Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

The first mix of soul covers was very popular (and great fun to compile), so I hope that subsequent compilations will also find an audience.I think I have at least two more in the works.

There are a few surprising covers in this mix. Maxayn reshape the Rolling Stones song entirely, while the wonderful Zulema Cusseaux, a gifted songwriter in her own right, perhaps even tops my favourite solo McCartney track. And could there be soul versions of Wild Thing? Jagger’s ex-squeeze Marsha Hunt gave it a shot.
Scanning the tracklisting, there are some wonderful strong women who have been much neglected among the 20 featured acts. We previously encountered the unjustly forgotten Barbara Jean English with the utterly astonishing So Many Ways To Die on Any Major Soul 1972-73; here she improves on one of Bread’s better songs. Tami Lynn never had much of a big audience; her cover of Smiley Lewis’ One Night Of Sin (featured here as the original of Elvis’ One Night) shows why that was a great shame. Unlike those two, Denise LaSalle has had a notable career, even if she is often remembered for the horrible 1985 novelty hit My Toot-Toot. Here LaSalle is allowed to break a rule: being featured with a song already covered on the first mix.

The idea with these compilation is to take songs that are better known in versions outside the soul genre, but there must be exceptions. The test is in how much the covering artist appropriates the song. The amazing Marlena Shaw does that with the Main Ingredient’s Don’t Want To Be Lonely, and The Temptations give I Heard It Through The Grapevine their spin (like the two better-known versions by Gladys Knight and Marvin Gaye, it was produced by Norman Whitfield).

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R , and a front and back cover is included. Several of the songs included here are, to my knowledge, out of print. Be sure to buy the albums that include the songs that you like in particular — if you like the album fillers, you’ll surely like the rest of the album.

TRACKLISTING
1. Al Green – I Want To Hold Your Hand (1969)
2. Maxayn – You Can’t Always Get What You Want (1972)
3. Zulema – Maybe I’m Amazed (1972)
4. Donnie Hathaway - He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother (1971)
5. The Smith Connection – Rainy Days And Mondays (1972)
6. Isaac Hayes – I’ll Never Fall In Love Again (1971)
7. Candi Staton – In The Ghetto (1972)
8. Thelma Houston – Don’t Make Me Over (1981)
9. Marlena Shaw – Just Don’t Want To Be Lonely (1973)
10. Barbara Jean English – Baby I’m A-Want You (1972)
11. Solomon Burke – He’ll Have To Go (1964)
12. Denise LaSalle – Harper Valley P.T.A. (1973)
13. Tami Lynn – One Night Of Sin (1972)
14. The Temptations – I Heard It Through The Grapevine (1969)
15. The Intruders - Mother And Child Reunion (1973)
16. Family Brown – When I Need You (1977)
17. Billy Paul – Your Song (1972)
18. Joe Simon – Help Me Make It Through The Night (1973)
19. The Dells – A Whiter Shade Of Pale (1969)
20. Marsha Hunt – Wild Thing (1971)

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Generally I’m wary of cover versions, especially if the song being covered is already well known in its original form or is otherwise identified with a particular artist. There is not much you can do to improve on, say, Bridge Over Troubled Water other than to strip the song down and rework it completely. Not many artists have succeeded in doing so. But for an example of how a well-known song can be totally reworked, one might look to Otis Redding’s version of Try A Little Tenderness (originally recorded by Bing Crosby). Or listen to what Donny Hathaway does with the standard Misty on this mix.

The songs covered by soul artists come almost exclusively from a non-soul tradition. Some are standards (Don’t Fence Me In, Misty, Nature Boy), some country (King Of The Road, Harper Valley P.T.A.), some were pop or rock hits. Only two songs here were originally soul numbers, though For Once In My Life had traversed genres before Gladys Knight & the Pips released their take in 1973 (see HERE). The other, originally by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, is redone here by Chic man Bernie Edwards in a rather nice poppy way. Merry Clayton (whom we last encountered HERE) may be covering a Rolling Stones song, but it is she who sang on the Stones in the first place, so it’s really half a cover.

I’d be interested to know which covers worked for the listener, and which fell flat. As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R , and a front and back cover is included.

TRACKLISTING
1. The Isley Brothers – Listen To The Music (1973)
2. Merry Clayton – Gimme Shelter (1970)
3. Erma Franklin – Light My Fire (1969)
4. Stevie Wonder - Bang Bang (1966)
5. Jackie Wilson – Eleanor Rigby 1969)
6. The Dells - Wichita Lineman/By The Time I Get To Phoenix (1969)
7. Isaac Hayes - It’s Too Late (1973)
8. The Delfonics – Alfie (1968)
9. Donny Hathaway – Misty (1970)
10. Grady Tate - Don’t Fence Me In (1974)
11. Joe Tex – King Of The Road (1965)
12. Vivian Reed – Harper Valley P.T.A. (1970)
13. Flaming Ember – Spinning Wheel (1971)
14. The Supremes & The Temptation - Got To Get You Into My Life (1968)
15. George Benson - Nature Boy (1977)
16. Bernard Edwards feat. Jocelyn Brown – You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me (1983)
17. Charles Brimmer – We’ve Only Just Begun (1976)
18. Gladys Knight & The Pips – For Once In My Life (1973)
19. Roberta Flack – Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye (1969)
20. Billy Paul - Mrs. Robinson (1970)
21. Voices Of East Harlem - For What It’s Worth (1970)

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And here we come to an end of the 1970s in the Any Major Soul series. There are two mixes covering ’80s soul HERE and HERE. Still, the years 1980/81 and possibly 1982/83 were good enough to yield any major mixes; I’ve not thought about later years.

It’s tempting to dismiss the soul music produced in the disco era. I think this mix shows that it was still a golden era for soul, if not of quite the incredible standards a few years earlier when there was the happy confluence of the influences exerted by the likes of Philly, Motown, Hi, Muscle Shoals, Atlantic, and the Chicago scene. Read more…

The cull to bring the 1976/77 mix down to CD-R length was more brutal than I had anticipated. So much good music that failed to make the cut (hence all the bonus tracks)! Here then is a mix of a few fairly well-known songs, a couple of album tracks, and a handful of quite rare — and certainly not familiar — numbers. A few of these rarities are not of great sound quality; I hope the excellence of the music compensates for that. Read more…

By the mid-1970s, soul had by and large left behind its R&B roots and the influence of funk and what would become widely known as disco was beginning to manifest itself — many soul acts of the period crossed back and forth between soul, funk and disco.

A few notes on some of the featured acts: Read more…

I was delighted to see a comment from Jerry Plunk, lead singer and drummer of the Flying Embers, thanking me for including the group’s Westbound #9 in the Any Major Soul 1970/71 mix (and a comment from Jerry Lawson from the Persuasions, appreciating the inclusion of his group’s version of He Ain’t Heavy/You’ve Got A Friend in The Originals Vol. 30). I hope that this series of ’70s soul mixes will create some interest in acts and songs that are not as widely remembered as they ought to be. So this compilation excludes the most obvious picks for the years 1972/73, and includes what I hope are a few great new discoveries, or indeed re-discoveries. As before, it was a struggle to keep the mix down to the standard CD-R length. Read more…

Some people will reel in disbelief and perhaps go on by shouting out the first names of assorted soul deities as I proclaim: The 1970s were the golden age of soul music. Of course, ’60s soul was fantastic, as the two volumes of Any Major’60s Soul compilations proved (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2). But by the late 1960s and early ’70s soul had acquired such a breadth of variety which the still nascent form of the previous decade did not have, by force of progress. The soul shouters were giving way to smooth guys, often singing in falsetto, and the Muscle Shoal horns went out and the string arrangements came in. And Motown and Stax had lost their way. As smooth as ’70s often was, however, it still retained depth. For the first half of the decade at least, soul produced some of the most gorgeous sounds ever in music. Read more…

After a hiatus of a few weeks, we return to the age of the Afro, the glorious times of sunny soul which talked about love and preached social-consciousness. Read more…

Before we launch into the second part of the Age of the Afro series, let me thank the kind people who commented so generously and positively on the first installment — and, indeed, everybody who posts comments. Any blogger, certainly the music writers, will agree that comments validate our efforts, and encourage us to carry on. So, on to the next lot of ’70s soul classics. Read more…

My brother is currently visiting me. He has noted with some amused disdain my facility to jump musical genres within minutes. So, one minute I might be listening to a song by AC/DC, then a Motown track, followed by Wilco and Dean Martin. And it’s true, I love music so much, and for so many different reasons, I take joy in hearing a song I love, or even just like. But the one genre I will always return to is the soul music of the 1970s. And so, proceeding from the ’60s soul three-parter, here we inaugurate my series of ’70s soul, revisiting the age of the afro. Read more…