Sam & Dave - May I Baby

 #Sam & Dave #Sam Moore & Dave Prater #soul #R&B #Southern soul #Atlantic/Stax #Double Dynamite #The Sultans of Sweat #1960s

Sam Moore and Dave Prater made for one of the most successful Soul acts of the 1960s, racking up a string of hard-grooving hits with a tag-team vocal style that owed a debt to the church music both men had grown up singing. Solo performers at the outset, the two southerners - Moore from Florida, Prater from Georgia - formed a duo in 1961, after meeting at a club in Miami. After bouncing between various labels and issuing a series of singles that received regional airplay but failed to ignite, the pair’s moment came when they were signed by Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records in 1964, and Wexler sent them to Stax Records in Memphis, to record with the writing and production team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter. In addition to supplying them with songs and pairing them with house band Booker T. and the M.Gs (as well as the Stax horn section, the Mar-Keys), Hayes loosened up the singers’ straight R&B approach, bringing to the fore a wilder, call-and-response style derived from Gospel music.  From: https://teachrock.org/people/sam-and-dave/

Orla Gartland - I Go Crazy

#Orla Gartland #indie folk #contemporary folk #folk pop #R&B #alternative rock #indie rock #singer-songwriter #music video 

Irish musician Orla Gartland combines singer/songwriter folk and elements of traditional Irish music with bedroom pop sensibilities. Hailing from Dublin, Gartland was taught to play violin, fiddle, and other traditional instruments at the age of 5, but she found her true calling when she picked up the guitar at 12. Within a year she was uploading cover songs online, eventually branching out and creating her own tracks. At 17, she had released her debut single, "Devil on My Shoulder," landing her support slots for Ryan O'Shaughnessy and Nina Nesbitt on their respective U.K. tours. Her debut EP, Roots, surfaced the following year, and she toured the U.K. with five headline shows. Later the same year, Gartland contributed the song "Cast Your Stone" to the Simple Things album in support of suicide prevention in Ireland. After the release of her second EP, 2015's Lonely People, Gartland relocated to London and stepped back from writing for a short period, returning in 2019 with a third EP, Why Am I Like This?. She joined Irish Women in Harmony in 2020, working with them to record a version of "Dreams" in support of Safe Ireland, a domestic abuse charity. Later the same year she released her fourth EP, Freckle Season, which she combined with her previous EP to create Why Is Freckle Season Like This. It led to placements on the BBC Three/Hulu series Normal People. Gartland's first proper album, Woman on the Internet, was recorded with help from producers including Tom Stafford and the Vaccines' Pete Robertson. It arrived on her label, New Friends, in August of 2021.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/orla-gartland-mn0003202129/biography

The Jeff Beck Group - I Ain't Superstitious

 #The Jeff Beck Group #Jeff Beck #Rod Stewart #blues rock # hard rock #British blues rock #British R&B #heavy blues rock #proto-metal #classic rock #1960s

Despite being the premiere of heavy metal, Jeff Beck's Truth has never quite carried its reputation the way the early albums by Led Zeppelin did, or even Cream's two most popular LPs, mostly as a result of the erratic nature of the guitarist's subsequent work. Time has muted some of its daring, radical nature, elements of which were appropriated by practically every metal band (and most arena rock bands) that followed. Truth was almost as groundbreaking and influential a record as the first Beatles, Rolling Stones, or Who albums. Its attributes weren't all new - Cream and Jimi Hendrix had been moving in similar directions - but the combination was: the wailing, heart-stoppingly dramatic vocalizing by Rod Stewart, the thunderous rhythm section of Ron Wood's bass and Mickey Waller's drums, and Beck's blistering lead guitar, which sounds like his amp is turned up to 13 and ready to short out. Beck opens the proceedings in a strikingly bold manner, using his old Yardbirds hit "Shapes of Things" as a jumping-off point, deliberately rebuilding the song from the ground up so it sounds closer to Howlin' Wolf. There are lots of unexpected moments on this record: a bone-pounding version of Willie Dixon's "You Shook Me"; a version of Jerome Kern's "Ol' Man River" done as a slow electric blues; a brief plunge into folk territory with a solo acoustic guitar version of "Greensleeves" (which was intended as filler but audiences loved); the progressive blues of "Beck's Bolero"; the extended live "Blues Deluxe"; and "I Ain't Superstitious," a blazing reworking of another Willie Dixon song.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/truth-mw0000262744

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Hot Burrito #2

 #The Flying Burrito Brothers #Chris Hillman #Gram Parsons #country rock #rock & roll #R&B #soul #psychedelic country #1960s #1970s

The Flying Burrito Brothers was an American popular musical group of the late 1960s and ’70s that was one of the chief influences on the development of country rock. The original members were Chris Hillman, “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow, Gram Parsons, and Chris Ethridge. Later members included Michael Clarke, Bernie Leadon, and Rick Roberts. Parsons and Hillman, former members of the Byrds, founded the Flying Burrito Brothers in Los Angeles in 1968, appropriating the name from a group of local musicians who gathered for jam sessions. Earlier that year, Parsons had been the driving force behind the Byrds’ pioneering country rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The Burritos’ first album, The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969), also displayed Parsons’s guiding hand: he contributed most of the songs and shaped its combination of classic country and western - punctuated by Kleinow’s pedal-steel guitar - and hard-driving southern California rock. Even after Parsons left the Burritos in 1970 (replaced by Roberts), his songs continued to appear on the group’s albums, including the live Last of the Red Hot Burritos (1972), which also prominently featured bluegrass musicians. Numerous other personnel changes - including the arrival and departure of Leadon, who helped found the Eagles - and the group’s limited commercial appeal outside a small, devoted following contributed to its dissolution by 1973. Kleinow and Ethridge re-formed the band in 1975, and there were other short-lived incarnations into the 1990s. Parsons is often called the originator of country rock. Although he disdained that moniker, his work provided the link from straight-ahead country performers like Merle Haggard to the Eagles, who epitomized 1970s country rock. Numerous performers have cited Parsons as a major influence, notably the singers Emmylou Harris (who collaborated with him in 1973) and Elvis Costello and the alternative rocker Evan Dando.  From: https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Flying-Burrito-Brothers

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing

#Marvin Gaye #Tammi Terrell #Motown #R&B #soul #gospel #ballads #1960s

Over a span of just 12 months beginning in April 1967, the duo of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell enjoyed a string of four straight hits with some of the greatest love songs ever recorded at Motown Records. Sadly, only the first two of those four hits were released while Tammi Terrell was still well enough to perform them. In October 1967, just six months after the release of the now-classic “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Terrell collapsed onstage during a live performance at Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College. Two-and-a-half years later, on March 16, 1970, Tammi Terrell died of complications from the malignant brain tumor that caused her 1967 collapse. Terrell’s illness was at first downplayed by the Motown Records publicity machine while new material by the duo of Gaye and Terrell was still being released. Many of the singles released under their names were created by laying Marvin Gaye’s vocals over existing recordings of Terrell made prior to her illness. Gaye scored one of his biggest solo hits ever during this period with “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” but following Terrell’s death in 1970, he stopped performing live for the next three years.  From: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/motown-soul-singer-tammi-terrell-dies

Laura Nyro - Stoned Soul Picnic

#Laura Nyro #blue-eyed soul #R&B #piano rock #jazz rock #folk rock #alternative pop #singer-songwriter #1960s #1970s

Whatever role Laura Nyro chose to play - earth mother, soul sister, angel of the Bronx subways - she committed to it. With a soaring, open-hearted voice and ingeniously crafted compositions, Nyro transformed a range of influences into her own kind of art song. She made vertiginous shifts from hushed reveries to ecstatic gospel-driven shout-ups with an intensity and a courage that, as Elton John would point out, left its mark on many contemporaries who achieved greater commercial success. As the music of the 1960s reached a climax, no one else merged the new songwriting freedoms pioneered by Bob Dylan with the pop sensibility of the Brill Building tunesmiths to such intriguing effect. As a teenager, she wrote And When I Die and Stoney End, songs that became hits for other artists. Her own enigmatically titled albums - Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat - showed a precociously sophisticated sensibility. Later, rejecting commercial pressures, she would help push the boundaries of popular music by writing songs celebrating motherhood, female sexuality and her menstrual cycle. In the hearts of admirers, she kindled a loyalty fierce enough to withstand the semi-obscurity into which she had fallen by the time of her death from ovarian cancer in 1997, at 49. The dimming of her fame had been gradual and, to an extent, self-actuated. If her early songs seemed to give listeners the thrill of overhearing her innermost thoughts, she lived her adult life edging towards the spotlight before withdrawing to cope with personal upheavals, then re-emerging years later with songs that confounded expectations by explicitly affirming new commitments to radical feminism, animal rights and environmental activism.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jul/27/laura-nyro-the-phenomenal-singers-singer-the-60s-overlooked

surrey on

go somewhere, travel (from the ancient song 'surrey down to the stoned soul picnic', written by laura nyro (R.I.P.) and performed by the insipid 5th dimension)

a surrey is a 4-wheeled 2-seated horse-drawn carriage

lets' surrey on down to the bluntsman's and procure some 'goodness'

i'm going to surrey on over to jane's for a 'taste'

From: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=surrey%20on

The Small Faces - Afterglow

 #The Small Faces #Steve Marriott #hard rock #British R&B #British psychedelia #mod #British invasion #1960s #pre-Faces #pre-Humble Pie

There was no shortage of good psychedelic albums emerging from England in 1967-1968, but Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake is special even within their ranks. The Small Faces had already shown a surprising adaptability to psychedelia with the single "Itchycoo Park" and much of their other 1967 output, but Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake pretty much ripped the envelope. British bands had an unusual approach to psychedelia from the get-go, often preferring to assume different musical "personae" on their albums, either feigning actual "roles" in the context of a variety show (as on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album), or simply as storytellers in the manner of the Pretty Things on S.F. Sorrow, or actor/performers as on the Who's Tommy. The Small Faces tried a little bit of all of these approaches on Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, but they never softened their sound. Side one's material, in particular, would not have been out of place on any other Small Faces release - "Afterglow (Of Your Love)" and "Rene" both have a pounding beat from Kenny Jones, and Ian McLagan's surging organ drives the former while his economical piano accompaniment embellishes the latter; and Steve Marriott's crunching guitar highlights "Song of a Baker." Marriott singing has him assuming two distinct "roles," neither unfamiliar - the Cockney upstart on "Rene" and "Lazy Sunday," and the diminutive soul shouter on "Afterglow (Of Your Love)" and "Song of a Baker." Some of side two's production is more elaborate, with overdubbed harps and light orchestration here and there, and an array of more ambitious songs, all linked by a narration by comic dialect expert Stanley Unwin, about a character called "Happiness Stan." The core of the sound, however, is found in the pounding "Rollin' Over," which became a highlight of the group's stage act during its final days - the song seems lean and mean with a mix in which Ronnie Lane's bass is louder than the overdubbed horns. Even "Mad John," which derives from folk influences, has a refreshingly muscular sound on its acoustic instruments. Overall, this was the ballsiest-sounding piece of full-length psychedelia to come out of England, and it rode the number one spot on the U.K. charts for six weeks in 1968, though not without some controversy surrounding advertisements by Immediate Records that parodied the Lord's Prayer. Still, Ogdens' was the group's crowning achievement - it had even been Marriott's hope to do a stage presentation of Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, though a television special might've been more in order.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/ogdens-nut-gone-flake-mw0000587922

Labelle - Lady Marmalade

 #Labelle #Patti LaBelle #R&B #soul #funk #funk rock #glam rock #deep soul #pop rock #1970s

Labelle was an American girl group who were a popular vocal group of the 1960s and 1970s. The group was formed after the disbanding of two rival girl groups in the area around Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, and Trenton, in New Jersey: the Ordettes and the Del-Capris, forming as a new version of the former group, then later changing their name to the Blue Belles. The founding members were Patti LaBelle (formerly Patricia Holte), Cindy Birdsong, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash. As the Bluebelles, and later Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, the group found success with ballads in the doo-wop genre: "Down the Aisle (The Wedding Song)", "You'll Never Walk Alone", and "Over the Rainbow". After Birdsong departed to join The Supremes in 1967, the band, following the advice of Ready Steady Go! producer Vicki Wickham, changed its look, musical direction, and style to reform as Labelle in 1971. Their funk rock recordings of that period became cult favorites for their brash interpretation of rock and roll and for dealing with subjects and matters that were not typically touched by female black groups. Finally, after adapting glam rock and wearing outlandish space-age and glam costumes, the band found success with the proto-disco smash hit "Lady Marmalade" in 1974, leading to their album Nightbirds, which achieved gold success. They were the first contemporary pop group and first black pop band to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House. They were also the first black vocal group to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labelle

The Yardbirds - Turn Into Earth

 #The Yardbirds #Eric Clapton #Jeff Beck #Jimmy Page #blues rock #psychedelic rock #British R&B #British blues revival #1960s

The Yardbirds put out their strongest album ever in 1966 as well as their only album of all original material. It originally had an eponymous title but has come to be known as Roger the Engineer because of the sketch (drawn by guitarist Chris Dreja) on the album’s cover of Roger Cameron, the album’s engineer at Advision Studios in London. The album was co-produced by bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, who left the band shortly after and was replaced by Jimmy Page, who filled in on bass until Dreja mastered the instrument and Page returned to his primary instrument, the electric guitar. But the central influence that shaped the sound of this album was the innovation and experimentation of lead guitarist Jeff Beck. His heavy blues and guitar distortion is considered by many to be the earliest precursor to heavy metal. Beck joined the Yardbirds in May 1965 after founding guitarist Eric Clapton decided to leave the band. With Beck, the group began to expand their heavy blues base into different sects of rock and roll including unexplored areas of psychedelia, middle-aged chants, and Indian-influenced music. Primarily a singles-oriented band, each 7-inch release by The Yardbirds added new dimensions to the band’s sound or expanded on the ideas of the previous single. With Beck’s first full album with the group and the band’s first attempt at an album of all-original material, the band brought this experimentation to a new level, while still holding on to the core of blues roots.  From: https://www.classicrockreview.com/2011/10/1966-the-yardbirds/

Laura Love - Bad Feeling

 #Laura Love #folk #Afro-Celtic #Americana #Afro-Carribean #folk rock #funk #R&B #world music #singer-songwriter

Over the past several years, Laura Love has become quite acclaimed in the Northwest music scene as an unparalleled vocalist, bassist, and songwriter. Love's style is a synthesis of inner-city funk and folk-ish sensibility. One of the most difficult tasks for a musician is to find an apt label for her music; folk/funk, African/Appalachian, and House/Celtic have been bandied about for Laura Love. Whatever you choose to call it, Love's original music is at once fresh, def, and rooted in tradition. Although a popular headliner in her own right, she has opened for John Lee Hooker, Lyle Lovett, Bo Diddley, Karla Bonoff, and Elayne Boosler and been invited to perform at a number of folk and eclectic music festivals. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Laura Love began her career at the age of 16, singing jazz and pop standards at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. Since then, Love has played in a blues-grunge outfit, in a duo, trio, and in the funny feminist foursome, Venus Envy. Love has released three albums: Menstrual Hut (1989), Z Therapy (1990), and Pangaea (1993), all on her own label, Octoroon Biography. Shum Ticky followed in 1998 and Fourteen Days arrived in 2000 on Zoe Records.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/laura-love-mn0000116761/biography

Singer-songwriter Laura Love isn't yet a household name, but she's done pretty well for an African-American woman who grew up in abject poverty in Nebraska - a place where other black faces like hers were few and far between. She's got her own flavor of music she calls folk-funk, and has sold more than 200,000 records over the span of her short and very independent career. Her latest creative blast is a combination memoir and CD of songs inspired by the trials during her young life, You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes. Love's life story isn't an easy one, but her words and music convey a wry wit and deep sense of joy and humor. Almost all of the songs on the You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes CD were composed at the same time she wrote her memoir. The book reveals Love's often shocking struggle against adversity - her mother's mental illness, the family's deep poverty, her stays in foster homes and other setbacks. But instead of hitting back, Love's words and music recall the gratitude, joy and sense of humor that characterize her outlook on life.  From: https://www.npr.org/2004/08/26/3871856/laura-love-two-for-easter 

Stevie Wonder - Living for the City

 #Stevie Wonder #Motown #soul #R&B #pop soul #funk #rock #gospel #jazz #progressive soul #1970s

Inspired in part by the fatal shooting in New York of a ten-year-old black boy by a white plain-clothes policeman, the audacious centerpiece of Stevie Wonder’s experimental 1973 album was a seven-and-a-half-minute meditation on the brutality of black America: Living for the City. Just as Wonder’s saccharine, middle-of-the-road smash hit You Are the Sunshine of My Life was selling millions around the world, the virtuoso former child star was busy in the studio pioneering the sound of black music by recording a concept album: Innervisions. Expanding on the ambitions of Talking Book the year before, it would secure his transformation from Motown pop star to legendary artist and activist.
Meanwhile, early on the morning of April 28th, 1973, Clifford “Cleophus” Glover was walking with his 51 year-old stepfather along New York Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, New York when a white Buick Skylark drew up alongside them and a white man got out of the car shouting “You black son of a bitch!” and started shooting at them. They ran for their lives, but Cliffie did not make it. Police Officer Thomas Shea claimed that Add Armstead and his stepson resembled two known thieves – thieves who had been described as around 24 years of age and about six feet tall. Shea, who became the first police officer in almost 50 years to be charged with committing murder while on duty, claimed that the child had reached for a gun. Forensic evidence proved that the ten-year-old had been shot in the back; no evidence of a gun was ever found. Thomas Shea lost his job on the force, but in June 1974 a jury of 11 white men and one black woman found him not guilty of murder and he walked away a free man. Riots had followed the initial shooting and worse still came when the verdict was announced. Hundreds took to the streets. White children playing baseball were attacked by angry rioters on a local playing field. Cars were turned over and burned and two police officers were injured by rioters.
Stevie Wonder attended the funeral of Cleophus Glover, and sang for the congregation as the procession left the church. “I have followed the case,” he told Jet magazine. “It brings America down another notch in my book. I hope that black people realise how serious things are and do something about it”. This was the burning issue on Stevie Wonder’s mind as he wrote the epic Living for The City. With an infectious funk swagger – and complete with authentic street noise sound effects, spoken dialogue and the poignant slamming of a jail door – Living For The City contains a cinematic intermission that tells the fictional story of a wide-eyed innocent who comes to the big city to make his fortune and finds himself quickly duped into becoming a drug runner, arrested by the police and sentenced to ten years behind bars. There is not a lot of hope in this tale of the boy from “Hard Times, Mississippi” – his dreams are crushed and any prospects of a productive future along with them. Far from finding a welcoming community and useful work, he is plunged into a heartless ghetto populated by unscrupulous gangsters in a city controlled by a draconian white establishment. As the story concludes we hear a jailer yelling: “Get in the cell, nigger!” brutally underlining the unfeeling institutionalized racism. There is no happy ending in this potted saga. As Stevie gruffly sings: “If we don’t change, the world will soon be over.”  From: https://www.musicto.com/active/fight-evil/living-for-the-city-stevie-wonder/

Dr. John - Desitively Bonnaroo

 #Dr. John #Allen Toussaint #The Meters #blues #jazz #soul #funk #R&B #New Orleans #psychedelic voodoo rock #1970s

Dr. John further defines an ass-shaking new synthesis on Desitively Bonnaroo. Even today, there’s really no roadmap for the crazy-eyed co-mingling of R&B, jazz, island beats, blues, boogie funk and hoodoo splashed across this LP, recorded alongside fellow New Orleans legends Allen Toussaint and the Meters. At the same time, the grooves here are so sleekly ingratiating as to be therapeutic. Desitively Bonnaroo doesn’t aspire to the brash, edgy soul of contemporaries like George Clinton or the Ohio Players. No, it’s too sophisticated, too mysterious, for that. Which is probably why this 1974 cluster-funk didn’t sell nearly as well as its predecessor, Dr. John’s break-though In the Right Place. Stirred together at Allen Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Studios in New Orleans, Desitively Bonnaroo is the sound of a group of musicians in perfect sync. And, yeah, having a ball. Dr. John has rarely sounded more loose, more committed. “High steppin’ mama!” he crows at one point, with a singing voice like a knotty live-oak knee. “Better keep on foxin’ with your foxy self!” Nearby, the slinky, coolly salacious backup singers match Dr. John and Co., wail for wail: “Give me what you got for me!” (Named after a south Louisiana expression meaning roughly “better than the best,” ‘Desitively Bonnaroo’ later gave a Tennessee-based music event its name).  From: https://somethingelsereviews.com/2011/02/19/dr-john-with-the-meters-desitively-bonnaroo-1974/

The Temptations - (I Know) I'm Losing You

 #The Temptations #David Ruffin #Eddie Kendricks #Motown #R&B #soul #funk #psychedelic soul #1960s

The Temptations were an American vocal group noted for their smooth harmonies and intricate choreography. Recording primarily for Motown Records, they were among the most popular performers of soul music in the 1960s and ’70s. Originally called the Elgins, the Temptations were formed in 1961 from the coupling of two vocal groups based in Detroit - the Primes, originally from Alabama, and the Distants. That same year they signed with Motown. After a slow start - with the addition of David Ruffin and largely under the direction of songwriter-producers Smokey Robinson and Norman Whitfield - the Temptations turned out a string of romantic hits. Bass Melvin Franklin, baritone Otis Williams, and occasional lead Paul Williams provided complex harmonies, and the two regular lead singers, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, strikingly complemented each other. Ruffin had a remarkable sandpaper baritone and Kendricks a soaring tenor. Paragons of sleek fashion and practitioners of athletic choreography, the Temptations epitomized sophisticated cool. In the late 1960s they shifted to a more funk-oriented sound and to more socially conscious material when Whitfield became the group’s producer and principal songwriter.  From: https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Temptations

The list of Motown songs based around a guitar riff is a short one, but this masterpiece should be at the top of that one and several others. Producer Norman Whitfield wrote the song with Edward Holland of Holland-Dozier-Holland, but the Temps’ road manager Cornelius Grant supplied the signature guitar line. Grant’s contribution not only got him co-writing credit, but earned him the spot to play on the record – that’s him you hear on guitar in the song. The Temptations’ classic line-up was in full effect for this number. David Ruffin nails the vocals. The rasp in his voice makes it sound like he’s been up all night drinking, smoking and thinking about where this relationship has gone. When the rest of the Temps chime in with “looosing you” it sounds like a desperate cry echoing out of the abyss. The subtleties in Whitfield’s arrangement take center stage in the last minute of the song, as the playing of Eddie “Bongo” Brown and the Funk Brothers horn section take over. Check out that great trombone line and how the long low note underscores the desperate feel of the song. You can hear Ruffin’s world collapsing as the horns ramp up and dance with the voices as the song fades out. The gravity of the situation would be dire if it weren’t so easy to dance to. Seizing on the rock elements of the song, Rare Earth cut a 10 minute cover for their 1970 “Ecology” album. Motown cut the track down to three minutes and released it as a single that summer where it peaked at No. 7 on the pop charts, one slot higher than the Temptations’ original. The greatest bar band of all time, the Faces, cut their version a year later. It was also released as a single and appeared on Rod Stewart’s blockbuster “Every Picture Tells A Story” album.  From: https://joelfrancis.com/2009/06/17/the-temptations-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9Ci-know-i%E2%80%99m-losing-you%E2%80%9D/

Edwin Starr - War

#Edwin Starr #Norman Whitfield #Motown #soul #R&B #protest #1960s

An anti-war anthem deemed a little too forthright for one of Motown’s biggest acts hit the top of the charts for one of its finest soul singers in August 1970. Edwin Starr, who arrived at Motown with a fine track record but had never quite dined at Tamla’s top table, had the USA’s hottest single as “War” started its three-week run atop the Billboard Hot 100. The song was written by Barrett Strong and producer Norman Whitfield, who recorded the first version of it with the Temptations. But even though that creative combination was producing some real cutting-edge social commentary, Motown felt that to release their version as a single would alienate their more conservative fan base. Many politically engaged students lobbied the label to release the Temptations’ recording, but Motown decided on a different tactic. Whitfield recorded a new version with Starr, the soul man born Charles Hatcher in Nashville in 1942 and raised in Cleveland. He’d made his name at Detroit label Ric-Tic in the mid-1960s with such gems as “Agent Double-O-Soul” and “Stop Her On Sight (S.O.S.),” before transferring to the Gordy label when Motown bought Ric-Tic outright. The result of the new interpretation was a soul classic, with a lyric that was clearly anti-Vietnam but has remained sadly relevant throughout the world ever since. Starr’s powerful vocal delivery brought a real sense of anger and frustration to the recording.  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/edwin-starr-war-song/

The New Respects - Trigger

 #The New Respects #alternative rock #indie rock #blues rock #soul #R&B #funk #folk rock

The New Respects are a high-energy throwback rock and soul quartet comprising siblings Alexandria, Alexis, and Darius Fitzgerald, and their cousin Jasmine Mullen. The children of a Nashville preacher, twins Alexandria (guitar) and Alexis (bass) and their brother Darius (drums) grew up on gospel music, and while Mullen (vocals) heard a wider range of influences in the house, her parents were both songwriters in the Christian music industry, with her mom, Nicole C. Mullen, having established herself as a prominent recording artist in the early 2000s. Forming in high school as the John Hancock Band, the quartet was initially based around more of an indie folk sound. As they became more established, the influences of early rock, R&B, blues, and soul began to inform their sound, and their music became more dynamic. By 2016, they'd signed with Capitol CMG and changed their name to the New Respects. Following a pair of singles later that year, they made their debut in early 2017 with the Here Comes Trouble EP.  From: https://www.isrbx.me/3137661009-the-new-respects-before-the-sun-goes-down-2018.html

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - Rattlesnake Shake

 #Fleetwood Mac #Peter Green #blues rock #British blues revival #heavy blues rock #psychedelic blues #1960s

Peter Green formed Fleetwood Mac with Mick Fleetwood in 1967; the pair had met playing in bands in 1960’s London. They played in Peter B’s Looners and then the subsequent Shotgun Express, a short-lived R&B group that featured a young Rod Stewart as the vocalist. In addition to this, Green played guitar in John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, an iconic band that has featured some of Britain’s best musicians — he had joined to replace none other than Eric Clapton himself. Clapton had become a superstar with Cream, and Green wanted to replicate that for himself.
The long and highly mythologised history of Fleetwood Mac was to start when Bluesbreakers drummer Aynsley Dunbar left the band to join the new Jeff Beck Group, a band that would become legendary in itself. Without a drummer, Green suggested Fleetwood join, and Mayall agreed. The line up of The Bluesbreakers then consisted of Green, Fleetwood, Mayall, and bass player John McVie. Mayall had given Green some free recording time as a gift, and so he, Fleetwood and McVie recorded five songs. The fifth of these was an instrumental named ‘Fleetwood Mac’, after the instrumental section of The Bluesbreakers, “Mac”, being short for McVie. After this short recording session, Green proposed to Fleetwood that they form a new band. The pair headhunted McVie as bassist and attempted to entice him by using the name Fleetwood Mac. Unsurprisingly, rather than risk it with a new band, McVie opted to keep his steady income, and declined. Forgetting about McVie for the meantime, the duo hired slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist Bob Brunning; Brunning joined the band on the fairly harsh condition that if McVie agreed to join, he would leave. Brunning would only play a handful of shows with the new band, and this first iteration of many would debut live on 13th August 1967 at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival as ‘Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, also featuring Jeremy Spencer.’ Within a few weeks of this show, John McVie agreed to join the band in what is now a legendary lineup change.
This second iteration of the band would have hits with Green’s compositions of ‘Black Magic Woman’, ‘Albatross‘, ‘Man of the World’, ‘Oh Well’ and ‘The Green Manalishi’. They remain fan favourites, cherished particularly among Mac purists. Along with these hits came international recognition, and of course, excess. The band released their second album, Mr Wonderful, in August 1968 and went on their first of many American tours. In an anecdote stereotypical of the time, they hung out with The Grateful Dead in San Francisco and were offered LSD, amongst other things, by the Dead’s now-legendary purveyor of psychedelics, Owsley Stanley. By December things had changed. At the start of a 30-date tour in New York, the band finally succumbed to Stanley’s pervasive products. This was the start of the end for Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, including Jeremy Spencer. It is well documented that Peter Green’s unselfish nature allowed the then-members of Fleetwood Mac to thrive musically, and without him, they would not be the band we know today. This is true, regardless of how third guitarist Danny Kirwan felt; he had joined as an eighteen-year-old in 1968 and didn’t connect personally with Peter Green.
It is interesting to note though, that both Green and Kirwan’s mental states visibly started to change after the release of 1969’s single, ‘Man of the World’. Both were taking large doses of LSD, and Green had adopted a form of Buddhism influenced by Christianity — Green started wearing white robes and a crucifix around his neck. The frontman also became concerned with accumulating wealth, and Fleetwood recalls: “I had conversations with Peter Green around that time, and he was obsessive about us not making money, wanting us to give it all away. And I’d say, ‘Well you can do it, I don’t wanna do that, and that doesn’t make me a bad person.'” In a story as old as rock and roll itself, tension and drug use finally engulfed the band.  From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-peter-green-quit-fleetwood-mac/

Joan Osborne - St. Teresa

 #Joan Osborne #hard rock #alternative rock #folk rock #blues rock #R&B #blue-eyed soul #country rock #roots rock #gospel #singer-songwriter #1990s

Joan Osborne, when asked what inspired the song St. Teresa:  It’s funny. That character actually was based on a woman I used to see out my window when I was living on the lower east side in New York City. I would see this woman out on the street corner, and she had a baby in a stroller with her. She was selling drugs fairly openly on the corner. Those were the days when that neighborhood was really kind of like the Wild West. I was fascinated by her because I thought she was really a strong person to be out on the street doing what she was doing with her child by her side. I kind of admired her in a way, not that I would ever want to raise my own daughter in those circumstances, but this was a woman who was making the best of her situation and doing what she could to support her family in this urban jungle environment. So, I became fascinated with her. I thought that if I could see her that maybe there were other people who were looking out windows and watching her as well. The song is from the point of view of imagining somebody else who is watching her and who might go down and buy some drugs from her and have a relationship with her. It was based on that. I don’t want to say much more about it because I don’t like to interpret lyrics too much, but that is who the song was based on.  From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/48940/

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - The Love I Saw In You Was Just A Mirage

 Smokey Robinson & The Miracles #Motown #R&B #rock & roll #soul #funk #1960s

The most underrated Miracles LP of the '60s, Make It Happen featured a spate of great songs, including three or four that really should've been hits (plus one that only became the group's biggest hit three years after release). Opening with "The Soulful Shack," a grooving dance number that would've fit perfectly on the previous year's Away We a Go-Go, the album featured plenty of near-misses, including a pair of delightful good-times dance songs, "My Love Is Your Love (Forever)" and "It's a Good Feeling," plus a great choice for a cover, a tender version of Little Anthony & the Imperials' "I'm on the Outside (Looking In)." The hits really did shine more than any of the other songs, though, marking yet another leap in the level of Smokey Robinson's compositional sophistication. "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage" is a brilliant twist on a romantic novelty in the Motown mold (with a production that deftly references the British Invasion), while "More Love" is the most sincere lyric and most emotive performance in the group's catalog, a song of reassurance occasioned by several miscarriages suffered by Robinson's wife (and fellow Miracle), Claudette. The capstone, however, was the last song, "The Tears of a Clown," originally written as an up-tempo instrumental groover by Stevie Wonder and his producer, Hank Cosby. Robinson's lyric is witty yet sublime, and his lead vocal is one of the best performances of his recording career. One of the biggest misses by the notoriously hit-conscious Motown organization was failing to release this as a single before it became an album hit on British radio in 1970, three years after it first appeared. It shot to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and prompted Motown to re-release Make It Happen under a new title, The Tears of a Clown.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/make-it-happen-mw0000873287

William "Smokey" Robinson's high tenor is his calling card, but he's also one of the most important songwriters and producers of the 1960s. The only Motown artist to write and produce his own recordings from the beginning, he also wrote and produced many of the most memorable songs for Motown's other acts: "Ain't That Peculiar" for Marvin Gaye; "My Guy" for Mary Wells; "My Girl" and "Get Ready" for the Temptations. He kept plenty of top material for himself, from early hits like "Shop Around" and "Ooh Baby Baby" to the Sound Of Young America classics "The Tracks Of My Tears" (which inspired the Zombies' "Time Of The Season") and "The Tears Of A Clown" (co-written with Stevie Wonder). Smokey has an ear for catchy melodies and was a perfectionist producer and arranger, but his most important contribution was his lyrics: probably the most cleverly written love songs of the period, often working an extended metaphor to death: listen to "The Way You Do The Things You Do" by the Temptations or the Supremes' "The Composer" or Smokey's own "More Love" or "I Second That Emotion" and you'll see what I mean. Bob Dylan once called him America's greatest living poet, and I suspect he wasn't kidding. (Dylan later said it was a slip of the tongue and he'd meant to say Artur Rimbaud, who was neither alive nor American, but whatever).  From: http://www.warr.org/smokey.html

Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

 #Sly & The Family Stone #psychedelic soul #funk #funk rock #progressive soul #R&B #1960s

Sly Stone wrote "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" because he felt listeners were not hearing the messages in his songs even though the band was more popular then ever. Sly & the Family Stone were an integrated band and tried to spread the message of racial harmony, but Stone thought that message was getting lost. Larry Graham played the innovative bass line using a technique where he thumped the strings. He learned this technique when he was playing in a duo with his mother, who played the organ - with no drummer, he had to create the percussion with his bass. This style became very popular on funk records for years to come and was a big influence on artists like Prince and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/sly-the-family-stone/thank-you-falettinme-be-mice-elf-agin

In the beginning, Sly & The Family Stone were pop’s great utopian experiment: A band where the musicians were black and white, male and female, drawing on hard R&B and way-out psychedelic rock, playing for every audience that would have them. In 1969, the Family Stone hit #1 with “Everyday People” and played one of the standout sets at Woodstock. Their wild, freaked-out take on soul music helped birth funk and set the Motown aesthetic on a whole new trajectory; the Temptations and the Jackson 5, especially, built on what they’d done. But for Sly Stone and his bandmates, things turned dark quickly.
Around the time that they blew up and became huge stars, Sly & The Family Stone left their San Francisco home for Los Angeles. They all started doing harder drugs — PCP was reportedly a favorite — and hating each other. Sly insulated himself from his bandmates, some of whom were his actual siblings, and he surrounded himself instead with dealers and gangsters. There are stories about how he’d carry around a violin case full of nothing but drugs. He started missing shows and putting on chaotic performances at TV tapings. And he stopped releasing music. At a time when popular artists were expected to crank out albums at a dizzy rate, Sly & The Family Stone only put out one single in the more than two years between their 1969 breakout Stand! and the dark, nasty 1971 epic There’s A Riot Goin’ On. And that single went to #1.
On a purely sonic level, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” sounds like a total celebration. It’s sharp, sprightly, upbeat. All the band members share lead vocal duties, singing as one, like they’re an army. Larry Graham hammers his bass hard, popping the strings and treating his instrument like it’s percussive. Sly and Freddie Stone’s guitars do a wah-wah strut, and Jerry Martini and Cynthia Robinson’s horns stab through the mix. The hook sounds celebratory — like the Family Stone is thanking America’s public for latching onto their bugged-out sound.
But that is not, of course, what the Family Stone were doing. Instead, the lyrics are both sardonic and freaked the fuck out. The first verse may or may not be a story about a dangerous fist fight with a cop, or with a white man: “Looking at the devil, grinning at his gun / Fingers start shaking, I begin to run.” The second is an admission of defeat, a statement of futility: “Thank you for the party, but I could never stay / Many things on my mind / Words in the way.” On the third verse, the band reels off the titles of past hits, turning those words into pure gibberish. It’s a whole song of heavy notes, and it ends on the heaviest one: “Dying young is hard to take / Selling out is harder.”
So: A stark fuck-you hidden within the disguise of a great party song. And it will remain a great party song, since most of us never pay attention to the lyrics, which is the whole problem that those lyrics tried to address. (Technically, “Thank You” shared its #1 with the ballad “Everybody Is A Star,” which would’ve been a 7.) “Thank You” is a remarkable song, a possibly-ironic work of unity from a band that wasn’t even close to being unified. It’s messy, since everything the Family Stone did was messy. And Sly would find sharper, more direct ways to say the things that he wanted to say. But the intensity was already there, if you knew where to look.
From: https://www.stereogum.com/2026526/sly-the-family-stones-thank-you-falettinme-be-mice-elf-agin-review/columns/the-number-ones/

Babe Ruth - Gimme Some Leg

#Babe Ruth #Janita Haan #hard rock #progressive rock #blues rock #funk rock #British R&B #album rock #1970s

British band Babe Ruth debuted in 1972, sporting an incendiary hard rock sound ignited by the forceful voice of Janita "Jennie" Haan and jamming guitar/organ work of multi-instrumentalist Alan Shacklock. Though primarily a hard rock group, their tireless experimentation with wildly diverse styles was assuredly in step with the progressive rock of the era. Their incredible debut, First Base, encompassed more styles than may be able to be absorbed at first listen. Here they display a penchant for radically deconstructed cover versions, which may make them comparable to a hipper, heavier Manfred Mann's Earth Band; using as sources Zappa and Morricone as opposed to Springsteen and Holst. Their second and third albums (Amar Caballero and Babe Ruth) come off as recklessly irregular yet occasionally dazzling. After the self-titled album, Shacklock left, replaced by live second guitarist Bernie Marsden (whose best-known gig was with Whitesnake). The magic was gone for the subsequent album, Stealin' Home, except for the two Haan-penned and Shacklock-arranged songs: "2000 Sunsets" and "Tomorrow (Joining of the Day)." Haan left after that, yet the band, which now included no original members, made one further album, Kid's Stuff, which many believe should never have been made.  From: http://www.expose.org/index.php/articles/display/babe-ruth-greatest-hits-17.html