Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

Is 1972 the greatest year in soul music, or is it 1973? We have had two mixes covering 1972 (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), and now we have the first volume of 1973. Either way, it was the golden age in which utter gems like Leroy Hutson“s Love Oh Love went by quite unnoticed. To have these two years concentrated in one mix, check out Any Major Soul 1972/73, perhaps one of the greatest soul mixes ever compiled “” and the credit for that goes not in any way to the compiler, but to the great people who made that music.

And here”s the mindblowing thing: when you hear the fine music on this mix, remember that just a few of them were hits; most of them were not, many were even just album tracks. Hutson”s Love Oh Love was released as a single: it reached #75 on the “Black Charts”.

One of the album tracks was the Isley Brothers” If You Were There from the outstanding 3+3 LP. Eleven years later it was covered by Wham!, on their Make It Big album, introducing this fine song to a teenage audience.

On the Undisputed Truth“s Law Of The Land album Girl You”re Alright (spelled on the label incorrectly as “your”, anticipating Facebook grammar by almost four decades) is Track 3. It”s a fine song, but the track of greater interest is the one that precedes it: the original version of Papa Was A Rolling Stone. One day I”ll make a mix of original recordings of songs that became big Motown for others, and the Undisputed Truth will feature with that.

Margie Joseph“s Touch Your Woman might also feature in the “Covered With Soul” series “” it was a hit the previous year for Dolly Parton. Dolly sang it in a way that suggests that a nice embrace will get her over the present spat (apart from one knowing inflection in the delivery of the title), but there is no doubt what Margie is talking: passionate make-up sex.

Letta Mbulu“s 1973 Naturally LP was an eclectic affair, with the sounds of her native South Africa, Afro-soul and straight soul. The featured track was written by the late, lamented Joe Sample.

Finally, I assure you that the sequencing of Darondo“s Didn”t I followed by Sylvia Robinson“s song of the same title is purely coincidental. They just went well together.

…
1. The Three Degrees – Year Of Decision
2. Freda Payne – Right Back Where I Started From
3. Bobby Womack – Lookin’ For A Love
4. Margie Joseph – Touch Your Woman
5. Denise LaSalle – There Ain’t Enough Hate Around (To Make Me Turn Around)
6. Irma Thomas – She’ll Never Be Your Wife
7. Four Tops – It Won’t Be The First Time
8. Leroy Hutson – Love, Oh Love
9. Baby Washington & Don Gardner – Lay A Little Lovin’ On Me
10. The Isley Brothers – If You Were There
11. John Edwards – Spread The News
12. The Spinners – One Of A Kind (Love Affair)
13. Bloodstone – Outside Woman
14. Al Green – Have You Been Making Out O.K.
15. Darondo – Didn’t I
16. Sylvia – Didn’t I
17. Terry Callier – Just As Long As We’re In Love
18. Inez Foxx – You’re Saving Me For A Rainy Day
19. Pat Lundy – He’s The Father Of My Children
20. Letta Mbulu – Now We May Begin
21. The Undisputed Truth – Girl You’re Alright
22. Sly & the Family Stone – Skin I’m In
23. Lyn Collins – Take Me Just As I Am

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With violent death of John Lennon just as 1980 drew to a close, the first few months of 1981, the year I turned 15, was spent on Beatles binging. I had been a fan before, but the only way to honour John Lennon was to go into manic overdrive. I even liked Yoko Ono‘s single — and Walking On Thin Ice is a indeed a fine song on its own merit. It was the song John and Yoko were working on that 8 December, before Chapman shot Lennon dead outside the Dakota, apparently while John was holding the master tape of the song.

In February I bought Bruce Springsteen‘s The River double album. On that day I had an eye test which for a few hours almost blinded me — I lacked the knowledge or sense of irony that might have prompted me to crack a “Blinded By The Light” joke. The second side of the album — starting with Hungry Heart and ending with the title track, and in between the glorious You Can Look (You Better Not Touch) — turned me into a Springsteen fan. Or was it simply the first track, the very underrated The Ties That Bind, which did the trick? It helped that Springsteen looked very cool, much like Al Pacino, on the cover.

From Springsteen it was a short jump to Garland Jeffreys‘ Escape Artist, a hit-and-miss affair that came with an EP, on which the E-Street Band’s keyboardist Roy Bittan and organist Danny Federici played. Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg also appeared on Jim Steinman‘s Bad For Good album, a ridiculous and thoroughly entertaining affair which had been intended for Meat Loaf. The cover and the spoken track, Love And Death And An American Guitar, are so magnificently mad that Bad For Good should reside in every serious record collection.

Later I bought Nils Lofgren‘s Night Fades Away; Lofgren would, of course, later join the E-Street Band. I listened to the LP again not so long ago. It’s not great, though Lofgren’s version of Peter & Gordon’s I Go To Pieces (written by Del Shannon) is pretty good. Around the time, or maybe a bit earlier, I also bought Neil Young’s Re-ac-tor LP, with its red and black sleeve. I listened to it again a while ago. I was reminded why I never listened to it back then. It’s awful. Even Opera Star, which prompted me to buy that LP.

I didn’t own Kids In America on record, and I didn’t really like it very much (though I did like Kim Wilde), but the song was so ubiquitous that hearing it beams me back to 1981. I rather enjoy it now. I also didn’t own Kim Carnes‘ Bette Davis Eyes on record, though I taped it off the radio. It was a hit when my sister’s boyfriend returned from a visit to Colorado. For a German boy who had been around a fair bit in Europe, the USA was nevertheless terribly exotic. I expected that all of America sounded like Kim Carnes’ song and Juice Newton’s Angel Of The Morning. Which in 1981 much of the USA possibly did.

The year was also the time when the New Wave broke big. Visage‘s double whammy of great singles with great videos — Fade To Grey and Mind Of A Toy — as well as Duran Duran’s Girls On Film and the OMD songs provided a whole new sound. Best of them was Ultravox‘s Vienna. One of the great songs of the 1980s, and still it was held off the British #1 spot (when that still meant a great deal) by the ghastly novelty song Shaddap Your Face. Well, that nation re-elected Thatcher, so it had — and evidently still has — a surplus of idiots. Alas, last week, shortly after I had prepared this mix, Visage’s Steve Strange passed away at 55.

I bought the Rolling Stones‘Tattoo You album, freshly released, on the day we were making a trip to East Germany. I taped it as we packed the car for our driving entertainment. At the border I hid the tape in my jacket pocket. I left the tape (and other contraband we smuggled over, at some risk) with our friends in the GDR. I wonder whether they knew to capitalise on having the brand-new Stones album. I have been told that my act of smuggling tapes and Bravo magazines (West Germany’s big pop and sex education publication) was greatly appreciated.

As autumn broke I bought Billy Joel‘s Songs In The Attic LP, an album of songs recorded in concert which in their studio versions had been considered unsatisfactory by Joel. It is a near-perfect album, to this day an all-time favourite. In 1981 I played it to death. This and the older Turnstiles, The Stranger and 52^nd Street LPs (I always hated Glass Houses) provided the soundtrack for and solace in many dark teenage days.

My quartet of acts that I was obsessed with in 1981 — Beatles, Springsteen, Joel — was completed at the end of the year by the German band BAP. Their story is remarkable: they sung only in Kölsch, a dialect unique to the city of Cologne, yet they went on to become Germany’s biggest act for several years. Their rock sound was catchy and their live performances incendiary. In 1984/85 I saw both BAP and Springsteen in concert within eight months or so of one another. The energy was comparable, though the quality of the music not so much.

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R and includes home-reared covers. PW in comments.

1. John Lennon – Watching The Wheels
2. The Look – I Am The Beat
3. Yoko Ono – Walking On Thin Ice
4. Bruce Springsteen – The Ties That Bind
5. Garland Jeffreys – R.O.C.K.
6. Jim Steinman – Bad For Good
7. Kim Wilde – Kids In America
8. Ultravox – Vienna
9. Visage – Mind Of A Toy
10. The Specials – Ghost Town
11. Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes
12. Rolling Stones – Waiting For A Friend
13. Nils Lofgren – I Go To Pieces
14. Billy Joel – Summer, Highland Falls
15. Stray Cats – Stray Cat Strut
16. Foreigner – Juke Box Hero
17. Fischer-Z – Marliese
18. Hazel O’Connor – (Cover Plus) We’re All Grown Up
19. Bap – Verdamp lang her

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We all may have attended weddings during which the happy couple chose the most inappropriate tune for “Our Song”. Stalker theme Every Breath You Take, perhaps, “because every breath she takes I will be watching her”, or James Blunt”s psycho anthem You”re Beautiful “because, you know, she is beautiful”. The potential for awful choices is endless.

Relief is at hand with this compilation, bang on time for Valentine”s Day. This mix is useful for weddings, but I”ve tried not to make it an obvious wedding theme “” The Dixie Cups can stay at home, as can Billy Idol.

It can work as a wedding proposal mix, even though it lacks the insistence of Beyoncé (or the cheery bounciness of the rather good Bruno Mars). And even though some songs speak of getting hitched “” Springsteen is pretty clear about his intentions; clearly his little girl of the song is not the pregnant Mary nor the mother-in-law wielding Sherry, nor the unnamed wife with kid in Baltimore Jack, who feature on the same double LP “” it is not exclusive to that purpose.

It might work best as a collection of love songs: some celebrating just being in love, some expressing hope for a nuptial future, some expressing love within marriage. I didn”t necessarily make this mix to get you laid, but if Peter Mayer”s or Deb Talan”s beautiful songs (based on poems by William Jay Smith and Pablo Neruda respectively) doesn”t make your beloved go all doe-eyed , you might have a problem. Ben Fold”s The Luckiest, meanwhile, might be the greatest love song in pop. Pity that the woman he wrote it for is now his ex-wife”¦ In everything, I”ve tried to avoid the most obvious songs. If you are so fortunate as to have a loved one, perhaps some of the songs on this mix will help articulate how you feel.

As ever, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R and includes home-romanced covers. The front cover photo is by Prawny; the gorgeous back cover photo by Dedulo Photos (both morguefile.com).

Happy Valentine”s Day!

1. Dinah Washington – Come Rain Or Come Shine (1954)
2. The Flamingos – I Only Have Eyes For You (1959)
3. The Association – Never My Love (1967)
4. The Platters – With This Ring (1967)
5. Honey Cone – Blessed Be Our Love (1971)
6. Minnie Riperton – Never Existed Before (1979)
7. Al Green – Let”s Stay Together (1972)
8. Ambrosia – Biggest Part Of Me (1980)
9. Alan Price – Groovy Times (1978)
10. Ron Sexsmith – Never Give Up (2006)
11. Ben Folds – The Luckiest (2001)
12. Deb Talan – Cherry Trees (2001)
13. Peter Mayer – Now Touch The Air Softly (1999)
14. Loggins & Messina – Danny”s Song (1972)
15. Bruce Springsteen – I Wanna Marry You (1980)
16. Indigo Girls – Power Of Two (1995)
17. Ben Harper – By My Side (1995)
18. Neil Young – Harvest Moon (1992)
19. Mary Chapin Carpenter – Grow Old With Me (1999)

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It was carnage in January! The headline death in January surely was that of Demis Roussos, the hirsute yet balding crooner of housewife-friendly ballads who hid his substantial girth beneath flowing kaftans. The look gave him an iconic image, but he was not considered very cool. Yet, as a member of Aphrodite”s Child, the Egypt-born Greek had plenty cool quotient with some pretty trippy music. The trio, which also included Vangelis on keyboards, were on the vanguard of prog-rock.

Vangelis lost another past musical partner three days later with the death at 72 of Italian musician Maurizio Arcieri, with whom he collaborated in the late-1970s project Chrisma (later renamed Krisma), an electronic music group founded by Arcieri with his wife Christina Moser in 1976 which enjoyed some success throughout Europe. Arcieri already had been a star in the 1960s as the founder and leader of the beat group The New Dada, who supported The Beatles on their 1965 tour of Italy.

Soul singer Don Covay, who has died at 76, is mostly remembered for the “˜60s soul standard See-Saw, but it is as a writer that he received the greater recognition from the soul community. Chief among the songs Covay wrote was Aretha Franklin”s glorious Chain Of Fools, originally written for Otis Redding who never recorded it. Earlier, Chubby Checker took Covay”s Pony Time to the US #1. Other well-known Covay compositions include Solomon Burke”s I”m Hanging Up My Heart For You, Gladys Knight & The Pips” Letter Full Of Tears, Wilson Pickett”s I”m Gonna Cry , and his own Sookie Sookie and the much-covered Mercy Mercy (on which a still unknown Jimi Hendrix played guitar). And his Long Tall Shorty featured as the b-side to The Kinks” All Day And All Of The Night.

The rise of the pedal steel guitar in country music can be in part be credited to an act by Little Jimmy Dickens, who died on the second day of the new year at the age of 94. It was Dickens who had brought steel guitar player Bud Isaacs to Nashville. In 1954 Isaacs went on to play his novel pedal steel guitar on Webb Pierce”s big hit “Slowly”. The whiny sound immediately caught on, with every steel guitar player quickly fitting pedals. Little Jimmy Dickens, who measured 4″11 (or 1,50m) was something of a country legend himself when he scored his biggest hit in 1965, the marvelously titled May The Bird Of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose. By then he had been a member of the Grand Ole Opry for 17 years (he”d rack up 66 years on the Opry). Among his pals was Hank Williams, who once wrote a song for Dickens in 20 minutes while on a flight, calling it Hey Good Lookin”. A week later Williams recorded the song himself, telling Dickens jokingly: “That song”s too good for you!”

In the world of gospel music, Andraé Crouch was the giant. The good pastor was the godfather of contemporary gospel, Read more…