics weave vivid floral imagery and childlike wonder, conjuring a “peacefulness and a freeness” rooted in late-60s psychedelic idealism. Riperton delivers these lines with restraint, almost a whisper of innocence, drawing the listener into an intimate space.
While “Les Fleurs” is the most famous track, Come to My Garden as a whole is mesmerizing in its cohesive mood and craft. The album unfolds as a cycle of mostly minor-key ballads, flowing gracefully from one song to the next like an extended suite. Stepney, drawing on his love of classical composition and jazz, imbues each arrangement with rich colors and textures—yet always keeps the focus on Minnie’s voice. Throughout the album, there is a palpable romantic melodrama underpinned by sensual understatement. For example, on “Completeness,” Riperton’s voice flutters and soars in multi-octave arcs, but the song itself begins gently with shimmering strings and Ramsey Lewis’s piano setting a mellow tone. As she sings a poetic paean to love, Stepney gradually adds layers—a hint of brass here, a swell of choir there—raising the intensity in tandem with Riperton’s vocal until it climaxes in “heartachingly beautiful” fashion. Yet even at its peak, the track retains an airy elegance. Stepney knew exactly when to “grow the arrangement” and when to pull back to a hush, “never overpowering Minnie’s gentle vocal.” This push-and-pull creates a dreamy atmosphere across the record, a stream-of-consciousness groove not unlike the hypnotic flow of Astral Weeks in its intimate, introspective vibe.
Most of the songs were penned by Stepney with Riperton’s husband Richard Rudolph, and they often read like internal monologues or vivid vignettes. The title track, “Come to My Garden,” invites a lover into a private sanctuary—an apt metaphor for the album’s enveloping feel. Over a “grand, dramatic piano-led introduction” that gives way to a tender waltz, Riperton’s phrasing is delicate and precise, “emphasizing the lyrics in such a way that you become aware of their beauty.” She sings “come to my garden, I will take you…where nothing will harm you” with a breathy intimacy, as if sharing a secret. Stepney’s arrangement leaves pockets of space here—a shimmering string phrase, a meandering bass line—creating a sense of spacious serenity around her voice. Other songs explore themes of memory and anticipation. “Memory Band,” a composition Stepney originally introduced in Rotary Connection days, is presented here as an almost cinematic reverie. Riperton’s vocal is understated and tender, riding lightly over Phil Upchurch’s subtle guitar, as she delivers lyrics that have a “poetic, dreamlike quality” of reminiscence. Stepney allows the arrangement to occasionally swell, but he then deftly returns to the gentler motif, ensuring the understated mood prevails.
A standout late in the album is “Rainy Day in Centerville,” one of Riperton’s most wistful performances. The song finds her reminiscing about meeting her partner on a fateful rainy day and how they “can’t live without each other” now. Fittingly, the arrangement mirrors the changing weather: it opens with a dramatic burst of horns and full-band fanfare, as if evoking a sudden storm, then settles into softer verses where piano, bass, and strings gently underpin Riperton’s melancholy croon. Her voice here veers from tender to powerful, offering glimpses of her range and conveying a deep, bittersweet longing. As the song builds toward its conclusion, Stepney layers in a “crescendo of drama”—swirling strings and horns in clever interplay—beneath Riperton’s vocal, which rises to a final, ethereal peak. It’s a goosebump-inducing moment of catharsis, yet handled with such artistry that it never feels overwrought. Moments like this make clear that Come to My Garden was ahead of its time—a soulful song cycle unafraid of classical drama and nuanced emotional storytelling, at a moment when much of the soul world was focused on gritty realism or pop crossover.
Notably, Riperton exercises vocal restraint across the album compared to some of her later work. Listeners who know her only from the 1975 chart-topping ballad “Lovin’ You”—famous for its birdlike whistle notes—might be surprised that Come to My Garden rarely showcases her highest register outright. There are no gratuitous octave-leaping stunts here. Instead, Riperton is all about serving the songs’ mood. She modulates her delivery from a breathy sigh to a full-throated belt only when the emotion truly calls for it. On the exquisite track “Expecting,” for instance, she delivers one of her most affecting performances on the record, blending “restrained power” with flashes of her upper range to convey both vulnerability and elation. As the arrangement gently “soars” around her, Minnie’s voice remains controlled, glacially pure, and spine-tingling—so that when she finally lets a high note ring out, it lands with breathtaking impact. This dynamic approach—using her range judiciously rather than constantly—gives the album a reflective, intimate feel. It also makes the few climactic moments truly shine.
In contrast, on later albums like Perfect Angel (1974) and Adventures in Paradise (1975), Riperton more often pushed her vocals to the foreground, indulging in dramatic high passages and show-stopping climaxes (as on the passionate “Inside My Love” or the funkier “Reasons”). Those are brilliant recordings in their own right, but Come to My Garden remains distinctive for its understated, delicate touch. Riperton’s restraint here—guided by Stepney’s sensitive direction—proves the adage that less can be more. By holding back at times, she draws us in closer, inviting us to lean forward and listen to the nuances of her phrasing, the flutter of vibrato on a gentle high note, the emotional catch in her lower register. It’s a performance of subtlety and emotional nuance, the kind that seeps into your soul rather than knocking you over. And when Minnie finally does unleash brief, powerful climaxes (as in the final refrain of “Les Fleurs” or the swelling end of “Expecting”), the contrast feels earned and profoundly moving.
If Come to My Garden was underappreciated on release, its influence and reputation have only grown with time. When the album came out in April 1970 on GRT/Janus Records, it barely made a ripple on the charts—eventually peaking at #160 on the Billboard 200 (and that was only after a 1974 re-release when Riperton scored a hit). In the moment, it seems the record might have been “too sophisticated” for an industry then more attuned to simpler R&B or rock fare. Chess Records was in upheaval (having been sold to GRT), and promotion was likely scant. Disappointed by the lack of success, Riperton actually stepped away from music for a few years—moving to Florida to focus on family life after this album didn’t take off. Little could she know that decades later, Come to My Garden would be revered as a lost treasure of its era.
Over the years, crate-digging DJs and soul aficionados kept the album’s spirit alive. In the 1990s, UK rare-groove and acid-jazz circles embraced “Les Fleurs” in particular—the track became a DJ favorite in London clubs, its “iridescent” chamber-soul beauty casting a spell on a new generation of listeners. Contemporary artists explicitly drew from its well: the acclaimed British duo 4hero recorded an ornate cover of “Les Fleurs” in 2001, introducing the song to the neo-soul and electronica crowd. Hip-hop producers, always attuned to lush ’70s soul, also paid homage by sampling cuts from Come to My Garden. The New York rap duo Black Sheep flipped a portion of “Les Fleurs” for their jazzy 1991 track “Similak Child,” layering Riperton’s vocals and Stepney’s strings into a golden-age hip-hop context. Brooklyn’s Smif-n-Wessun sampled the dreamy “Only When I’m Dreaming” on their gritty 1995 song “Hellucination.” Even in the 2000s, top-tier MCs were digging into the album—Nas lifted a piece of the moody “Rainy Day in Centerville” for his track “Where Y’all At” in 2006, proving the music’s resonance in a modern urban narrative. Each of these samples and covers is like a small acknowledgement that Stepney and Riperton created something timeless; the musical seeds planted in that garden continued to sprout in genres far beyond 1970s Chicago soul.
Beyond direct samples, one can hear Riperton’s influence in the broader landscape of soul and jazz vocals. Her ability to convey “beauty and love and the countercultural” in her music, to be simultaneously technically astounding and spiritually free, has inspired countless artists. As scholar Brittnay Proctor-Habil observes, Riperton’s refusal to be confined by genre, especially as a Black woman artist in 1970, was quietly revolutionary. In Come to My Garden we hear a Black singer embracing orchestral pop sophistication, jazz improvisational sensibility, psychedelic mysticism, and straight-up soulfulness all at once. That “spirit of flouting convention,” as Proctor-Habil notes, has echoed through the works of later musicians who blend styles—from the adventurous R&B of Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, to the artful soul-pop of Solange or Lianne La Havas. And of course, every time a vocalist like Mariah Carey or Ariana Grande ascends into that stratospheric whistle register, they ride a trail that Minnie Riperton blazed (Carey has often cited Riperton as an influence). But Come to My Garden shows that Riperton’s legacy isn’t just about hitting high notes. It’s about channeling emotional truth with artistry. Modern soul-jazz artists who prioritize authenticity and musicality over formula can find a patron saint in Minnie’s work here.
The collaboration between Minnie Riperton and Charles Stepney on Come to My Garden was lightning in a bottle. Now it’s rightly deemed the album “the peak of their work together and a highlight of both of their careers.” Stepney would go on to shape the sound of Earth, Wind & Fire’s landmark albums in the mid-‘70s, applying the sophisticated symphonic textures he honed with Riperton on a much larger stage. But sadly, he and Minnie never reunited for a follow-up. Stepney died suddenly in 1976, and Riperton’s own career was cut short a few years later. That only elevates Come to My Garden’s status as a singular, unrepeatable milestone. It represents two brilliant minds in perfect sync: Stepney’s lush, innovative orchestration meeting Riperton’s angelic voice and heartfelt delivery. The album shows how far soul music can stretch as an art form—incorporating the grandeur of a symphony or the intimacy of a jazz combo, all without losing its emotional core.
Masterpiece (★★★★★)
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