Guest Blogger: Eli 'Paperboy' Reed on Roscoe Robinson

photo by George Korval

PETER GURALNICK:

The first time I heard Eli play, he was doing impassioned versions of Elmore James songs, with wild slide guitar and heartfelt (but very young – he was only 18 or 19) vocals.

The next time I saw him, his playing was just as impassioned, but his singing was of an entirely different order. He explained how it had happened. After serving an apprenticeship in the Chicago church (various Chicago churches), he had come under the influence of Roscoe Robinson. 

I had known Roscoe for almost a decade at that point. I had met him when I first started working on my Sam Cooke biography. He and Sam had been fast friends and rivals in competing teen gospel quartets, and Roscoe was as full of pep nearly fifty years later as I imagined he and Sam must have been when they first met. Today, at 85, I don’t think Roscoe has lost a step, and Roscoe and Eli have been performing together off and on for the last five or six years. Well, look, let Eli tell you about it. But don’t miss the incredible performance at the end – Roscoe singing, Eli playing, and the whole world spinning on its axis.

Just remember one thing: ROSCOE ROBINSON BELONGS IN THE ALABAMA MUSIC HALL OF FAME. Vote early and often.

ELI REED:

Roscoe Robinson is sitting on my living room couch in Allston, Massachusetts. He has been there for a few hours and it isn’t getting any more comfortable for me, or for him. The night before, we played our first show together at the club Johnny D’s Uptown, in Somerville, Massachusetts, and it went remarkably well. Now we are supposed to be on our way to Brooklyn for the next show; the only problem, my band is late. Very late. One hour goes by, then two, then three, and the band has still not arrived. I am nervous, and he can tell. Roscoe takes this time, not to be frustrated with me (though it’s clear that he is) but to impart some wisdom on my young mind: “You got to learn to control your people, otherwise they’ll never respect you,” he says, and I try to take it in, but really I just want to get the hell out of there.

    The previous day, I had met Roscoe Robinson for the first time. There aren’t too many singers out there who have his sort of pedigree. He’s sung with both sets of Blind Boys (Alabama and Mississippi), recorded for Trumpet, Chess, Wand and Sound Stage Seven just to name a few of the legendary labels, and has been making records for more than SIXTY years. He was the hand-picked successor to Archie Brownlee, perhaps the greatest Gospel shouter in history. He’s a legend in the world of both Gospel and Soul. I was a little nervous.

    At the time, I was barely 23 years old, and I fancied myself a Soul singer. I had done my time in some juke joints in Mississippi and some churches in Chicago, but I thought I knew a whole lot more about singing than I actually did. A friend had arranged for me and my band, The True Loves,  to back up Roscoe at some shows he had put together, first in Boston and New York and then in Chicago the following week. I decided to build a tour around these shows; we would play the first two shows with Roscoe, then tour our way out to Chicago and meet Roscoe there for the final show. This would be the first time that we would play outside of the northeast.

    After thinking long and hard about what music I should play in the car (I settled on the Swanee Quintet), I went to pick up Roscoe at the airport. He was dressed immaculately in a bright blue, double-breasted suit (I learned later on to expect that) and, at 79, he carried his own bag and had no one helping him.

    Hearing the Gospel music playing in the car surprised him; he seemed slightly incredulous of me, this young white kid, and how I might know about this music. Roscoe is a keen observer, and he’s certainly not one to show all of his cards right away. It took me a while to realize that he liked me from the start. Later that day he led a rehearsal with my band, carefully correcting everyone’s parts and making sure they did things the way he wanted. He was all business, and because of that, the show went well.

    The next day, while we were STILL waiting for the band to arrive, I decided to sit at the piano and sing some Gospel tunes, and that’s when we really started to get along. He laughed and shouted and joined in as I fumbled my way through Alex Bradford and James Cleveland tunes, and after a few minutes, we both forgot about how late the band was and we got the spirit. It was the beginning of a friendship that I cherish to this day.

    The show in Brooklyn was great (though the drive was harrowing, with Roscoe critiquing my driving the whole way), and so was the one a few days later in Chicago. Each time we performed with Roscoe, I learned more about how to work a crowd, how to create dynamics within a song and how to build to a climax, only to bring it down to a whisper seconds later. Roscoe’s singing ranged from powerful Gospel fire (“Leave You in the Arms of Another Man”) to smooth R&B crooning (“A Thousand Rivers”) to stomping Soul-for-the-dance-floor (“That’s Enough”), his status as an elder statesmen shining through it all.

    I may have learned more, though, just sitting and talking with him in the dressing rooms. We talked about music, of course, but also about how to be a good manager, how to maintain a relationship while on the road, how to keep your voice healthy and how to keep your shoes from getting scuffed in your suitcase (put them inside your socks!)

    After we finished that tour, Roscoe and I kept in touch, speaking over the phone regularly and continuing our conversations about music, life, and love. I brought him up to Brooklyn again for our first annual Brooklyn Soul Festival (he killed as usual), and when the band and I were traveling through Birmingham we brought him on stage as a special guest and he brought the house down. The morning after that show he picked me up in his own car (still driving at 83) and took me out to breakfast.

    In the summer of 2012, I asked my longtime girlfriend to marry me and, unbelievably, she said yes. One of my first calls was to Roscoe to tell him the good news. He immediately said, “I’m coming!” and I certainly couldn’t refuse him. While planning the wedding, we got the idea to have Roscoe sing a song during the ceremony.

    When the big day came in September of 2013, Roscoe arrived, dressed as sharp as ever (upstaging me as usual). The song we chose for him to sing was one he had written during his time with The Blind Boys of Mississippi, “Sending up My Timber.”

photo by Clean Plate Pictures

    There’s a dream that I dream
    Of my heavenly home
    And I know, that I’m going there some day
    That’s why I’m sending up my timber, everyday.
    
    The song is about how you need to live a good life to “send up your timber” and build yourself a home in heaven, but my wife and I felt that it could be applied to how to build a successful marriage and a “heavenly” home together.

    It meant the world to me that Roscoe, the man who taught me so much, not just about my craft but about how to be a better man, was the one singing those words on the happiest day of my life. After the ceremony was over, Roscoe found my wife and me in a quiet moment and attempted to thank us for having him there, but I stopped him. Before he could thank us, I had to thank him, for everything that he had done for me and for being a part of such a momentous occasion. I am proud to call Roscoe Robinson my mentor and my friend, and I can’t wait for the next time we sing together.

http://www.elipaperboyreed.com/

A Word from Mr C: Lost Soul

Mr. C:

Lost Soul was originally a series of albums I put together at CBS Records in the “80s that cobbled together truly inspired CBS label singles that sadly missed their commercial mark.  The Lost Soul concept seemed to fit the final piece of the SWEET SOUL MUSIC discography. 

Looking at this list almost thirty years later, the song selection still seems on the money.  And if CD reissues and YouTube have made them readily available, the navigation compass remains true to the spirit of intent.  Lost Soul stands as a sturdy and lovingly assembled tribute to great voices from the shadows.

For this edition– a special bonus cut!

"Believe in Me Baby Pt.1 +2” (Jesse James/20th Century Fox)  Reworked Little Milton cover to an appreciative audience with an emotional sermon on “the fast life and things like that.”  A 6 minute charging soul drama that ends at peak crescendo. Showtime.

Mr. G:

Joe’s right. It was so great working on Sweet Soul Music and getting these mix tapes in the mail – one after another, close to 40 in all. It was the basis not just for a book but for a lifelong dialogue, one that pre-dated Sweet Soul Music and has never really stopped.

Listening to this mix today – which was never actually a tape, more like an ideal –  reminds me once again of the richness and diversity of the music.

Now don’t forget: you can still see Otis Clay, a 2013 Blues Hall of Fame inductee, who, like Mavis Staples, continues to perform with undiminished fervor, each of them as emotionally compelling (wait’ll you hear Mavis’ new Jeff Tweedy-produced album) as they ever were. And if you like Jackie Moore’s beautifully controlled version of Paul Kelly’s “Personally” (co-produced by William Bell), check out Kelly’s own “folk soul” album on Bullseye, Gonna Stick and Stay, from 1993, or his great Warner Archives collection, The Best of Paul Kelly, with all but one song on both albums written by Kelly himself.

There’s a Sam Cooke component here that I was not fully aware of at the time. I knew that Arthur Conley’s “Let’s Go Steady,” which stands as an explicit tribute to Sam, was written by J.W. Alexander, Sam’s business partner, mentor, and friend. But I’m sure I didn’t know that Bobby Womack’s striking “What Is This?” was produced by Fred Smith, a Kags songwriter and SAR employee (Sam and J.W.’s publishing company and record label respectively), who had great success on his own as songwriter and producer (the Olympics’ “Western Movies” was just one of his many hits, and he worked with Bill Cosby’ for years), and was the owner of Keymen the label on which Bobby’s single appeared.

Maybe what stands out most of all for me, though, is Little Richard’s epic “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got (But It’s Got Me).” As Joe wrote on the final page of the book, it is “arguably the greatest soul ballad of all time. The Mt Rushmore of soul.” And it is. I can remember seeing Richard with Jimi Hendrix on guitar at the Donnelly Theater in Boston in May of 1965 around the time he recorded the song. (I ushered the show!) He didn’t sing “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got” that night. His showstopper was “Shake a Hand,” on which he left the mike and came to the edge of the stage, projecting his voice effortlessly without amplification and imploring the audience to join him. Which, without hesitating for a second, they very soulfully did.

I remember, too, buying that great Don Covay composition in its various Vee Jay versions (it came in two parts, and different lengths, for some reason, on different pressings). I bought it at Skippy White’s Mass Records: Home of the Blues, where I bought just about every soul record that I own, including Jesse James’ gently insistent “Believe in Me Baby” and Aretha’s first Atlantic album, I Never Loved Man the Way I Love You, the night it came out. That’s where Joe got much of his collection, too – but Joe went me one better. I just brought my Paperback Booksmith paycheck to Skippy. Joe went to work for him after graduating from college – and I’m sure it was the best postgraduate course there ever was.

A Word from Mr C: Dan Penn-The Fame Recordings

Guest Blogger: Joe McEwen (Mr. C)

Me and Mr. C:

I met Joe in 1970 when Jake and Alexandra and I were selling tickets to a Lightnin’ Hopkins concert at the door. Jake was 2, and Joe was 18 or 19. “Did you mean what you said in that Solomon Burke article you wrote in Rolling Stone?” Joe said, without bothering to introduce himself. “Yes,” I said. We’ve been friends ever since.

–PG

DAN PENN– THE FAME RECORDINGS (ACE)

For years there was quite a mythology surrounding the name Dan Penn.  A Southern soul songwriter whose name appeared

on some off the most heartfelt, literate ‘60s soul music stories (sung by voices like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, James Carr and Arthur Conley), Dan Penn was also something of a singer, whose impossible-to-find random singles and never-heard demos were rumored to be at least the  equal of the Murderers Row that made them famous.  Much of the Dan Penn myth-making was fueled by the enthusiasm of Atlantic Records entrepreneur and A+R guy Jerry Wexler. In fact it was Wexler’s Atlantic label that released more than a few of Penn’s best compositions.

There’s no doubt Dan Penn was a mysterious presence, more heard about than heard.  A white man who succeeded in a black man’s world.  Not unlike LSU basketball genius Pete Maravich (whose college career timeline paralleled Penn’s years here), Dan Penn was a larger-than-life ghost, with little national exposure.

A few years back, CBS Sports aired a documentary about Maravich.  Watching it was really something.  Pete Maravich was certainly more than advertised, a basketball-playing magician and soloist whose talent stood outside time and place. To my mind, it’s not a stretch comparing the Maravich footage to the 23 publishing demos (there’s one actual Fame single) on Dan Penn: The Fame Recordings.

In the early part of the 1960s, Dan Penn led a band, Dan Penn and the Pallbearers, that played the college fraternity circuit throughout Mississippi and Alabama. Despite local success, Penn found his calling in songwriting. The liner notes to this project are mostly a conversation with Dan, a self-revelatory monologue about the craft of writing songs. 

Dan Penn took this work with studied seriousness.  His writing influences ran a gamut of radio hit styles: Phil Spector, Motown (Marvin Gaye), Sam Cooke and Joe Tex.

As a singer, Penn’s vocals are styled and impassioned, equal parts Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich and Bobby Bland.  He was a mimic when he needed to be, anything to sell the song.  His more-than-occasional mid-song soliloquies  (particularly “Uptight Good Woman” and “It Tears Me Up”) are spot-on Tex. 

Dan Penn was an original, an eloquent songwriter with a voice to match.  He helped popularize a style that has become known as country-soul and Penn landed right in the middle of those two worlds. Backed by producer and label owner Rick Hall’s home-grown house band (an ensemble embarking on their own spectacular career), Penn created a kind of soul music that was high-level pop art.Wallace Daniel Pennington aka Dan Penn, to use a Maravich-inspired basketball metaphor, could throw a blind behind-the-back bounce pass on the run. The thrill is in these songs and performances.  Once in a while the myth really does become the man. Such is the case with Dan Penn.

– Joe McEwen

Dan Penn: The Fame Recordings available at fine records shop everywhere or from Amazon.com