three takes
You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board.
“People Get Ready”
Curtis Mayfield, live, England (London), 1988
*****
The Impressions (featuring Curtis Mayfield), 1965
More Curtis Mayfield? Here. Here. Here.
*****
Al Green, live, Washington, D.C., 1983 (Gospel According to Al Green, 1984)
More Al Green? Here. Here. Here.
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lagniappe
radio gems: gospel
Gospel Memories
WLUW-FM
Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, 10-11 a.m. (CST) (archived shows)
three takes
He’s the guy who, early in his career, while an arranger and producer for Curtom Records, brought Baby Huey & the Babysitters to the attention of Curtis Mayfield.
“Little Ghetto Boy” (Donny Hathaway)
take 1
John Legend & The Roots
Live (recording studio), 2010
*****
take 2
Live, New York, 9/23/10
Want more of John Legend & The Roots? Here.
*****
take 3
Donny Hathaway, live, 1972
*****
lagniappe
Donny Hathaway, “The Ghetto,” live, 1970s
*****
Donny Hathaway died in 1979 at the age of 33. He was a casualty of mental illness. Afflicted with severe chronic depression and ultimately diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, he leapt to his death out of a New York City hotel room.
*****
Curtis Mayfield on Donny Hathaway:
To see him there in the studio at about 21 years old, directing all these real big session guys like he’d been doing it for years, was a tremendous sight to see. But he always believed in himself. He always believed in his talent. He wasn’t conceited about it, but he knew he could do anything these guys could do and almost certainly better. I’d have loved to sign him as artist, but it wasn’t to be.
*****
Bassist Christian McBride on Donny Hathaway:
You can tell that he listened to Stravinsky. He listened to Debussy. He was a musician who was the full 360-degree circle.
two takes
“Hard Times” (Curtis Mayfield)
John Legend & The Roots, live (recording studio), 2010
***
Baby Huey & the Babysitters, 1971 (The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend, produced by Curtis Mayfield and released, posthumously [the singer died, at 26, in 1970], on Curtom Records)
I must have seen Baby Huey & the Babysitters at least a half-dozen times. In the late ’60s they played the Chicago area teen clubs. Tight rhythm section, punchy horns, soulful vocals—what could be, at 16, a finer date?
Yesterday he sang gospel; today he sings soul music.
O.V. Wright
“I Feel Alright,” live, Memphis, 1975
*****
“I’d Rather Be Blind, Crippled, And Crazy” (Back Beat Records, 1973)
*****
“Drowning On Dry Land” (Back Beat Records, 1973)
*****
“A Nickel And A Nail” (Back Beat Records, 1975)
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lagniappe
Soul is church. Just changing ‘Jesus’ to ‘baby.’ That’s all it is.
—O.V. Wright
*****
Somehow, someway, O.V. Wright continues to be a mystery. Though he spent his entire life in Memphis, recorded with [producer] Willie Mitchell and was a contemporary of everyone from Otis Redding to Al Green, Wright remains a largely unheralded figure.
Hardcore soul enthusiasts and R&B historians have consistently ranked him among the most evocative and powerful singers of all time, yet his troubled life and tragically early death at the age of 41 in 1980 have consigned him to the margins of music history.
“I remember Willie Mitchell saying, after we lost O.V. — and I never will forget this — Willie said he was the greatest singer that was ever on the planet,” recalls drummer Howard Grimes.
***
Wright was revered by his peers, including a young Al Green. “Al used to come in and try and listen to O.V. record,” recalls Willie Mitchell, laughing. “And O.V. would see him and say, ‘Al, what you doing here? Get out of my session!'”
***
“He just had more church in him,” says Howard Grimes. “That’s what touched people.”
[Otis] Clay recalls being in the audience when Wright turned a Miami nightclub into a revival meeting. “Man, he whipped that audience into a frenzy like I’ve never seen,” says Clay. “You would’ve thought he was a preacher passing out blessings. He’d say, ‘If you love the blues, come up and shake my hand.’ And, man, people lined up, just like they would in church. That was typical O.V.”
—Bob Mehr, Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 11/13/08
Elvis—blues singer
Elvis Presley, “Stranger In My Own Home Town,” live (rehearsal), 1970
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lagniappe
Percy Mayfield, “Stranger In My Own Home Town” (1964)
*****
art beat
Stranger in Paradise: The Works of Reverend Howard Finster, Chicago Cultural Center, through 9/26/10 (in the gallery next to The Jazz Loft Project, W. Eugene Smith in NYC, 1957-1965, there through 9/19/10)
Mr. Coke (1988; tractor enamel on wood)
***
My work is scrubby. It’s bad, nasty art. But it’s telling something. You don’t have to be a perfect artist to work in art.
—Reverend Howard Finster
***
Matthew Arient’s Angel (1987; tractor enamel on wood)
***
Howard Finster Vision House
Mr. Excitement
Jackie Wilson, “Higher and Higher,” “Lonely Teardrops,” live (TV broadcast), introduced by Roy Orbison and (I think) Del Shannon, 1974
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lagniappe
art beat
While at the Art Institute the other day, I wandered into a small room of paintings by this guy—who, in his early 20s (in the 1950s), moved to New York to study music with Lennie Tristano.
Robert Ryman, from The Elliot Room (Charter Series), 1985-87
*****
radio
Looking for something different?
How ’bout an hour of NYC traffic reports, uninterrupted?
(I stumbled onto this last night—Kenny G’s Hour of Pain—while waiting for Sinner’s Crossroads.)
Who would’ve thought this would be so good?
Tom Jones & Janis Joplin, “Raise Your Hand,” live (TV broadcast), 1969
recipe
1 cup funkiness
1 cup elegance
Mix until thoroughly blended.
Professor Longhair (AKA Henry Roeland [“Roy”] Byrd), December 19, 1918-January 30, 1980
“Tipitina,” live
*****
“Hey Little Girl,” live
**********
lagniappe
Mike Kinnamon, Bonnie Bramlett’s Nashville-based manager, in response to an email letting him (and Bonnie) know that her music was featured here (Delaney, alas, is no longer alive), left a voice-mail message yesterday:
. . . I just love it when somebody like you cares enough to send stuff like that around. It’s really cool, and it lifts her [Bonnie] up, too. Thank you so much, buddy . . .
looking back
Today, celebrating our 300th post, we revisit a few favorites.
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3/12/10
Both Chicago blues artists. Both guitar players. Both influenced by other kinds of music.
Musical personalities? They could hardly be more different.
Buddy Guy, “Let Me Love You Baby,” live
*****
Fenton Robinson, “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” live, 1977
***
Back in the 1970s, when I was at Alligator Records, I had the pleasure of working with Fenton, co-producing his album I Hear Some Blues Downstairs (a Grammy nominee). He didn’t fit the stereotype of a bluesman. Gentle, soft-spoken, serious, introspective: he was all these things. He died in 1997.
**********
3/3/10
What other pop star has made such stunning contributions as a guest artist?
Sinead O’Connor
With Willie Nelson, “Don’t Give Up”
*****
With the Chieftains, “The Foggy Dew”
*****
With Shane MacGowan, “Haunted”
**********
5/28/2010
two takes
“La-La Means I Love You”
The Delfonics, live, 2008 (originally recorded 1968)
*****
Bill Frisell, live, New York (Rochester), 2007
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music . . . carr[ies] us smoothly across the tumult of experience, like water over rocks.
—Vijay Iyer, liner notes, Historicity (2009)
The other day, as I waited for a train at an underground station in downtown Chicago, an older black guy started singing this song, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, and at that moment everything—this song, this singer, this place—seemed all of a piece and I was no longer waiting.
Curtis Mayfield (with David Sanborn, alto saxophone; Hiram Bullock, guitar; David Lindley, steel guitar; George Duke, piano; Phillipe Saisse, keyboard; Tom Barney, bass; Omar Hakim, drums), “It’s All Right,” live (TV broadcast [Sunday Night]), 1989
music clip of the day 