Thelma Houston – Don’t Leave Me This Way

Meant For Diana Ross, It Made A Struggling Singer A Star

Thelma Houston released “Don’t Leave Me This Way” in November 1976 as a single from her fourth studio album Any Way You Like It. The song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 18, 1976, and climbed slowly over four months before hitting number one on April 23, 1977, where it stayed for one week. It topped the R&B chart for five weeks starting in February and spent weeks at number one on the disco chart. The single sold over a million copies in the US alone and peaked at number 13 in the UK. What nobody told Houston when she recorded it was that the song had originally been assigned to Diana Ross as the follow-up to her smash hit “Love Hangover”—and that her producer Hal Davis had essentially stolen it for her instead.

The song became 1977’s seventh biggest hit on the Billboard year-end chart and number 12 on the R&B year-end chart. It appeared on the soundtrack to the controversial film Looking for Mr. Goodbar later that year, introducing Houston to millions more listeners. The Any Way You Like It album, released in 1976 on Tamla Records, finally gave Houston the commercial breakthrough she’d spent over eight years chasing. In 1978, she won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female at the 20th Annual Grammy Awards. The song experienced a revival in 1995 when multiple remixes reached number 19 on the US Billboard Dance Chart and number 35 in the UK. VH1 ranked Houston at number 86 on their “100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders” and placed the song at number two on their “100 Greatest Dance Songs” list in 2000.

The song was written by the legendary Philadelphia soul team of Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff, and lyricist Cary Gilbert. Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes had recorded it first in 1975 with Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocals for their album Wake Up Everybody. That version was warm, itchy Philly soul with sweeping strings and triumphant horns—beautiful, but not explosive. When Hal Davis heard it while producing Houston’s album, he recognized its potential and convinced her to record it. But Houston’s version transformed the song completely. Davis gave it a disco treatment with an aqueous 20-second intro before the drums kicked in, building drama and intensity throughout without ever settling down. The song never stops climbing. Houston infused it with gospel-trained power, her vocal delivery wracked with urgency and overwhelming joy. What had been a gentle plea in the Blue Notes’ hands became a desperate, ecstatic demand in Houston’s.

The track was recorded in 1976 and produced by Hal Davis, who had pioneered a similar aqueous-intro-to-disco-explosion approach on Diana Ross’s “Love Hangover” earlier that year. Recording took place at Motown studios in Los Angeles during sessions for the Any Way You Like It album. The single version runs 3 minutes and 37 seconds, while the album version stretches past four minutes. Houston’s vocal performance required minimal takes—she nailed the song almost immediately, channeling years of frustration into one explosive recording. A Boston DJ record pool unanimously reported positive audience response to the track in discotheques, and Tamla Records selected it for single release. By 1976, Motown wasn’t what it had been a decade earlier—the base had moved to Los Angeles, many legendary studio musicians had left—but “Don’t Leave Me This Way” proved the old assembly-line craftsmanship was still there.

Houston had spent nearly a decade struggling for a breakthrough. Born in Mississippi and raised in Long Beach, California, she was already married, divorced, and raising two kids when she even attempted a music career. Jimmy Webb produced her stunning 1969 debut Sunshower, but it didn’t sell. She moved to Motown in 1971, but her early singles flopped. She sang in nightclubs. She appeared on The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine. In 1975, she recorded the original version of “Do You Know Where You’re Going To” before Berry Gordy gave the song to Diana Ross instead, making it the theme for Ross’s film Mahogany. Houston later told the Los Angeles Times: “These have been tough years, full of disappointment. You release a record and you say, ‘This is it.’ But it’s not. You release another one and go through the same thing. It’s awful to have to rely on a hit record to get your career going but that’s the way it is.”

The song’s cultural reach has been extraordinary. In 1986, British synth-pop duo The Communards covered it in a hi-NRG version featuring Sarah Jane Morris on vocals alongside Jimmy Somerville’s unmistakable falsetto. Their version topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks and became the biggest-selling single of 1986 in the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Houston’s version became an unofficial theme song for the AIDS epidemic in gay male communities. A 1994 art exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia entitled “Don’t Leave Me This Way – Art in the Age of AIDS” referenced the song’s significance. In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked it number eight on their “Best Disco Songs of All Time” list. In 2021, Rolling Stone included it at number 355 on their “500 Best Songs of All Time.” In 2025, Billboard ranked it number 19 on their “100 Greatest LGBTQ+ Anthems of All Time.”

For a song that almost went to Diana Ross, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” changed everything for Thelma Houston. But the starmaking machine failed her again after this—she never scored another major hit despite recording throughout the 1980s and beyond. In 2024, at age 78, she competed on season eleven of The Masked Singer as “Clock,” making it all the way to the semifinals and finishing third overall. As her encore, she sang “Don’t Leave Me This Way”—the song that had defined her career 47 years earlier. Sometimes everything clicks exactly once, and that one time has to be enough. Houston once reflected: “This is the craziest schedule I’ve ever been on in my entire life.” She was talking about recording an earlier album on tour, but she could have been describing her entire career—a lifetime spent waiting for one perfect moment. When it finally came, she made it immortal.