Love Land Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band
Label: Warner Bros.
Released: 1969
In the early 1950’s, Charles Wright started out his musical carrer playing guitar and singing in a number of Los Angeles Doo-Wop bands. A few years later, after a brief stint as an A&R for Del-Fi Records, he ditched the Doo Wop and the day job to form Charles Wright and the Wright Sounds (eventually becoming Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band). At first, Charles and his gang stuck to R&B covers, but by the late ’60s the band found their creative groove and created a number of funktastic originals like “Express Yourself” and today’s feel good tune “Love Land”.
I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing James Brown
Label: Polydor
Released: 1969
An obvious choice for Black History Month is James Brown’s 1968 hit “Say It Loud– I’m Black and I’m Proud,” but we don’t go for the obvious at DFD. From 1969 comes “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself).” While Brown brings the funk here, the lyrics are equally strong. He lays out the basics of the African-American civil rights struggle with a call for equal opportunities. He demands schools teach a more racially-inclusive history. He encourages youth to stay in school, as they are the future. He empowers listeners to strive for self-reliance and aim high, deep words from a man who was born poor and earned his riches by being the hardest-working man in show business. James Brown: teacher, visionary, innovator, game-changer, genius, activist, leader, inspiration, icon, legend, timeless.
Aretha Franklin is a force of Nature, a gift from God. Her fierce, joyous, ferociously sexual voice encompasses gospel, blues, pop and jazz, effortlessly leaping from growling lows to glass-shattering highs in pitch-perfect two-octave bounds. From her 1967 Atlantic Records debut, across five albums (four Top 5) and nine singles (eight Top Ten), and through the summer of 1968 (when Time magazine honored her as the first Black woman on its cover), Franklin soared to the summit of American popular culture, her sweet, smiling visage among the most recognizable Black faces in the country alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Cosby and Harry Belafonte. Franklin’s apocalyptic “Respect” (a #1 hit in 1967) alone inspired more Black Pride and perked up more white ears than a month of marches and sit-ins. In the midst of all this, opening Side Two of Aretha Now, her fourth LP, awaits the subtle gem, “You’re A Sweet, Sweet Man.” Riding atop drummer Roger Hawkins’ spare, funky back-beat, Franklin settles effortlessly into a no-nonsense, soul-deep groove, her electrifying moans and spine-chilling swoops sending sugar to her lover as the Sweet Inspirations lay down some honey in the background.
Having already displayed her vocal chops with soul, funk, ballads and disco, Chaka Khan experiments with jazz on “And the Melody Still Lingers On,” her interpretation of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia.” Featuring Herbie Hancock and Gillespie himself, as well as a Charlie Parker sample, Chaka and producer Arif Mardin add lyrics that pay tribute to the classic original composition. When it arrived in 1942 “it was new and very strange” but subsequently “paved the way for generations from Coltrane to Stevie.” “The past you can’t ignore, the torch is lit, we’ll keep the flame,” vows Chaka, at once saluting the past while being very much in the present. The performance also foretold her future – one of Khan’s 22 Grammy nominations would be for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1983. Sixty-eight years after the debut of “Night in Tunisia” and twenty-nine years after Chaka’s version, its melody still lingers on.
Film producer Sig Shore brought the world Superfly in 1972. In 1975, he stepped behind the camera for That’s The Way Of The World, a movie that starred a young Harvey Keitel, and featured rising R&B act Earth Wind & Fire. E,W&F played “The Group”, a band caught in the middle of record company politics with Keitel as the producer who believes in and fights for them. And the music. The soundtrack, provided by Maurice White and the band, was released as Earth, Wind & Fire’s 6th album and went Gold almost immediately – eventually selling over 3 million copies. In addition to hits like “Shining Star,” “Reasons” and the title cut, it included dazzling tracks like “Happy Feelin’”, which features Maurice White on kalimba, an African thumb piano. (Kalimba is also the name of White’s production company.) Kalimba is a Bantu word which means “little music”, but there’s nothing little about E,W&F or this song. And, even though the album was a smash, the film disappeared into obscurity. That’s the way of the world, I guess…
With the help of Teddy Riley, Keith Sweat laid a foundation for the New Jack Swing movement with 1987’s “I Want Her.” Spacious, reverb-laden kick drums provide ‘street’ bounce and digitally synthesized snares lend a hip-hop edge to mellifluous R&B vocals on the first New Jack Swing song to hit the Billboard charts. Topping at #1 on the R&B chart and #5 on the Hot 100 chart, this song spawned an era. From Bobby Brown’s “Don’t Be Cruel” to Paula Abdul’s “The Way That You Love Me,” with many songs in between, including most of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous album, many artists would further embrace and build upon the New Jack Swing sound.
One of the unsung heroes of Stax Records throughout the 1960s and into the next decade, William Bell’s assured, eminently soulful pipes could charm the birds right out of the trees and knocked many a lady off her feet. The doo-wop-trained Memphis native waxed one of the label’s seminal early releases with his spine-chilling original “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” its meager 1962 chart placement by no means indicative of its massive Southern soul appeal. Bell came back with another stunner, the mini-soap opera “Any Other Way.” He runs into a two-faced friend on the street who’s checking up on him for his ex-girlfriend’s amusement, but Bell’s too proud to admit he’s heartbroken. So he tells the cad to relay a message: He wouldn’t have it any other way. The arrangement sways with a tinge of Latin panache; Chuck Jackson liked it well enough to cut a muscular competing version in 1963. But William’s moody treatment rings our bell!
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.
Donny Hathaway’s name will probably always be topped on the ’70s soul marquee by those other legends such as Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, and Al Green. He achieved his greatest commercial success with duet partner Roberta Flack, but recorded only three proper studio albums prior to his apparent suicide in 1979. After working as an arranger and pianist for other artists, including Mayfield’s Impressions, Hathaway released his debut solo album, Everything Is Everything, in 1970. This, the opening track, is one of his finest, showcasing everything that makes him one of the decade’s hidden treasures: earthy grooves, gospelly backup, and most of all, that voice! And for arrangement nerds, go ahead and stack its horn swells up against anything happening at the top of that marquee. Bah-nah-nah-naaah-nah-nah-naaaaah!
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.
It’s been something of a double-edged sword for Eddie Floyd. Enjoying a monumental smash with his Stax classic “Knock On Wood” meant that its immediate follow-up, “Raise Your Hand,” would be unfairly relegated to comparative obscurity, even if it did chart respectably in 1967. It’s time to rectify that injustice once and for all: “Raise Your Hand” packs the same knockout punch as its more celebrated predecessor. Cowriter Steve Cropper tosses in a nifty little Latin-tinged guitar intro before his MG’s bandmates jump in and dig deep into Memphis soul soil behind Floyd’s infectious vocal. There’s a party going on here as Al Jackson, Jr., in all likelihood the consummate R&B drummer of his era, does his usual spectacular job of keeping the groove rock-steady. Wave those arms in the air and make Eddie happy!
