At this late stage of the game, it’s very rare to hear a piece of music that has you gripped from bar one.

But that happened recently when Jennifer Holliday’s ‘And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going’ turned up on Forgotten 80s.

The song was vaguely familiar. Then the penny dropped – I was a big fan of ‘The Larry Sanders Show’ and always loved Jim Carrey’s performance on the final episode (see below) in 1998, but didn’t have a clue at the time that it was a cover version.

But back to Jennifer Holliday. She first performed ’And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going’ at the age of just 20 when she took on the role of Effie Wright in the musical ‘Dreamgirls’, which opened on 21 December 1981 at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. Written by Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger, the song ends Act One with a dramatic flourish.

Released as a David Foster-produced single in 1982, it got to #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Best Female R’n’B Vocal Performance Grammy for Holliday. It’s an electrifying vocal performance, fusing soul and gospel and injecting a touch of humour to boot.

Holliday was subsequently one of the first signings to the Geffen label, her first solo album Feel My Soul produced and co-written by Earth, Wind & Fire mainman Maurice White – it reached #31 on the Billboard pop chart and was Grammy-nominated.

Holliday was then featured vocalist and arranger of The New Jersey Mass Choir on Foreigner’s #1 single ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’, a performance which reportedly reduced the song’s co-writer/guitarist Mick Jones to tears when recorded at New York’s Right Track Studios during summer 1984

Less successful was a second album for Geffen, 1987’s Get Close To My Love, but Holliday has continued to perform to this day in both secular and non-secular formats. More power to her elbow, and bravo for an absolutely spellbinding vocal performance (Jim’s not bad either, sounding occasionally a bit like Mike Patton).