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.
In the twenty-four hours since my last post this song has followed me around.
Thanks for this mainly go to two commendable GSH radio tributes on Jazz FM. One was a compelling interview with Paul Jones yesterday morning which I caught completely by chance in a cafe in New Cross. As the owner and I sat listening he told me about the time he saw GSH perform in the very pub across the road from us. That must have been a good few years ago.
There are no finer testaments to GSH's poetic genius than the lyrics to this song.
There have already been many tributes to Gil Scott-Heron who passed away last weekend. He was 62. Since the usual allocation is three score years and ten, he was comparatively young. But it's maybe not really too surprising that he sold himself short. There's no doubt that he had his demons, sadly, particularly in latter years when extended periods of drug use and consequent imprisonment must have taken their toll.
His best known pieces*--"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised","B-Movie","Johannesburg"--were erudite, acerbic and witty comments on the political landscape but they were all very much of their time. Their references to Watergate, Reaganomics, Spiro Agnew, Caspar Weinberger et al are really no longer meaningful for anyone who's under forty years old. The world is poorer, not just for his loss, but also because we never really got to hear his thoughts on the Dubya era, Abu Ghraib, the Tea Party Movement, and so many more of the issues of more recent times. For me this is a large part of the tragedy of his latter years, of his death.
A huge amount of credit goes to Richard Russell, owner of XL Records, for coaxing Scott-Heron back into the studio and for watching over his work on I'm New Here, last year's "comeback" album, a poetic masterpiece. Russell's trip-hop/dubstep electronica is a far remove from the jazz/soul medium of GSH's earlier career but it's the perfect counterpoint to Scott-Heron's more personal, less politicised, take on the twenty-first century.
One of the consequences of the release of I'm New Here was the round of promotional TV and newspaper interviews which meant that GSH and his work were exposed to a whole new generation of music fans. He even got pride of place on Newsnight in a clip which, in the way of these things, has since been added to YouTube. Cringe with me as Jeremy Paxman hails "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" as possibly the greatest rap song of all time. (I'm sure he would know.)
This interview was filmed at round about the same time. I think it's a fitting tribute.
* Some of them songs yes, but others really poetic monologues set to music. I'd prefer to play down the rap/hip hop connection. Unlike most commentators, it seems.
It always seems unfair to me that so few musicians ever get the recognition they deserve. I've been to some great jazz gigs lately and have come across a couple of veteran players in particular whose significance I've only become aware of because of some rather sad circumstances.
I recently saw alto sax veteran Peter King and his quartet at the Bull's Head, my favourite jazz venue. There were a couple of comparative youngsters on piano and bass, 69-year-old King himself of course on saxophone and Martin Drew on drums.
Such a large man that even sitting behind his huge kit, Drew was an imposing presence, particularly on the more up-tempo numbers where he was really able to let fly with some furious solos. He seemed to "sing" along with them, as if they were the accompaniment to a tune playing in his head. Slightly off-putting for everyone else though, just the kind of tuneless droning of someone lost in music they're listening to through headphones:
I also remember him apologising to the other band members during the half-time break for "playing the wrong song", having seemingly mistaken one of the numbers on the improvised set list. I doubt that many audience members spotted his gaffe. Indeed, I overheard him jokingly asking "whether it actually makes any difference which tune the drummer plays".
Quite a humble, self-effacing approach for a musician who in his time, it turns out, played with some of THE major figures in twentieth-century jazz: Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald and Ronnie Scott, amongst others. For THIRTY YEARS, he was a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio!
It was only after the gig that I discovered Drew's history because browsing through a newspaper less than two weeks later I came across a photo of Drew behind his drum kit in the exact same pose as I had remembered him at the Bull's Head. Drew had apparently suffered a heart attack three days after the gig and died. Here was his obituary. I had almost certainly seen his last public performance.
Eerily, today I discover that trumpeter and flugelhorn player Harry Beckett also died last month, within days of Drew. A couple of months ago I went to an excellent concert at the Barbican where many of the greats of British big band jazz played their way through a history of the music. Not surprisingly, the evening culminated in an extended tribute to the music of the late Sir Johnny Dankworth, including two numbers from his widow, Dame Cleo Laine, 84 years old, not so sure on her feet, but having lost none of her stage presence and self-deprecating wit.
Beckett was another veteran who had appeared earlier in the evening. Clearly a very old man, he played along with one tune--a Jazz Warriors number, I think--but then sat motionless at his desk in the trumpet section for the rest of the evening, looking very much like a fish out of water, but nonetheless seeming to enjoy listening to the music, as we all did.
Playing a kind of more typically British jazz music with many of the important groups of the sixties and seventies, Beckett also became an inspiration to young black jazz musicians in his work with the Jazz Warriors and continued to record until very recently. I know this--now--because I've just--today--read the obituary which appeared in the Guardian last month. Better to be appreciated after your death than not at all, I suppose.
They say these things come in threes, so here's wishing Dame Cleo the best of health...
It's not unusual for musicians to die before their time, but Andy Palacio's death two weeks ago was unusual in that--in contrast, say, to the Hendrixes and Lennons of times gone by--he left no extensive back catalogue for his record company to repackage and reissue and no lengthy career to be earnestly reappraised. It was only as recent as last year that Palacio came to prominence after his "Watina" album won him widespread critical acclaim.
Interesting that one of the qualities Charlie Gillett, in the review on his own website, picks out is what he considers the "universal" appeal of the music. I would agree that it's accessible in the way that much world music is accessible: danceable, guitar-based and a reasonably easy listen for western ears. But I think that, rather than being "universal", this music belongs to a very particular time and place: it's a modern-day representation of the music of the threatened Caribbean culture of the Garifuna and as such has proved to be hugely important for the Garifuna community.
World music is often criticised for diluting local music so that it becomes more palatable (marketable) to western audiences but surely the fact that this music is "accessible" ("universal") can also be a virtue. Most obviously of course, the financial rewards of commercial success benefit the musicians themselves and are also usually channelled back to the home community.
Like the Buena Vista Social Club project, Palacio's Garifuna Collective mixes young and old musicians alike and so reinforces the continuity of local musical traditions across the generations. Throughout their history the Garifuna people struggled to retain their language, culture and identity and it's thanks to Andy Palacio that this identity is now being reinforced in modern times. Hopefully the Garifuna Collective can keep up the momentum even if, sadly, their leader is no longer able to show them the way.
