The queen of soul Aretha Franklin brings the gospel funk to The Beatles "Eleanor Rigby" at the 1970 Jazz à Juan festival in Antibes, France. Well, good morning to you too!
And here's a bonus clip from the same gig, "Respect":
Pioneering hip hop musician Afrika Bambaataa's love for Kraftwerk is evidenced by his groundbreaking 1982 electro track "Planet Rock" (above). Indeed, Bambataaa's underground DJ sets in black nightclubs were a key point-of-entry into the United States for many international electronic musicians in the early 1980s, from Yellow Magic Orchestra to Gary Numan. I hadn't realized though that Kraftwerk readily acknowledged that it was a two-way musical conversation: Black American music, particularly R&B, was a massive influence on Kraftwerk's music. In The Wire, John Morrison writes:
Read the restIn an interview with Dan Sicko, the late author of Techno Rebels: The Renegades Of Electronic Funk, former Kraftwerk percussionist Karl Bartos gives an essential statement on the influence of black R&B on the band's work: “We were all fans of American music: soul, the Tamla/Motown thing, and of course, James Brown. We always tried to make an American rhythm feel, with a European approach to harmony and melody.” When exploring the band’s early work, this rhythmic influence does occasionally peek its head up through their abstract sound. On “Tone Float” (the title track from founder members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben’s pre-Kraftwerk 1970 debut album as members of Organisation), the band can be heard experimenting with a rhythmic framework similar to the “Bo Diddley'' beat, the heavily accented drum pattern that dominated rock ’n’ roll in the 50s and early 60s. For their first release as Kraftwerk, the “Bo Diddley” beat remerges, albeit with an aggressive Jazz flair courtesy of drummer Charly Weiss providing the driving pulse for the the album’s ten minute closer “Vom Himmel Hoch”.
Almost every night for the last week, I've been listening to my vinyl copy of Sade's 1985 masterpiece "Promise." Sade's deeply sexy, jazzy soul stands the test of time. This morning, I was surprised and delighted to see this stunning 1985 TV performance of "Is It A Crime" on The Old Grey Whistle Test that Reddit user castigamat posted to r/LiveIsBetter. Read the rest
The great soul singer-songwriter Bill Withers has died of heart complications. The three-time Grammy winner was 81. Withers is best known for his hits “Lean on Me,” "Lovely Day," “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Just the Two of Us" but he has penned and sung dozens of masterpieces. In 1985, after a miserable album recording and release experience, Withers walked away from the music industry. From Rolling Stone:
As the decades ticked by, many fans forgot that Withers was even alive, which he found hysterical. “One Sunday morning I was at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles,” he told Rolling Stone. “These church ladies were sitting in the booth next to mine. They were talking about this Bill Withers song they sang in church that morning. I got up on my elbow, leaned into their booth and said, ‘Ladies, it’s odd you should mention that because I’m Bill Withers.’ This lady said, ‘You ain’t no Bill Withers. You’re too light-skinned to be Bill Withers!’”
In 2015, he made a rare public appearance when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I still have to process this,” he said shortly after learning the news. “You know that Billy Joel line, ‘Hot funk, cool punk, even if it’s old junk, it’s still rock & roll to me?’ I’m happy to represent the old junk category.”
The legendary Mavis Staples. Read the rest
In 1969, Herbie Hancock found the funk for a collection of music he composed for "Hey, Hey, Hey, It's Fat Albert," a TV special that eventually led to the long-running cartoon "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids." Hancock collected those tracks on Fat Albert Rotunda, the band leader's first LP after bailing on the Blue Note label. It's a deeply soulful affair that presaged Hancock's 1973 jazz-funk classic Head Hunters. Now, Fat Albert Rotunda is readily available again as a high-quality vinyl reissue from my friends at the Antarctica Starts Here label. Dig it.
Herbie Hancock - Fat Albert Rotunda LP (Antarctica Starts Here/Superior Viaduct)
In January 1972, Aretha Franklin performed at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood. The LP of those performances is an absolutely breathtaking celebration of soul gospel. It won a Grammy, became the biggest selling live gospel record in history, and remains the highest selling record of Franklin's career. Filmmaker Sydney Pollack documented the performance and the plan was to release the concert movie as a double feature with Super Fly during the summer of 1972. The problem though is that Pollack hadn't used a clapper board during the filming that would enable him to sync the audio and footage from the five cameras. With no way to properly edit the film, the project was shelved until about ten years ago. And in a few months, the world will finally see it. From the New York Times:
Read the rest(Alan) Elliott, who had been obsessed with the lost footage since working as a music executive in the mid-1980s, ultimately persuaded Warner to sell him the reels in 2007. (He mortgaged his house.) By 2010, digital technology had evolved to a point that syncing film and sound was finally possible....
As a planned release date approached in 2011, however, Ms. Franklin sued Mr. Elliott for using her likeness without her permission. That started years of legal wrangling, with Ms. Franklin and her lawyers blocking Mr. Elliott and the Telluride Film Festival from showing “Amazing Grace” in 2015 and 2016, even after deals for her compensation seemed to have been worked out.
"Do you remember the 21st night of September?"
Happy 40th anniversary to Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," which was actually released on November 18, 1978. What's the significance of September 21 in the lyrics? Well, none.
"We went through all the dates: 'Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth ... ' and the one that just felt the best was the 21st," co-writer Allee Willis told NPR in 2014. "I constantly have people coming up to me and they get so excited to know what the significance was. And there is no significance beyond it just sang better than any of the other dates. So ... sorry!"
Read the restDo you remember? ?
— Earth, Wind & Fire (@EarthWindFire) September 21, 2018
Keith Wilder, singer for 70s funk powerhouse Heatwave, died on Sunday at age 65.
"From Heatwave is your heart," Wilder once said. "If your music is where your heart is, and you put your whole heart into, it will come out the way your heart is as a person and a human being... We kept our music in a vein that also was a pure, clear picture and representation of what we were like, and what we were about. And we kept our music that way... We just kept it real and kept it pure."
The titular track from 1971's (For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People by The Chi-Lites. Read the rest
My friends in The Afghan Whigs released a stunningly weird and and dark new video for their track "Demon in Profile," from their just-announced album In Spades to be released May 5. (And yes, that's Har Mar Superstar in the clip.) I've listened to the entire album and it's a phantasmagoric, expansive, soulful masterpiece that to my ear harkens back to the noir magnificence of my favorite Whigs record, Black Love (1996).
“(In Spades is) a spooky record,” says Greg Dulli. “I like that it’s veiled. It’s not a concept album per se, but as I began to assemble it, I saw an arc and followed it. To me it’s about memory – in particular, how quickly life and memory can blur together.”
A few weeks after the release of In Spades, the Whigs take their magick to Europe.
David Axelrod, whose 1960s and 1970s production and compositions melding jazz, soul, and rock had an indelible impact on contemporary hip-hop and R&B, has died at age 83. From Billboard:
Born in Los Angeles in 1933, Axelrod produced his first album in 1959 and went on to become a pioneer in combining jazz, rock and R&B in recorded music. He spent several years working for Capitol Records in production and A&R in the 1960s and went on to release more than a dozen of his own albums.
While a contemporary of, and somewhat analogous to, idiosyncratic composer/arrangers like Van Dyke Parks, Axelrod was much more influenced by jazz, as reflected in his orchestrations and his own compositions. He produced David McCallum's Music: A Bit More of Me, the 1967 release featuring "The Edge," a song that famously turned into the predominant sample in Dr. Dre's 2000 hit "The Next Episode." He also collaborated with the Electric Prunes on their bizarre 1968 album Mass in F# Minor, and when the group splintered in the middle of recording, he finished it with session musicians.
Read the rest
In 1975, Suriname's Dutch Rhythm Steel & Show Band released "Soul, Steel & Show," a killer funk-psych-soul LP that included scorching covers of Neil Young's "Down by the River," Isaac Hayes's "Theme from Shaft," Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe," Kool & The Gang's "Funky Stuff," and other great jams. Can you dig it? I knew that you could.
Footage from the August 1983 concert at Minneapolis' famed First Avenue club when Prince (1958-2016) debuted the magnificent 13-minute original version of Purple Rain - with an additional third verse - that was later edited and overdubbed for the Purple Rain album. This was also guitarist Wendy Melvoin's first performance with The Revolution. (Apologies that the video host's Flash-based widget won't work on some mobile browsers.) Read the rest
Maurice White, founder of the incredible psychedelic R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire, has died at age 74.
“Although we were basically jazz musicians, we played soul, funk, gospel, blues, jazz, rock and dance music … which somehow ended up becoming pop,” White wrote. “We were coming out of a decade of experimentation, mind expansion and cosmic awareness. I wanted our music to convey messages of universal love and harmony without force-feeding listeners’ spiritual content.”
If you don't want my love, you're free to go... Read the rest
On November 4, 1975, David Bowie performed "Golden Years" on Soul Train. Sure, he was lip-syncing, but who cares. The Thin White Duke's got soul.
The Bowie Golden Years site has more background on the appearance.
