From the Sweet Soul Music Discography: R&B-Transition Years
This is a playlist I originally put together in 1986 as a kind of introduction to the Discography section of Sweet Soul Music. But I only imagined it – I never actually listened to it straight through. Here it is slightly revised and available through Spotify (and I’m sure you can recreate this on MOG, RDIO, or ITunes). I can’t guarantee that every recording is the original – but it sounds pretty good to me. And in a funny way I find myself appreciating it so much more now than I once might have – even though these were always songs that I admired without reserve.
I think maybe I just wasn’t as open to wistfulness and melancholy in those days – in some ways I’ll put it down to the education that Elvis and Sam Cooke have provided me with. But, you know, when you really get down to it, it’s probably just life. Nat King Cole’s “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You” – at one time I might have dismissed it as just a little proper, just a little sentimental. But now I hear Oscar Moore’s guitar solo, Nat’s piano, that voice, and there’s no hold-back in my engagement. I’m with Sam Cooke, I’ll take Nat King Cole as my tutorial model any day. Same with Charles Brown’s “Drifting Blues,” with Oscar Moore’s brother Johnny giving his name to the group and playing the beautiful guitar lead. Or the subtlety and heartache of the Prisonaires “Just Walking in the Rain.” It’s not that I didn’t appreciate them way back then. But I appreciate them so much more now.
Is mellowness all? Certainly not. Dig Guitar Slim’s “The Things That I Used to Do,” one of the rawest, most tore-down commercial blues of all time, which also marks the debut of arranger and pianist Ray Charles’ hard r&b sound. Or songs like Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” – everyone knows what that led to. Or Louis Jordan’s seminal “Let the Good Times Roll,” which left its mark (like so much of Jordan’s groundbreaking work) on James Brown, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, and Sam Cooke, just for starters. And, of course, where would we be without the Dionysian spirit of Howlin’ Wolf, James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, or Bob Dylan and Billy Joe Shaver in their untrammeled poetic years? (None included here – just a few points of reference.)
And then there’s the gospel infusion: the majestic Faye Adams version of “Shake a Hand” (I wish you could have heard Little Richard mashing down on this for six or seven minutes at the Donnelly Theater in his 1965 secular comeback – with Jimi Hendrix on guitar!). Or Roy Hamilton’s operatic version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which established a trend for spiritual uplift until Ray Charles blew the model wide open with his literal translation of the Southern Tones’ “It Must Be Jesus” into “I Got a Woman.” Or listen to the inspirational message of “Please Send Me Someone to Love” from Percy Mayfield, the “poet laureate of the blues” – nothing to do with gospel, really, just a universal (and universally influential) message of social uplift and racial justice cloaked in a graceful metaphor.
Every song here tells a story – each one has its own story. There’s no trend, there’s no stamp – or if there is a trend (and lots of people, obviously were catching on) each song, each artist stands on his or her own with a heartfelt message of exuberance, sorrow, plaintiveness or pain – doesn’t matter, there’s something to suit every mood.
You know, listening to this I started thinking about Solomon Burke (again), who considered himself a kind of cross between Gene Autry, gospel giant Brother Joe May (“The Thunderbolt of the Middle West”), and Ivory Joe Hunter (just dig Ivory Joe’s very soulful, and hugely influential, “I Almost Lost My Mind”).
You can hear everything that Solomon was listening to here – well almost. But I’ll tell you a funny story about “Don’t Deceive Me,” presented here in its original form by Atlanta blues singer Chuck Willis. When Solomon was making Soul of the Blues for Black Top Records, I suggested that he cut “Don’t Deceive Me” – I thought it would be a perfect match for Solomon’s improvisational skills, with its simple, gut-wrenching lyrics and melody and its wide-open space for a sermon. (I was thinking of the remarkable way that Howlin’ Wolf transformed the song in live performance.)
Well, Solomon did record it – and he called me up right afterwards. “You’re going to be really proud of me, Pete,” he said. “I did it just like you always want me to. I sang the song. And every time I started to get off of it, Selassie told me [this was his son, Haile Selassie], ‘Stick to the song, Dad. Remember what Peter said.’” And when I heard his version, it was indeed true. Solomon had stuck to the song, as I had not infrequently urged him to do – particularly when he stubbornly resisted learning many of the new songs that he was recording in favor of what he liked to call “spontaneity.” “Don’t Deceive Me,” for me, was an altogether different case. Or at least it should have been. But this was where Solomon chose to apply the lesson. Which is why you won’t hear any sermon on Solomon Burke’s beautifully rendered, emotionally controlled version of “Don’t Deceive Me.” I guess I’ll just have to take the blame.