You may not know the name, but you probably know one of his songs.Shuggie Otis, son of ‘50s R&B bandleader Johnny Otis, wrote “Strawberry Letter 23” which The Brothers Johnson turned into a HUGE hit in the late ‘70s. “Aht Uh Mi Hed” came from his 1974 album Inspiration Information.Despite a host of strong songs and rhythms, the album surprisingly went nowhere upon release.Shuggie is a fascinating character. Playing with his father’s band at 12, recording with Al Kooper at 15 and Zappa at 16, he released his first record at 17.Inspiration Information was released when he was the ripe old age of 21 and unfortunately would be his last proper album. He turned down offers to tour with the Stones at the time as well as to have Quincy Jones produce the follow up to this record, and we still haven’t heard much from him after 36 years. Do yourself a favor and check out the 2001 re-issue on Luaka Bop.
Straight Shooter, the sophomore effortfrom Swan Song super group Bad Company, featured a handful of FM staple songs. Buried among those hits is a musical gem you may have missed. Side two’s opener “Deal with the Preacher” was always a favorite of mine because it features one of the best vocal performances Paul Rogers ever laid down on tape. While there are plenty of songs about a deal with the devil, today’s selection is about a deal with a preacher. But don’t be fooled, “Deal with the Preacher” is anything but religious, in fact this is a burning love song of the first degree. Shortly afterStraight Shooterwas released, the band would embark upon their first US tour.
Joni Mitchell is nuts! At least that’s what her analyst thinks in Joni’s cover of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross’ “Twisted,” itself a cover of a Wardell Grey instrumental. Sure, at age three she got drunk on vodka and passed out, but so what? She enjoyed her crazy hallucinations! She already knew she was a genius, and neither I nor Prince would dispute that. Her analyst thinks she needs treatment, as do Cheech & Chong, who in their backup vocals describe Joni as “flip city” and “boop shoobee.” Yes, Cheech & Chong do backup on a Joni Mitchell record. She IS a mad genius! Boop shoobee! A swinging jazzy arrangement and beautiful joyous vocals make the case that her shrink should leave her be. Crazy rarely sounds so good!
In 1974, Tom Waits released his raucous second album, The Heart of Saturday Night. “New Coat of Paint” invites the listener to a night on the town lit by a “bloodshot moon”. His raspy, bluesy voice is a testament to years of drinking and smoking in the shadows of back alley piano bars. Mr. Waits is a jack-of-all-trades with his crass crooner voice, his beat poetry, and his on-screen antics as an actor. Every night is a Saturday night when you play this saucy number.
Meanwhile Back At The Ranch / Should I Smoke Badfinger
Label: Warner Bros.
Released: 1974
There’s always a tendency to look at the glass being half empty when it comes to Badfinger – which is a shame.I mean, there are certainly enough dark parts to their story, but there’s a giant, bright, shining element to the band: the incredible music. 1974’s Wish You Were Here delivered on every promise Badfinger had made up to this point.I would make the argument that it’s their most solid release.There’s not a weak track, and all four members make strong contributions.The LP’s closer “Meanwhile Back At The Ranch/Should I Smoke” features a Pete Ham first half and a Joey Molland wrap-up.(Not to mention the Average White Band horns!)While it’s sadly prophetic that a song with lyrics like this would be the “last” track released by the classic line-up, it’s more revealing and important that it shows them in all their brilliance. So, barkeep, top that glass off.
“In Love We Grow” features a 21 year old unknown singer by the name of Chaka Khan. The 1974 album Rags to Rufus featured the band’s first major hit “Tell Me Something Good”, but “In Love We Grow” featured Chaka in a way that very few recordings do: just her and the piano. This album and this ballad showcased her incredible depth and range as a singer and established her as a MAJOR new find for female singers in the industry. Chaka was clearly different, she didn’t grow up in “the church” and she idolized Sarah Vaughn. She approached pop funk music in a way that no one had before her.
Let’s have a party! Mr. Springsteen turns 60 this very day! For such a festive event, let’s turn to this tune from the great second album, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. Back in the day (well, the ’74 tour to be exact), Bruce & Co. turned what is a pretty wacky, rockin’ tune on the LP into a sometimes-longer-than-ten-minute slow and slinky version live. It’s interesting twists like the “slow” “E Street Shuffle” and new interpretations of old songs that have kept Bruce fans guessing and delighting in the surprises for over 40 years. (The man first stepped onstage to perform live in 1965!) So turn it up and raise a glass to one of the hardest and longest workin’ men in showbiz. Happy birthday, Bruce!
Happy birthday this week to the great Leonard Cohen, who mesmerized fans in 2009 with his first American tour in 16 years. This track’s taken from his fourth studio LP, 1974’s New Skin For The Old Ceremony, on which Cohen experimented with some more elaborate instrumentation than on his previous records. For this song, he shares vocals with Janis Ian.
Once one of America’s most famous draft resisters, Jesse Winchester is known for his smoky vocals, smooth groove, and sparkling lyrics. Learn To Love It included protest songs and love ballads, with the optimism of the latter balancing the anguish of the former. “Defying Gravity” is one of Winchester’s most cryptic love songs and takes a long look at our tiny universe, mortality, and the puzzle of existence with gentle humor and a melody that’s one of his best. “I live on a big round ball,” he sings, “I never do dream I may fall,” he continues whimsically. “And even if one day I do…I’ll jump off and smile back at you,” he concludes, perfectly capturing the weightless, muzzy feeling of first love.
It’s hard to believe that Michael’s gone. My fingers still hesitate to type those words. Despite the long, tawdry trail of headlines, controversies, schoolyard digs, surgeries, and eccentricities that dogged his every post-Thriller move, the man’s talents should not be overshadowed or denied. He escaped youth’s cruel novelty, maturing from the pint-sized frontman of a talented young band of Gary, Indiana, brothers into a successful solo artist, producer, and self-proclaimed King of Pop. In all incarnations he was nothing less than a cultural force. But in 1974 the 16-year-old was still just getting started. “What You Don’t Know” finds him far beyond pipsqueak bleats of playground love; here he restlessly obsesses over the heartbreaker who walked away. The discotheque scruff, with its brotherly streams of “no” and “know,” fits the desperation perfectly, and Michael pleads his dance-floor case with an ease that will be missed.
One of the leading standard-bearers of power pop in the 1970s, Badfinger learned the style at the feet of the masters as one of the most successful signings to The Beatles’ Apple Records. After their stint on Apple, Badfinger cut a pair of albums for Warner Bros., finishing with Wish You Were Here. Many fans continue to cite that 1974 release as the group’s peak, and there’s no denying that things went downhill from there; with the album mired in legal disputes, principle songwriter Pete Ham killed himself months later. His “Know One Knows” features Badfinger’s usual immaculate multitracked vocals and ringing guitars (with a not-so-usual middle section spoken in Japanese), making for a particularly tuneful reminder of the cruel vagaries of the music business.
As an advocate for social consciousness, Curtis Mayfield was pushing an agenda of lovemaking as a stepping stone to peace and understanding with “So In Love,” an uplifting, sublime stoned-soul cut from his 1975 album There’s No Place Like America Today, one of the only songs from it that charted—Top 10 R&B and #67 on the Pop charts. A gospel-drenched, whirring Hammond sets the mid-tempo vibe while a beautiful, punchy horn arrangement carries the song to Mayfield’s distinct falsetto, burning through lines like “You do so many things with a smiling face. Every time we kiss, it’s such a pleasant taste.” Curtis Mayfield, an architect of the Chicago soul sound, set the bar so high that few local recordings lacked the sophisticated and sweet vocal style he helped define, an influence that is still heard in modern R&B.
Buddy Holly had already gone to the glory when his version of this tune—written by Eisenhower-era teen idol Paul Anka—hit the charts in 1959. Linda Ronstadt, however, was just starting to hit her stride when she covered it a quarter century later on Heart Like A Wheel, her first #1 full-length. While the California rock pin-up bared her teeth on country-rock crossover classics “You’re No Good” and “When Will I Be Loved,” here she opts for a softer approach that stops well short of her later saccharine tendencies. A quiet resolve informs her vocals, comfortably nestled between plaintive harmonica and steel guitar parts. In a world rife with angry breakup songs, this remains a masterpiece of understated dignity. One suspects Holly would have approved.
After leaving The Byrds in 1966 for reasons that included a fear of airplanes (think about it), Gene Clark embarked on one of the more interesting and underappreciated solo paths of any folk-rocker who managed to escape the ’60s. The music ranges from familiar Byrds-y jangle, sprinkled with some proto-country rock moves (Gene Clark With The Gosdin Brothers) to adventures in bluegrass with über-picker Doug Dillard (The Fantastic Expedition Of Dillard & Clark and Through The Morning, Through The Night) to the barebones and lyrically poignant (White Light). The recurring theme tying all these groundbreaking albums together? Bad luck. Nothing he ever recorded managed to supersede his feathered past and, although it was followed by a handful of fine releases, 1974’s No Other, which includes this track, sounds like Clark’s last chance. Every drop of blood in his body is on this album.
Maria Muldaur’s love affair with American roots music went public with 1974’s Waitress In A Donut Shop, which danced between delicate folk, swing jazz, and tough-girl barroom blues. Clarence Ashley’s “Honey Babe Blues” is straight-ahead “old-timey” acoustic blues, brought to vivid life with David Lindley’s slide guitar and with flat-picking as pure as Blue Ridge mountain spring water by the masters of the plectrum, Doc Watson and his son Merle (that’s Doc imploring Muldaur to “sing it, gal, sing it”). In fact, Muldaur tells us, she first absorbed the song when Doc and Clarence picked it in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse in the early ’60s. “It was one of the first tunes I learned to sing and play on the fiddle,” she says, “back when I was a young beatnik babe falling in love with all kinds of old-timey and Appalachian music.”
