Re: soul, etc
I've deferred on my response to this as I've been trying to find an old article clipping in which Berry talks about his beginnings and how he credits Chess, Stax (and others) as the impetous for his success. I think you'll find that the label Gordy Berry would credit most for inspiring him was Vee Jay--which was, after all, black-owned and operated and did produce crossover pop hits. (Motown eventually put out an excellent compilation on Motown called "Hits from the Legendary Vee Jay Records" with Betty Everett and Jerry Butler and Jimmy Reed and Dee Clark and Roscoe Gordon and the Dells and BobEarl--talk about a label Elvis knew!...not to speak of that little British import act the Beatles they quietly introduced.) Stax was gritty and Motown was pretty. I love both, except I think Stewart allowed more artistic freedom, whereas I've heard that Gordy flaunted the whip with his artists. Much good music came out of Motown, but still I have to wonder how much of it was "manufactured" for top 40 sake? Tera Well, it was ALL manufactured to get to Top 40 if it could! And they both had distinctive sounds, after all. But Motown's ambition was to do something else--to produce acts that could break through to take in he big bucks and yes respect appearing live anywhere--including Las Vegas, night clubs, movies, television--none of which had very much been possible. You could say that Motown wasjust doing more than Stax-Volt to "make it with the white folks"--but then, I suppose you'd have to say the same thing about Col. Parker and Elvis--who wanted excatly the same Big Time show biz goals! As for Stax=grit and Motown=pretty--as a longtime fan of both, I'd have to say that this rounds out their depth and breadth too much. Martha and the VDs pretty not gritty? The Temptations? (And what David no doubt likes about those Philly folks is that crossing of gritty and pretty.) Maybe what us Stax supporters would say is that it's definitely the most country of the three! Though there wer other southern soul labels that could do that too, at this they were unsurpassed. And when these hard soul artists turn to n outright country lyric, it never seems a stretch. The Supremes sing Country? Well they did--but they never thought to get David's advice on picking the right Countripolitan records to play with... See, that might have been ineteresting! Barry
Re: soul, etc
At 10:36 AM 2/2/99 -0600, good ol' Stormin' Soron wrote: I'm not disagreeing, David, and I'm not putting words in your mouth, but this seems to me to be a heartbeat away from the commercial assumption that, if it sells well, it must be good. I guess I'm saying it doesn't work EITHER direction--commerical success doesn't mean music will suck, and it doesn't mean it will be great either. Though if we look back through the history of American pop, it's important to remember most of what gets heralded as great was also popular--which is exactly what it was trying like hell to be. I think "entire" and "resounding" are too strong for what you are saying. I mean the "entire" not to refer every single single ever put out, hardly, but to mean every part of the American popular musical tradition. And resounding, from where I sit, probably isn't strong enough. --david cantwell PS: I don't know about Jerry Curry's record collection, but MINE sure is good! g
Re: soul, etc
On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, David Cantwell wrote: PS: I don't know about Jerry Curry's record collection, but MINE sure is good! g Huh.just waking up after being prodded here. My record collection? Well, my record collection is quite um, eclectic. it's also in pretty poor shape since a large percentage of my vinyl came direct from garage sales flea markets. Quite strong in early 70's arena rock and mid 80's Euro-synth pop. Really lacking in the soul area. However, I'm making up for that by acquiring CD's right left. Again, my vinyl is destined for digital reformatting and then I'll divest it. Just takes too much damn room. When I say digital reformatting, I'm talking DVD-R, NOT that damn CD-R technology. Not enough space savings in my humble opinion. Jerry - who is picking up a Sharp Mobilon handheld tomorrow. Death to all laptops, I say.
Re: soul, etc
On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Scary Jerry wrote: Come on over folks for a great dose of Bad Company, Foghat, Rainbow, Deep Purple, UFO, Yes, Asis, Al Stewart, Blancmange, Ultravox, Communards. You just *had* to name names, didn't ya? Don't you realize that it's almost lunchtime on the West Coast? Jeez, and I was actually kinda hungry before reading Jerry's post. What's most frightening about Jerry is a fella with that kind of a musical "background" could somehow end up with fairly decent taste in twang. *All* of us should think seriously about what that means.g--don
Re: soul, etc
At 03:13 AM 1/29/99 -0500, Tera wrote: You guys are all the samesheesh! gActually, there probably wouldn't have been a Motown without Stax or Chess. I can see, I guess, how we might argue that Chess paved the way for Motown in that it proved there was a crossover market for black artists (Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley), but if that's what you mean, why not also include King or Imperial and whoever else? More to the point, though, how is it that, without Stax, "there probably wouldn't have been a Motown"? In truth, the two labels followed almost eerily simultaneous paths to success. However, if we have to choose a chicken or egg here, it's clearly Motown that came first, not Stax. If our standard is which label released the first single, then Motown wins: Smokey and the Miracles' "Way Over There" came out on Tamla the summer of 1959. Stax's first release (actually called Satelite at the time) was The Veltones' "Fool In Love" from September, '59. If instead our standard is first chart hit, then Motown squeaks out another victory. Smokey's "Shop Around" debuted on the RB chart in Dec. of '60 (on its way to number one and number two pop) while Stax and Carla Thomas didn't chart until Feb.of '61 with Gee Whiz (and didn't do quite so well there either: #5 RB, #10 pop). Elsewhere, Tera said: You could probably say the same of Elvis Presley who took a "rb" image concept and transferred it to rockabilly. This seems off. Presley fused country and rb to create rockabilly, not rb and rockabilly to create...what? (In fact, without rb in the first place, how do you even get rockabilly, let alone transfer rb back to it?) Do I like Motown? Hell yes! Indeed, catalogue to catalogue, and with a gun to my head, I'd prefer its output to Stax's, though barring the gun I don't really see any need to choose. I will, however, give a shout out to Gamble and Huff and Philly International (the O'Jays, Harold Melvin, etc.) which I will proclaim loudly as my favorite of all the great soul labels. Especially if we can include the work that Philly house arranger Thom Bell was doing, simultaeously, with the Spinners and Stylistics at Atlantic (and for that matter, what Philly Int.'s other arranger, Bobby Martin, was doing with the Manhattans at Columbia) then to my taste the more general term, Philly Soul, describes the best there ever was. --david
Re: soul, etc
Carl: On the fabulous Hi label where Willie Mitchell produced so much fine music. Does anyone here own the Hi box set? Is it a representative collection of that label's finest releases? Oh yeah. WIllie Mitchell was a recording genius Besides Ann Peebles, what else *is* in that box set? I've always wondered too. --junior
Re: soul, etc
Joe Gracey writes: There is no substitute for a 60s-era soul review. Take my word for it. Okay, as sad as it is, I'll provide a bookend to Joe's James Brown story. The year was 1988. I had graduated from college about a year earlier and was working and teaching bass at a local musical instrument store in Keene, New Hampshire. A local promoter was booking a few shows at the county fairgrounds that summer, one of which was a bill featuring Johnny Rivers, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and James Brown. I'm not a *huge* Johnny Rivers fan (other than "Secret Agent Man," that is) but was nuts for everyone else on the bill. And Rivers *is* a good performer, no doubt about it, and everyone else was great, too. Hell, even Chuck Berry turned in a fine performance. So James is the final performer of the day and his band comes out and starts playing funk instrumentals. James' personal problems were well-known during this period (he was awaiting trial for his famous car chase at that time and was also known to be having marital problems) and there was a lot of curiosity as to how the performance would go. So the band is playing...and playing...and playing. This goes on for about thirty minutes and there's no James Brown yet. People are starting to get a little worried and then Brown finally comes out and turned in a fine performance. Not quite great, and he was a little more incoherent than I'd expected, but certainly nothing to be embarassed by. Meanwhile, outside of town, James' estranged wife had come up to New Hampshire and tried to burn down the motel where James and his band were staying, not knowing that he was at the fairgrounds at the time. She was caught and charged with attempted arson, though I can't remember what the end result of that was. A couple of days later I was at work and a friend of mine came into the store. Said friend worked on the sound crew at the show and was telling me about what it was like backstage. We ended up talking about the arson thing that James' wife had been arrested for and he proceeded to tell me some horror stories about what it was like backstage before Brown's set. I really don't want to get into what he told me *too* much because none of it would come as a huge surprise at this point and James has admirably stuck to the straight-and-narrow in the intervening years. Safe to say, though, there was a good reason why the band was playing instrumental vamps for a half-hour before he finally went onstage. I was really impressed that the performance was as good as it was after hearing my friend's backstage stories. I truly wish I'd seen Brown in the '60s. A few years back PBS ran an old bw videotape of his 1968 Boston TV performance the evening of Martin Luther King's death; one of the most amazing TV concerts I've ever seen. The anger and energy in the audience came through loud and clear, twenty-five years after the original event. The way that Brown and Boston's then-mayor Kevin White handled the situation onstage saved Boston a lot of destruction that a lot of other cities weren't as lucky to avoid. --Jon Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wollaston, Massachusetts
Re: soul, etc
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Meanwhile, outside of town, James' estranged wife had come up to New Hampshire and tried to burn down the motel where James and his band were staying, not knowing that he was at the fairgrounds at the time. this is cool. -- Joe Gracey President-For-Life, Jackalope Records http://www.kimmierhodes.com
