song of the week 30: marvin gaye & tammi terrell - you're all i need to get by

It's one of those sitting-in-the-pub type questions isn't it? What's your favourite ever Motown album?

Stevie Wonder made some great records in the seventies of course but, in terms of a single album, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's Greatest Hits probably does it for me.*

Some bog standard facts:

• Tammi Terrell died tragically of a brain tumour at the age of 24. 
• Gaye was so shaken when it happened that he gave up live performance for three years and, rejecting the love song, turned to political issues for his inspiration. As it happened that worked out quite well.
• Rumour was that during the recording of the Greatest Hits album Terrell was already too ill to complete her vocal parts and that songwriter Valerie Simpson was called in to do so in her absence. Simpson has subsequently denied this though. 
• Simpson and husband Nickolas Ashford wrote most of the tracks on the album, as well as many great songs for other Motown artists. 
• They also scored a number 3 UK hit under their own names in 1984 with "Solid". 

Here's a tribute to Nickolas Ashford who died yesterday.

R.I.P.

song of the week 23: betty wright - clean up woman

Heard this on 6Music the other day...



Pretty good huh? Really like how the two guitar parts interlock and that...

Annoyingly though, once I've listened to it, it's this song which plays in my head afterwards.

song of the week 8: gladys knight and the pips - i heard it through the grapevine

Listening to the Motown Remixed album I was banging on about in my last post brings to my attention this lesser-known version of the Grapevine tune from a fresh-faced Ms Knight and her twinkle-toed Pips.

HINT: For maximum backing-vocals-effect turn up loud.



Remix here.

mix and mash

For some reason I seem to have heard a lot of really good remixes lately. In my experience remixes can go either way: some are utterly pointless and sound terrible, some just work really well.

The following fall into the latter category. Well I think so anyway. (Note for pedants: I believe some of these may be better described, by people who care about such things, as "mash-ups".)

• Bob Marley: No Woman No Cry (Love Is A Losing Game Remix) 
• Marvin Gaye: Let's Get It On (Da Producers MPG Groove Mix) (While we're at it, the Motown Remixed album on which this appears may be worth dipping into) 
• The Beatles: Blackbird (Bonzai Republic Remix) 
• "Afrobeatles" The Fab Four meet Fela Kuti (ticks two big boxes for me). Some of these work better than others. I think "Come Together" is probably the pick.

And then these two contrast such radically different styles in the originals that they flirt dangerously near to being horrible car crashes. I think they just about work though. See what you think.

• Carl Douglas & Chris Isaak: Kung Fu Fighting (Wicked Game Remix)
• Nirvana v Jackson 5: Smells Like Rockin' Robin. Just makes me smile...

ghost in the machine

There's nowhere to hide from "You Got The Love" at the moment. Every time I put the TV on it's lying in wait for me. In the last couple of days I've heard it three times in trailers for a thrilling new dance-related reality show, as well as on the last episode of Gavin and Stacey and performed in person by Florence and her accompanying Machine on the Christmas Top Of The Pops. It's featured on a few best-of-the-year round-ups on the radio too.

I haven't made my mind up yet about Florence Welch. I find her voice a bit grating, rather too shouty in the middle range and with an occasional tendency to be frankly all over the place intonation-wise. Having said that, she did a passable, if unnecessary, "My Baby Just Cares For Me" on Jools Holland's New Year's Eve knees-up last night. I do also like "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)", a single she released earlier last year. Listen to the difference though between her singing on the recorded version and her live performance of the song. Thank heavens for auto-tuner software eh?

No doubt spurred on by the excellent xx remix of the Florence version of the song, the Guardian recently ran an interesting article giving a comprehensive history of "You Got The Love". The piece serves as a timely reminder that, far from being a musical creation of the currently ubiquitous Ms Welch, in fact the song originally saw the light of day in 1991 thanks to a mysterious group of musicians calling themselves The Source and featuring the vocals of erstwhile disco diva Candi Staton:



Judging by what I've heard of Staton's voice--and there's some great southern soul material on her myspace page--I think it's fair to say that she can knock Florence into a cocked hat any day of the week.

kinky afros

In the last few days I've been listening again to this compilation of old seventies soul hits. I remember many of these ("You Can Do Magic", "Have You Seen Her?") with a lot of affection since they date back to a time in my early teens when I first started listening to music. (This often involved a transistor radio secreted under the bedclothes late at night and tuned to the Radio Luxembourg top thirty run-down).

Granted, there are some duffers here too. It's a shame, for example, that keyboardist and one-time "fifth Beatle" Billy Preston got mixed up in "With You I'm Born Again", a syrupy ballad with the one-time Mrs Stevie Wonder. The Stylistics were a band who seemed to have hit after hit for a number of years but I'm afraid I never really came to terms with the window-shattering falsetto of lead singer Russell Thompkins, Jr.

Doing a trawl of YouTube for some of the better tracks, I discovered a fantastic selection of videos from the US show "Soul Train" which are a real document of the times. Predictably, there's a preponderance of wide lapels, flared trousers and, yes, afros. And those synchronised on-stage dance routines are often a thing of wonder. As for the audience, on Top Of The Pops at around this time I seem to remember a lot of embarrassed dancefloor shuffling. There's none of that here...

sun strokes

Can I just say, a propos of nothing, that Don Letts's 6 Music radio show is well worth a listen if you haven't dipped into it yet.

He plays a real mix of genres. This was this week's "sun"-related selection.

I'm particularly liking the Nu Yorican track with its hypnotic piano riff.

There's a lot more going on in the original version though...



Groovy video too!

before they were famous

The other day I found, lurking in what's left of my ancient cassette collection, a compilation tape I must have put together ooh I don't know a good fifteen years ago. One of the tracks--I think I used to have the single too--was "Don't Come To Stay", a moody soul ballad by a band called Hot House.

I've since discovered that the lead singer was one Heather Small who went on to front M People, the band mainly remembered now for being the least ever popular winners of the Mercury Music Prize in 1994 when they consigned Blur's Parklife to also-ran status. (Whatever happened to them?) The following year they went on to perpetrate the overblown "Search For The Hero" which I seem to remember becoming a clatteringly obvious choice to routinely accompany feats of sporting endurance on TV. Maybe then the Hot House years produced Small's best work?

This is the best YouTube can do, a bit jumpy and sadly it cuts off abruptly at the best part of the song, but you probably get the general idea...



On the same tack, how about this, an early offering from another northern soul diva who went on to bigger things. Again, I think this is better than anything Lisa Stansfield (for it is she) recorded later as a solo artist...

follow the yellow umbrella

Join me if you will for a whistle-stop tour of some groovy old music venues.

(Er, they're in New York, in case you were wondering...)

Day 1: Midtown Manhattan, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, etc etc

Radio City Music Hall

Perversely, like many of the skyscrapers in Manhattan, the Radio City Music Hall sprung up in the Depression Era and opened in 1932. Home to musicals, films, and in latter years, the Grammy and Tony Awards, the lavish annual Christmas spectacular, which has run throughout its history, is a Nativity re-enactment using real animals: sheep, donkeys, even camels. For the duration of the show's run, they're housed in special living quarters behind the stage and can apparently be spotted being given a Christmas Day constitutional around Midtown Manhattan. The theatre has a spectacular Art Deco interior and its "Mighty Wurlitzer" pipe organ is the largest pipe organ built for a movie theatre.

Day 2: Greenwich Village,
a.k.a. "The Village" (1960s vintage),
now West Village.

Cafe Wha?

One of a number of establishments now on the tourist trail by virtue of having hosted early performances by one Robert Zimmerman. The establishment's own website lists Dylan as only one in a string of famous names who've popped in over the years--"Allen Ginsberg regularly sipped his cocktails here. The Café Wha? was the original stomping ground for prodigies Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Bruce Springsteen, Peter, Paul & Mary, Kool and the Gang, as well as comedians, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby..."--but a character called David Barry (??) has some interesting reminiscences.

Day 3: Walking tour of Harlem.

The Apollo Theatre

Originally opened in 1915, in 1934 the Apollo was given over exclusively to Afro-American performers as an opportunity to appear in the weekly "amateur nights" and, if well received, tour the U.S., make a name for themselves nationally, then return to the Apollo as a headlining act in their own right. Ella Fitzgerald was one of the earliest artists to do this, ditto Bessie Smith in 1935, and in 1959 James Brown, who later used the venue for his famous 1963 live album. So close was Brown's relationship with the theatre that when he died in 2006 he lay in state there, typically, "in a blue suit, white gloves and silver shoes." Harlemites queued up round the block to pay their last respects.

and finally, also in Harlem...

Minton's Playhouse

Founded in 1938 and frequented by early jazzers Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Earl Hines, it later played a huge part in the development of bebop. Dizzy Gillespie was a main mover, as was Thelonious Monk and, of course, Charlie Parker.

This is what they came up with...

subway sect

Few stones left unturned on the New York tourist trail at the weekend, but I didn't in the end get to go to any gigs during my visit. I did, though, hear a great soul voice at one of the 14th Street subway stations on Saturday afternoon. It turned out to be a member of a band called Acapella Soul, singing and playing a keyboard.

I know the name because I was one of the six or seven onlookers during the five or so minutes between trains who stumped up $10 for one of his (their) CDs. For me, buying an album on the strength of a single hearing is invariably a let-down (spontaneity and atmosphere of live performance lost etc etc), but I've just got home with this one and it's actually quite good.

They're obviously regulars around the Manhattan subway network--they pop up a few times on YouTube, often shamelessly breaking off mid-song (as here) to flog a few CDs...

let's see those hands

As I was saying, one of the songs which probably does make my Motown top ten is "That's The Way Love Is" by Marvin Gaye. I remember where I was when I first heard it, as one of the millions of TV viewers gawping their way through Live Aid. Alas, Marvin Gaye wasn't there to sing it, having met his tragic end more than a year previously.

If memory serves, Paul Young and Alison Moyet were consigned to an obscure early afternoon slot, but I remember this as one of the highlights of the day. It's much better than Young's eighties-bass-heavy arrangement of "Wherever I Lay My Hat"--another Gaye original--and Moyet in particular really shows what a great set of pipes she had (probably still has). It also backs up my rather lazy theory that although there were some good singers in the eighties, they were often working with pretty average material. In my view, this is probably the best song either of them performed.



Then again, ain't nothin' like the real thing...

signed, sealed, delivered

It seems that almost every time I put Radio 2 on at the moment, there's a documentary to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Motown.

Some great music of course, but it wasn't all sweetness and light in Hitsville USA, as this article from last week's Independent testifies. Last night, for example, there was an hour-long programme dedicated to the Funk Brothers who played as backing musicians on most of the label's output from 1959 to 1972. And that's a lot of songs. It wasn't until Marvin Gaye released What's Going On in 1971 that these musicians were even credited in liner notes and it was only with the appearance in 2002 of the film "Standing In The Shadows of Motown" that they were accorded any real credit.

I did start to compile a list of my top ten Motown tracks but frankly I'm going to have to get back to you on that. Particular favourites though are Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's fantastic Greatest Hits album and almost everything by Stevie Wonder from his Greatest Hits Volume 2--which covers his singles from 1968 to '71--to the slightly over-egged Songs In The Key of Life which saw the light of day in 1976.

By way of a less frequently played track, how about this 1975 Stevie Wonder-penned minor hit from the Supremes?

Diana Ross? Who she?

soul christmas

Today's Yuletide selection is the late Donny Hathaway's soulful "This Christmas" from 1972.

Love it...



...and if it's soul you want, check out this mix



from Planet Mondo. (Thanks to Cocktails for bringing this to my attention.)