At 07:48 PM 4/21/99 -0400, Carl wrote:
> Not to displace anything in David's definitive Top 4 -
>
> (sideline: except that I'm not quite convinced we've covered soul
> properly in the person of James Brown, whose influence vocally and
> rhythmically is definitive for funk-disco-rap but not so much in the
> more slow-grooving melody-centred part of pop-soul-R&B
Good call, Carl. Brother Ray is huge this century and he deserves to be
there, and very high too. But as for Brown and pop-soul R&B, I'd suggest a
replaying of the Startime box set, disc one, especially "Try Me," "I Know
It's True," Baby, You're Right," "Lost Someone," "It's A Man's World," and
especially, especially "Prisoner Of Love," which is as great a bit of
pop-soul-R&B as Charles ever did. Hell, as anyone ever did.
> - but on Tera's behalf I'd reluctantly say that if we look at the
> current state of pop music, where female singer-songwriters are about
> the only growing concern in the rock column of the equation, it's not
> easy to avoid pegging Joni Mitchell fairly high up.
Well, bristling, I say: HOW fairly high up are you talking? <g>
>Joni Mitchell was the pop-music equivalent of Jackie
> Robinson, breaking the bar as the first major female artist to visibly
> call the shots on her own career, on her own songs and in her own
> distinctly female (but not feminized) voice
Didn't Aretha already do this, at least during the post-Columbia, classic
Atlantic period?
> (Yes, you might name Dolly or Loretta or Aretha or Billie Holiday or
> Ella or Tina Turner, but I don't think any of them visibly held
> control over their personae and music in the same way.)
I've already named, as has Tera, Aretha, Mahalia, and Bessie, and I don't
think the rest of your list quite makes it to the Top Ten or Fifteen level
(well, MAYBE Ella..) that we've been discussing. BUT, Madonna (who you skip
over so quickly)... what I was thinking? She HAS to be incredibly high on a
list of most influentials, right? The whole current women's movement can be
traced back to her, I'd say, and far more directly--both in terms of music
and in terms of business--than it could to Joni. She's also been huge, for
better or worse, in the way image rules today, as well as in the way street
moves are immediately co-opted for commercial gain and (sometimes) artistic
success.
> The irony is that Mitchell's historical significance far outstrips her
> musical quality - much of the latter is for the worse, in that she,
> er, overlegitimized confessional songwriting
Agreed as to her quality. And, as to her singificance, would her
contemporary, Sweet Baby James, have played a more visible, more
broad-based role in spreading this kind of music to the wide world (both in
confessional songwriting and in OVERLY confessional songwriting)?
Plus, James apparently has got that whole Garth thing to answer for...
--david cantwell
