Archive for the ‘Record reviews’ Category

Roll over, Beethoven, and take Chuck Berry with you

Posted: May 19, 2015 in music, Record reviews
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From approximately 1976 until 1979, disco was the law of the land. Many people were unhappy under disco’s thumpa-thumpa-thumpa rule, and a rebellion broke out on July 12, 1979 in Comiskey Park, Chicago.

The White Sox, who were not enjoying a victorious season, had tried to lure paying customers into the ballpark with the promise of Disco Demolition Night. Fans were invited to bring their most hated disco records. The records were to be placed in a box in centerfield and blown up between games of a doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers.

You’d go to that, wouldn’t you? Explosives in a stadium where they sell beer. Fun!

The idea was the brainchild of a Chicago dj who was a cultural-reactionary or a shock-jock or simply attention-starved. In the days leading up to Disco Demolition Night, this dj whipped his fellow anti-disco insurgents into the kind of frenzy you only saw in, well, discos. His plan worked: The White Sox had hoped for an attendance figure of about 35,000, but what they got was 55,000, which was more than that stadium could hold. Also much like discos.

A lot of beer and hallucinogenics happened, records were thrown like frisbees at frightened ballplayers, the beleaguered security guards locked most of the gates which meant that the sane people couldn’t leave, the first game ended, and when the records blew up, so did the crowd. Due to multiple felonious assaults on the landscaping and Tiger manager Sparky Anderson’s refusal to let his team take the field, the White Sox and the Tigers were unable to play the second game.

(The Tigers won the first game, 4-1. The White Sox forfeited the second game because they were unable to provide a safe work environment.)

I’d like to remind everyone that when the Sox held a pro-disco night in 1977, it was completely non-violent, though I’m willing to bet that there was sex in the bathrooms. Just like in a disco.

So was Disco Demolition Night caused by a homophobic or racist reaction to shifting cultural standards, or was it simply the joy of morons who’d found each other? All I know is, white people always riot over stupid shit, and afterwards we never have a national conversation about family values.

White Sox pitcher Rich Wortham said, “This wouldn’t have happened if they had country and western night.”

I was a disco activist
I thoroughly enjoyed my disco years and if I still had my leisure suit I’d wear it to work. Actually, if I still had my leisure suit, my wife would’ve confiscated it at gunpoint. The late Donna Summer was always billed as the Queen of Disco, and I pledged my service to her. Let’s look at her collected works of the ’70s. This won’t take long, because most of these were – forgive me, my queen – crud.

(I’m not going to quote any of her lyrics, either, but I can’t help saying Toot toot. Hey. Beep beep.)

Lady of the Night (1974)
Ms. Summer’s debut demonstrates her astounding voice and her producer’s astounding confusion. Giorgio Moroder has no shortage of ideas, all of them bad:

“Born to Die” is country.
“Domino” is folk.
“Let’s Work Together” is from a Broadway show that closed in the middle of its first night.
“Sing Along (Sad Song)” is Judy Collins in an alternate, less-musical universe.
“Hostage” is ridiculous in any universe.
“Little Miss Fit” is right – Donna Summer doesn’t fit on this disc.

The only reason to listen to Lady of the Night is the title track, not because it’s good – it stands on stilettos to reach passable – but because of the way it showcases Summer’s voice, particularly that moment in the chorus when she ascends through laaaaaaaaady of the night.

All but one of these songs was co-written by Moroder, who despite this chaos is about to make Summer a star. Signor Moroder also has an excellent claim on the invention of disco. Brace for impact!

Love to Love You Baby (1975)
The title is 17 minutes long. Until this track, 17 minutes was the province of prog rock and heavy metal. The sex sounds are silly but the sensuality in Summer’s voice is not. I listened to all 17 minutes this afternoon, but I admit I took a couple of breaks. I found a flute solo in there! I might’ve been the first person to hear it in 40 years.

A Love Trilogy (1976)
This one opens with “Try Me, I know We Can Make It,” which is 18 minutes long. Oh no you don’t! And don’t try to sneak Barry Manilow past me, either (I found him in the credits).

Four Seasons of Love (1976)
This is a theme album. Based on the cover and the glamour girl calendar inside, the theme is Summer’s legs. Good call.

The five songs average 7 minutes apiece. The disco sounds routine to me now, but in 1976 this was an exciting record that would’ve kept you going at your favorite club.

By this time, Summer was writing or co-writing many of these songs. Moroder could use all the help he could get.

Once Upon a Time (1977)
Like Lady Gaga 30 years later, Summer acknowledges her enthusiastic gay following and tries to say something encouraging. Daring for that era, but this double-record set is too pretentious to contemplate.

I Remember Yesterday (1977)
An odd title for the world of disco, where everyone was living for the next bump, but the underrated “Love’s Unkind” does sound like the updating of a ’60s R&B hit even though it’s an original.

This album gave us “I Feel Love,” one of the most significant tracks of the decade. Entire genres of electronica (for example, “Tribal-Progressive House,” a name I don’t understand even though I listen to that channel), thousands of raves, and many career opportunities for techie djs with enormous egos all descend from “I Feel Love.” I can only wonder how many 38-year-olds are walking around today because their parents were inflamed by “I Feel Love.” (My parents were inflamed by Perry Como burning down the house with “Papa Loves Mambo.”)

You can find the extended version of “I Feel Love” on Donna Summer: The Dance Collection (1986), which also includes the extended “Hot Stuff” (but not “Bad Girls”), her “MacArthur Park Suite” (most of that one’s pretty good), and, out of nowhere, an appearance by Barbra Streisand.

Thank God It’s Friday (1978)
This is the soundtrack to the magna-crap film. “Last Dance” won an Oscar, crushing Olivia Newton-John and “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from Grease. In your face, ONJ! It’s particularly fun on a dance floor because of the 1:20 build-up to the 4 minutes of dancing. It always left me quivering with antici – say it already – pation.

Live and More (1978)
Way too many songs from Once Upon a Time.

Bad Girls (1979)
Was disco dying in 1979? Just like the Red Sox? No, it was evolving. Unlike the Red Sox.

Bad Girls gave Summer two mega hits (“Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff”). How do you beat an album with that pair in the first and second spots? They’re exciting disco/rock hybrids that are descended from all the funk/rock experiments that began 10 years earlier with Sly & The Family Stone, Isaac Hayes, and Curtis Mayfield. I remember standing on a dance floor in 1979 when the lights changed, the fog rose, and “Bad Girls” came on with that beat like a John Phillips Sousa march performed in jackhammers. I was happy and I didn’t even have sex in a bathroom.

There are not many albums you can put on at a dance party and let ride for eight tracks before you have to skip the slow songs or change the disc. Welcome to Bad Girls.

“Love Will Always Find You” is disco grafted to New Wave – it reminds me of Talking Heads’ “Memories Can’t Wait” and even some work by Graham Parker. “Dim All the Lights” and “Journey to the Center of Your Heart” are terrific dance numbers. They even have some Stevie Wonder-inspired keyboards. “One Night in a Lifetime” and “Can’t Get to Sleep At Night” (I admit that that one is too slow) finish this surprising set, which frankly kicks The Rolling Stones’ skinny asses on Some Girls.

In 1979, this is where you finished side two of the first record. You were supposed to put on side three of the second record, but that’s where Summer and Moroder reverted to their early form and delivered four awful ballads. One of them, “There Will Always Be a You,” was bad enough with a title like that, but Summer finished it off with a little yodeling.

So let’s return to 2015 and the present tense and with a single click head straight to side 4, because, Dear Readers, side 4 is as avant-garde as disco ever got. With these last three songs it’s as if David Byrne and Brian Eno had been turned loose with a synthesizer and a disco ball while Annie Lennox and Debbie Harry dirty-danced with Gary Numan and David Bowie.

In “Our Love,” the “Our love/will last forever” bridge is the most unusual 30 seconds in the disco genre. The rest of the song sounds like Bowie’s “Heroes” played at dance speed by Blondie.

Next there’s “Lucky,” which belongs in a category of music loosely called Synth Pop or New Romantics. Examples of bands that manufactured this stuff are all from the ’80s: Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Flock of Haircuts, The Spoons, Spandau Ballet, Erasure, ABC, Talk Talk, The The (I’m not making these up), and sometimes Duran Duran but not Duran Duran Duran.

The closer is “Sunset People,” and at this point I’m out of metaphors and stuck with words such as weird and bizarre and other synonyms suggested by Microsoft. I’m still happy, though.

I have never compiled a Top 10 list of disco records, but if I did, Bad Girls would smash smash smash them all. This is the toughest disco ever made, a set that in places blows away many straight rock bands of that era, including The Cars, Foreigner, Supertramp, Cheap Trick, Little River Band, and REO Styxjourneywagon. Donna Summer doesn’t have the thunder of AC/DC or Aerosmith, but there are stretches on this record where she doesn’t trail by much, plus she has a better sense of rhythm and her stupid lyrics aren’t as stupid as these stupidheads’ stupid lyrics.

It took Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder five years to get to Bad Girls, and there were plenty of places along their journey where we could’ve abandoned them (I did, more than once), but the important thing is that they arrived. Summer has a crossover hit, “She Works Hard for the Money,” waiting for her in 1983, but after Bad Girls all the rest was commentary.

If I still had my disco regalia I’d wear it in your honor. RIP, Your Highness.

 

Soul Sister No. 1

Posted: May 17, 2015 in music, Record reviews
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Here’s what I wrote about Aretha Franklin when I started this project. (If you’ve forgotten, if you weren’t paying attention, or if you have actual significant other things to do, I’m listening to all the black music of the 1970s.) So anyway:

“With Aretha Franklin, it’s always 1967, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You is on the turntable, and you’re about to drop the needle on the first track, ‘Respect.’ ”

For most people, the top five Aretha Franklin songs are “Respect,” “Respect,” “Respect,” “Respect,” and “Respect.” Spam spam spam eggs sausage and spam. I just checked the five most-streamed Franklin tracks from Spotify and they are “Respect,” “Respect” (re-mastered), “Think” (from The Blues Brothers soundtrack), “I Say a Little Prayer for You,” and “(You Make Me Feel like a) Natural Woman.”

Except for “Think,” these songs are all from the ’60s. Come on, folks! The woman’s career didn’t end at midnight on December 31, 1969! Let’s move boldly into the ’70s and respectfully see what Franklin was up to.

This Girl’s in Love with You (1970)
I haven’t heard this one, or if I did I was 15 and I don’t remember it. It was recorded in 1969 so it’s disqualified. That was handy.

Spirit in the Dark (1970)
Franklin wrote five of the 12 songs here. Of all the divas of the ’70s, Aretha Franklin and, guess who, Donna Summer, most resemble Marvin Gaye in that they wrote or co-wrote so many of their own songs.

Spirit in the Dark is overshadowed by her work from the ’60s and by the two albums that followed it in the ’70s. It has some weak stretches. But it also has “Spirit in the Dark,” which is Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” as a woman sees it:

It’s like Sally Walker sittin’ in a saucer
That’s how ya do it, it ain’t nothin’ to it
Rise, Sally, rise, put your hands on your hips
And cover your eyes, and move on with the spirit

“Spirit in the Dark” and four others (“Don’t Play that Song,” “The Thrill Is Gone,” “Pullin’,” and “When the Battle Is Over”) make this disc a Buy.

Live At the Fillmore West (1971)
This live set, which brings us the highlights from four nights at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, opens with “Respect” played 1.5 times faster than the version everyone knows from downloading it on Spotify. I just listened to it 3.0 times.

Live At the Fillmore West gets even better after that. Franklin covers Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With,” which had appeared the year before on Stills’ first solo album. She doesn’t take it away from him the way she took “Respect” from Otis Redding, but she comes close.

Then we swing into “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” You should buy Live At the Fillmore West just for this track. The three women in the chorus, the “Sweethearts of Soul,” come in after about a minute and a half of quiet musical reflection. Franklin follows, as if she were leading her congregation. “Still waters run deep,” she intones, then slowly and steadily turns this song into a hair-raising hymn of praise. How can one human being sing like this? Art Garfunkel was a one-man orchestra, but compared to Aretha, Artie is an AM/FM radio.

Her backing band is stunning. I haven’t checked the credits, but I assume it must be the Justice League of America.

We then move to a superlative four-song set in which Franklin accompanies herself on her electrified piano. We get her cover of “Eleanor Rigby,” the boogie of “Don’t Play that Song,” and then “Dr. Feelgood” from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You:

I tell you I don’t mind company
Because company’s alright with me
Every once in a while, yeah
But oh, when me and that man get to lovin’
I tell you girls
I dig you but I just don’t have time
To sit and chit and sit and chit-chat and smile

“Good God Almighty,” she cries, “that man makes me feelllllllllllllllllllll – ” I can’t tell what that man makes her feel, but I predict he’s going to do well when the results come back from the customer-satisfaction survey.

“Spirit in the Dark” follows, this time with the ability to bring eyesight to the blind.

OK. What a record. The only unpleasureable song for me is Franklin’s fruitless effort to turn “Make It with You” by Bread into something more than soggy toast. Everything else is going well. The crowd is hers. She practically controls their breathing. Everyone who attended one of these concerts was blessed.

There’s nothing Franklin can do to top this. Right? This is about as good as it gets. Right? You know I’m going to say Wrong!

Guess who shows up? Ray Charles! And what do they do? They do “Spirit in the Dark” all over again! “Well I tell you what,” Franklin says to her guest, as she gets up from her piano, “why don’t you sit right here?” If this magic moment doesn’t get your blood pumping, I guess you shouldn’t have bought your Pacemaker at Walmart.

“Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)” ends the record. It’s a snore, but it’s her good-night to the audience. She earned it.

Overall rating: Good God Almighty!

Young, Gifted and Black (1972)
This is the one with “Rock Steady,” another of her originals, and her cover of Weldon Irvine and Nina Simone’s civil-rights anthem “Young, Gifted and Black.” It also has the Jerry Butler/Otis Redding classic “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” a bass-heavy version with a gospel-tinged piano (well, everything she did in those years was gospel-tinged). And the wonder of “The Long and Winding Road.” Her interpretations of The Beatles are always interesting. Her interpretations of everyone are always interesting (except for Bread).

Amazing Grace (1972 – six months later)
If you honk because you love Jesus – even when you’re parked in your garage – you’ll find there’s no better way to cast your bread upon the waters than by cuing up Amazing Grace. Franklin shifts tectonic plates with her performance, particularly on “How I Got Over.” If there were a song like that about Maimonides, I might still be going to the synagogue on Saturdays.

The original release was a live, double LP with 14 tracks. The reissue has 27 tracks and vastly expands the number of announcements, introductions, and theological musings from the clergyman on duty. In the name of Our Lord Satan, please get the hell off of Aretha’s record.

Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky) (1973)
This album usually gets panned, starting with its cover, which was drawn by a high school yearbook editor on mescaline. It’s also the last album before she gets totaled by disco. I can’t recommend it, but a few of the songs are worth a spin.

“Hey Now Hey” is fascinating, a stop-and-go, straight ballad and jazzy gospel infusion that’s a very different sound for her.

“Just Right Tonight” is an 8-minute funky blues in which Aretha doesn’t start singing until she’s three and a half minutes in. This song proves that Aretha Franklin could be Aretha Franklin plus she could be James Brown in her spare time.

“Master of Eyes,” the closer, isn’t great, but I note it because it would’ve fit perfectly on at least half a dozen blaxploitation soundtracks.

Sparkle (1976)
A forgotten movie about a fictional ’60s girl group. Music by Curtis Mayfield, except for “Jump,” which was written by Marcus Miller and Luther Vandross.

Mayfield is missing his Super Fly superpowers here. “Hooked on Your Love” is the only number that’s worthy of Franklin, though “I Get a High” (another Mayfield anti-drug number) is close. “Jump” is nowhere near as good as the hit version by The Pointer Sisters. Yes, somebody finally took a song away from her.

Sadly, the next Aretha Franklin record you should listen to is Who’s Zoomin’ Who?, and that won’t appear until 1985. I haven’t followed her career past ’85 because I’m afraid of what I’ll discover. But from approximately 1966 through 1973 you could find few women or men who could move us like Aretha Franklin. I don’t care that her two most downloaded songs are “Respect” and “Respect.” Thanks for still being here and still singing. Rock steady.

 

 

It’s raining men

Posted: May 10, 2015 in music, Record reviews
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There were three men in the beginning of the 1970s who had the firepower to compete with Marvin Gaye: Al Green, Donny Hathaway, and Bill Withers. (At the end of the decade there was also Teddy Pendergrass, but I’m still trying to finish the beginning of the decade.)

These gentlemen were at their peak in the years 1970 through ’73, when I was in high school. (Pendergrass was at his peak when I was in disco.) Despite a few not-too-positive comments (what is this blog without not-too-positive comments), it was a pleasure to spend an entire day with them so I could write this post.

Al Green
My problem with Al Green is that his music follows an arc from make-out songs to soft rock to Jesus. But Green had a run of excellent discs in the early ’70s starting with Al Green Gets Next to You (1971). The big hit was “Tired of Being Alone.” The big flaw was “Light My Fire.” Sadly, there is nothing flammable about Green’s version.

Let’s Stay Together (1972) features the deservedly-popular title track, of course, but also a stunning reclamation project: Green’s cover of The Bee-Gees’ “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” Making something this artful out of something that awful must’ve been like making drinking water out of the Dead Sea.

I’m Still in Love with You (1972) includes my favorite, “Love and Happiness,” where Green lets the first 34 seconds go by before he even thinks about singing. There’s also a terrific version of “Oh Pretty Woman.” The soft rock seeps in with Call Me (1973), but Call Me also has “Here I Am (Come and Take Me),” so I still rate it as a Buy.

Donny Hathaway
The late Mr. Hathaway had a voice from a galaxy far, far away. His duets with Roberta Flack were popular (Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, 1972). But I never liked his material; I thought his voice was better suited for Broadway or even opera.

I was sleepwalking through his debut, Everything Is Everything (1970), which is pleasant, when “The Ghetto” came on. That was like stepping on the third rail. This is a true lost classic of the ’70s, a song the teenaged me only heard on the underground radio stations in Boston. I’d completely forgotten it. What a gift to have it returned.

However, I suspect I like “The Ghetto” because there’s not much singing on this track.

Bill Withers
Here’s the formula for making unfair judgments about Bill Withers’ albums:

1. The album covers all feature photos of Withers.
2. As his clothes improve, his music does not.

My favorite Withers record is his first, Just As I Am (1971). What an easy-going man…an easy-going man who can get to the core of an incident or an entire life in two minutes. “Ain’t No Sunshine,” which I know you love as much as I do, lasts two minutes. His tribute to his grandmother, “Grandma’s Hands,” is two minutes.

Give him another 30 seconds and you get his hair-raising cover of “Let It Be.” And when he decides to stretch out a bit and use three or even four minutes, he gives us “Harlem,” a rocker, and “Hope She’ll Be Happier,” a fresh look at an old subject.

Withers closes Just As I Am with “Better Off Dead,” a song about an alcoholic. Devastation.

His second album, Still Bill (1972), features “Lean on Me” and “Use Me,” but also “Another Day to Run” and the funky and adult “Lonely Town, Lonely Street,” “Take It All In and Check It All Out,” and “Who Is He (and What Is He to You)?”

Withers’ third effort, Live At Carnegie Hall, marks the end of the great Withers records. (Yes, I know that he still has “Lovely Day” coming up in a few years, but he cancels that out with the sticky-sweet “Just the Two of Us.”) Live At Carnegie Hall opens with eight minutes of “Use Me” and includes a “Grandma’s Hands” that’ll grab ya by the throat.

Bill Withers is sad. Al Green understands sad but isn’t. Donny Hathaway was seamless.

Random Pick of the Day
Lou Rawls, Live! (1966)
Lou Rawls sang like another Nat King Cole but with human flaws. Rawls is best known for “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine,” a planetary phenomenon in 1976.

To my ears, all of Rawls’ interesting recordings are from the 1960s. This disqualifies him from any further discussion in my survey of black music of the ’70s, but I couldn’t let this album go unheralded. It was a very different, at times ferocious man who recorded these songs: “Tobacco Road,” “Stormy Monday,” and “I Got It Bad (and that Ain’t Good).” Even old-timers such as “The Shadow of Your Smile” and “The Girl From Ipanema” sound new here.

As much as I like Al Green and Bill Withers and sort of like Donny Hathaway, I find the women of the ’70s to be much more diverse and interesting than the men. Next up in the black music of the ’70s series: Stand by for…Diva Week!

 

The road leads back to you

Posted: April 19, 2015 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews
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I edited a couple of trade magazines in the 1990s. When you edit any kind of specialty magazine, you find that boredom seeps in like water in an old rowboat. There are only so many ways you can present the same subject, to keep it readable, informative, and interesting to read.

It’s a struggle, but you won’t hear any complaints from me. There are enormous rewards that come with the editor’s blue pencil: wealth, celebrity, power, eager-to-please interns, the respect of your fellow editors, the adoration of your writers, and a bitchin’ sound system in your office.

Notice to our readers
There are several errors in our current post. “wealth” should read “health insurance.” “celebrity” probably refers to Run-DMSteve’s appearance on the front page of the Idaho Statesman in 2003. The reference to “power” is puzzling, but it might have something to do with shaking Al Gore’s hand in 1999 without being pummeled by the Secret Service.

In addition, Run-DMSteve has never been granted access to an intern, editors are too busy drinking to speak to each other, writers adore you only when you’re approving their invoices, and Run-DMSteve had to buy the sound system with his own money. We regret these errors.

My first magazine was published by Sierra On-Line, which made computer games. Sierra was chaotic and dangerous, a knife fight without any rules, but I never had trouble making those pages interesting.

My second magazine was published by Visio, which made drawing and diagramming software. The company was well-run but their products put me to sleep. I figured our readers must’ve had the same challenge. This is why I searched for unusual Visioids to profile. For example, there was a gentleman who used Visio to position the cameras for the Oscars broadcast, and a writer who visualized her complicated love life thanks to our software. I hope the latter story gave engineers around the world something different to think about.

Sadly, I never got to run our story about the Midwest cemetery administrator who used Visio software to keep track of his “residents.” That would’ve been my Halloween issue.

Not all who play chess are lost
In September 2002, the editors of Chess Life published an interview with Ray Charles and splashed his photo on the cover. Jackpot! Bingo! Touchdown! This issue must’ve been extremely popular because I can never find one on eBay. Everyone’s hiding their copy in their sock drawer. Here’s the only image I can find.

Ray Charles learned to play chess in 1965 while he was in a hospital kicking his heroin addiction. He basically traded addictions. Unlike most blind players, who play by calling out the moves in chess notation (if you’ve ever played Battleship, you’re halfway to learning chess notation), Charles played by feeling the pieces. I suppose this is similar to how he played the piano. He used a special board with raised dark squares and lowered light squares. The black pieces had sharper edges than the white pieces. Each piece had a peg in the bottom and each square had a hole.

“I’m nowhere near what you call a master. I’m just a person who plays chess,” he said in the story. “I don’t care if I lose. I try not to, but I just love to play.”

Charles was interviewed by Grandmaster Larry Evans, a former U.S. chess champion and a long-time columnist for Chess Life. Naturally, they played a game while they talked. Evans didn’t play full-out (he admitted as much later), which I’ve learned is always a mistake when playing children. They learn more when they play the real you, plus your sub-par moves sometimes return to bite you in the ass. Sure enough, Charles, who was a better player than he let on, came close to a draw.

At one point in the game, Evans warned Charles that if Charles moved a certain piece, Evans would be free to make a devastating counter-move. Charles said, “You’ve got your rights, brother.”

Charles also knew how to cut to the game’s essence. “You don’t just move pieces,” he said. “You have to have a reason. So you say to yourself, if I do this and he does that, then what will I do?” I’ve been trying to teach this simple concept for YEARS! But instead of slowing down and thinking, my chess kids invariably plunge ahead as if they were about to miss the ice cream truck.

Chess and music live on the same street
Ray Charles was not the only musician who loved chess. Here’s a partial list: Sonny Bono, David Bowie, Ludacris, Jay Z, LL Cool J, Kurt Cobain, John and Yoko, Wu-Tang Clan (the entire group), Phish (ditto), and some one-worders: Madonna, Cher, Moby, Nelly, Bono, and Sting. In fact the best thing I’ve ever read about Sting is that he has an estate somewhere with a giant chessboard built into the landscaping.

I haven’t even gotten to all the jazz and classical musicians who play or played chess. But the only country western musician that I know of who qualifies was…Ray Charles (Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, vols. 1-2, 1961).

All of this is the leadup to a sad truth: There’s little to say about Charles’ career in the 1970s, my current topic. I don’t believe he was capable of recording a bad album, but like all gods he was capable of recording unnecessary albums, and the ’70s were a long line of them.

Note: There are many necessary Ray Charles records. Here are just two: Ray Charles At Newport (1958) and The Genius of Ray Charles (1959).

I said when I began this series about black music of the ’70s that everyone on my list owed a debt to James Brown. I’m thinking now that we all owe an even bigger debt to Ray Charles.

“I beat Willie Nelson yesterday,” Charles said in Chess Life. “He tells me that I turned the lights out on him.”

Hit the board, Jack.

 

 

No wonder I can’t keep my mind on nothing else!

Posted: April 14, 2015 in music, Record reviews
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Today we say farewell to Percy Sledge, who sang “When a Man Loves a Woman” and went to the top of every chart in 1966. 1966 was the year my parents had finally had enough of me and my music and for my birthday bought me a transistor radio with an earplug and a wire that got tangled the moment it came out of its paper wrapper. “When a Man Loves a Woman” was one of the songs I remember from that indelible summer, though of course I had no idea what it meant as I wasn’t much more than a tadpole. I had barely graduated from “The Battle of New Orleans.”

Let us also praise organist Andrew Wright and bassist Calvin Lewis, who co-wrote the song.

Goodbye, Percy. Thanks.

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