Although a mere footnote in Southern soul history, Jackie Moore’s Sweet Charlie Babe yielded a fistful of killer sister soul and the hit “Precious, Precious.” Buried toward the end of the first side lies this Eddie Hinton-penned classic, which always stuck out as one of my favorites. Even with the cool, mid-tempo Miami funk production (the album was recorded at Criteria with Jackie’s cousin, Miami hitmaker Dave Crawford), the Hinton-influenced gospel-style guitar wailing and the solid, punchy horn arrangement prove you can take the song out of Muscle Shoals, but you can’t take the Shoals out of a song. It might not get you dancing, but then again, the hip-grinding sounds of “Cover Me” were not meant to be enjoyed on the dance floor.
Arthur Alexander, who had the first hit out of Muscle Shoals and got a nod from The Beatles when they cut his song “Anna,” disappeared in the late ’70s. “In The Middle Of It All,” a heartbreaking country-soul ballad about his own marriage, was originally recorded for Alexander’s 1972 Warner debut. This unpretentious, stripped-down arrangement from his bittersweet 1993 comeback, Lonely Just Like Me, retells enduring the miserable situation: “. . . my life is about to fall. . . . Sadness has found it, and I’m in the middle of it all.” The production is raw for a ’90s comeback recording, but Alexander’s top-notch delivery nearly trumps the original, making his mark once more before passing away later that year.
Scaggs’ lone Atlantic LP from 1969 was cut in Muscle Shoals at the famed 3614 Jackson Highway Studio. For an album with so much Southern muscle, it contains more deep soul than pop, but what else would you expect from the Eddie Hinton-era Swampers, including session legend Duane Allman, some of Memphis’s best horn players, and a young, pre-Grateful Dead Donna Jean (Thatcher) Godchaux? Driven by Barry Beckett’s haunting keyboard fills and Hinton’s Shoals-defining guitar licks, this bit of slow-burning Southern soul could ease the pain of any broken heart, and like other songs of the genre, offers glimpses of affirmation and hope. If Scaggs doesn’t make “your life shine,” the sounds forged in the quad cities of northwestern Alabama will.
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.
Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child Jimmy Scott
Label: Atlantic
Released: 1969
Jazz standards have never been my thing, but hearing Little Jimmy Scott belt through this self-arranged, Joel Dorn-produced 1969 version of “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” nearly brings me to tears. Scott was born with Kallmann syndrome, a condition that delays puberty, and his boy soprano has been preserved to this day. Viewed as childlike and effeminate, Scott was taken advantage of throughout his career. His mother died in a car wreck when he was 13, so she never shared in his success or was able to nurture him through these hardships. One could imagine Scott aching through every humble word over the sophisticated, uptown sounds of Junior Mance, Ron Carter, and Bruno Carr.
Given the political climate of the last eight years, I was expecting a new batch of counterculture protest songs like Wasted Youth’s “Reagan’s In” or John Prine’s “Sam Stone,” but it seems we’re stuck with the classics that are disturbingly relevant today. One such gem is Dr. John’s “The Patriotic Flag Waver,” from the misunderstood second album, Babylon, released in 1969 during his drug-addled, psychedelic voodoo-shaman era. Opening with children singing the familiar “My Country ’Tis Of Thee,” a military reveille drum-driven, laid-back New Orleans funk shuffle ushers in the Night Tripper growling through lines of American hypocrisy, the horrors of blind nationalism, the need to consume, and the reality that these are our freedoms as Americans. Swap out lines about the Black Panthers, Communism, and Vietnam for NSA, freedom fries, and Iraq and we haven’t strayed too far.
Like other veterans of the early R&B era, Esther Phillips teetered on the edge of crossing over by recording her take on country, pop, and jazz standards. Set Me Free is a peculiar collection culled from her last Atlantic sessions in Miami, material recorded in Memphis, and several unreleased early-’60s New York sides. From one of the New York sessions, “Hello Walls” is a stand-out treatment of the Willie Nelson-penned song, where the country shuffle she perfected on earlier recordings easily slides into the R&B bump Phillips honed throughout her early career with Johnny Otis. It can be argued that soul music wouldn’t have evolved without country, but hearing Esther Phillips wail through the first line of this pre-soul-era 1964 track leaves little doubt that this is true.
Interest in Don Covay’s mid-’60s sides usually revolves around whether or not Jimi Hendrix recorded on the sessions, but Covay alone cut some of the greatest genre-defining music of the soul era. His recordings were driven by his guitar-based songwriting and his signature overdubbed solo backup vocals. “Take This Hurt Off Me” is the follow-up hit to his Atlantic debut, “Mercy Mercy,” but remains number one in my heart. Although cut in New York City in 1964, it’s drenched with gritty Southern overtones of gospel and blues, which were still evolving in form themselves. Hard-hitting drum breaks by Bernard Purdie reign in the pleading cries of Covay’s broken heart and his testifyin’ guitar wails. If you need, I mean NEED, some love healing, the strain in both vocal tracks will set you straight.
Forget what you thought was electric blues: Let Buddy and Junior “rap strong and rap you long . . . let them turn you on” to the floor-filling sounds of this track, off Play The Blues, a record that best captures the raw energy of the duo. Cut at Criteria Studios in 1970 with Tom Dowd and Eric Clapton, following the Derek And The Dominos sessions, the album features Dr. John, who was in Miami finishing The Sun, Moon & Herbs (featuring Clapton). The Guy-penned “Man Of Many Words” is an energetic piece of hard soul and leans on Guy’s deep Southern roots. His confident delivery evokes the gritty drive of Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle.” And listen as longtime Chicago bluesman A.C. Reed’s greasy sax riffs, alongside Dr John’s buried piano rolls, fill out the vigorous, funky bass line and Guy’s slinky blues riffs.
