Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

This mix should persuade those who believe that soul music was dying by the mid-1980s of their error. There is much that’s great on this mix, and among tracks that did not make the cut.

Some of the songs are surprising. Cameo are more usually associated with funk and camp codpieces, not deep soul music as this duet between Larry Blackmon and Barbara Mitchell of Hi Inergy (who featured on Any Major Soul 1976-77). Denise LaSalle, during the time covered by this mix, had a hit with the awful Don’t Mess With My Toot Toot; the song here, an old-fashioned southern soul number, preceded that atrocity  by a year. And those who associate Amii Stewart only with thumping Euro disco will hear another side to the long-legged Washington-born and Italy-based singer. And if there has been a perception that Deniece Williams had sold out to pop with Johnny Mathis duets and Let’s Hear It For The Boy, Black Butterfly (from the same album on which the latter appeared on) will dispel that notion.

The 1980s saw much collaboration and crossing over between jazz fusion and soul. We saw this on the Any Major Soul 1980-81 mix, on which the great Grady Tate provided vocals for Grover Washington. Likewise, here Roberta Flack guests with Japanese saxman Sadao Watanabe on the very lovely Here’s To Love. Likewise Bobby Womack guests on Crusaders’ saxophonist Wilton Felder’s cumbersomely titled but gorgeous (No Matter How High I Get) I’ll Still Be Looking Up You. Womack, who had previously sung on Felder’s Inherit The Wind, was accompanied by Alltrinna Grayson. Grayson was discovered by Womack while singing in a burger joint; when Patti LaBelle dropped out of Womack’s tour, he roped in Grayson (her vocals here suggest that she was an astute replacement for LaBelle).

Bernard Wright, like his childhood friend Tom Browne, had a jazz-funk background and recorded on Dave Grusin’s GRP label, though Mr Wright, on which the featured song appeared, was released on EMI subsidiary Manhattan.

Paris L. Holley is the son of a bandleader for Billie Holliday, and recorded in Chicago, apparently only this one single — but what a magnificent single! Google reveals that there is a music producer and web developer of that name, but I have no idea if that’s the same person.

A few veterans from the 1970s were making comebacks: The Intruders had been recording since 1961, though their breakthrough came only in 1968. After success through the 1970s, two of the trio left to become Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the other member, Eugene Daugherty, became a truck driver. In 1984, he left the road to reform The Intruders with a new line-up, and scored a hit with Who Do You Love. The Spinners went back even further, when as the Domingos they shared the stage with the Four Ames, who’d become the Four Tops. After a stint with Motown and various personnel changes, the Spinners enjoyed their most successful period in the 1970s. Their last big chart hit was in 1980.

And Teddy Pendergrass made his comeback with Love Language in 1984, two years after the car crash that left him paralysed. Truth be told, Love Language was mostly inferior by TP’s standards (he’d hit a final high in 1988 with his Joy LP). In My Time is standard ’80s soul crooning fare, but I think TP’s understated vocals are rather touching.

If I had to choose favourites from this set, the contenders would certainly include the two opening tracks, and the Cameo song and Patrice Rushen’s High In Me from her Now album, the tape of which I wore out driving on the Autobahn in 1984. Hear a podcast interview with Rushen at the fine jazz blog Straight No Chaser.

TRACKLISTING
1. Sadao Watanabe & Roberta Flack – Here’s To Love
2. Bill Withers – Oh Yeah
3. Paris - I Choose You
4. Amii Stewart – Friends
5. Alexander O’Neal – A Broken Heart Can Mend
6. Bernard Wright – Just When I Thought You Were Mine
7. Denise LaSalle & Latimore – Right Place Right Time
8. Wilton Felder feat. Bobby Womack & Alltinna Grayson – (No Matter How High I Get) I’ll Still Be Looking Up To You
9. Deniece Williams – Black Butterfly
10. Cameo - I’ll Never Look For Love
11. Patrice Rushen – High In Me
12. The Intruders – Who Do You Love?
13. S.O.S. Band – Just The Way You Like It
14. DeBarge – Time Will Reveal
15. The Spinners – Love Don’t Love Nobody
16. Teddy Pendergrass – In My Time

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If I had any concerns that I might not be able to cover the 1980s with great soul music, then I was entirely mistaken. This series will go up to 1988-89 (at which point I’ll consider whether 1990-91 is worth covering). The 1982/83 season saw the continued rise of the Quiet Storm, corporate smooth soul stuff which would eventually choke the genre. There isn’t much of that on this collection (and where there is, such as Beau Williams’ Elvina, it’s great).

Opening track Time Is appeared on veteran funk group New Birth’s swansong album, I’m Back, a title that proved terminally temporary. Put together in the late 1960s by Harvey Fuqua, New Birth scored a number of R&B hits throughout the ’70s.

The LIVE Band, from New York City, released only one album (on The Sound of Brooklyn label). The title feature here sounds a lot like a Maze song, especially Joy And Pain, with the vocalist doing his best to emulate Frankie Beverley’s phrasing. It would be horribly unfair to call this a pastiche, though. It’s a great track from a fine album.
Gayle Adams represents the Washington D.C. soul scene here. Like so many other artists on this set, her career was relatively short-lived. Perhaps best-known for her cover of the Four Tops’ Baby I Need Your Loving or possibly the dance hit Love Fever, both from the album featuring Don’t Jump To Conclusion, the sets one mid-tempo number, with a rather nice guitar solo.

Among the bonus tracks for Any Major Soul 1978-79 were Switch, which included two brothers of the DeBarge clan, Bobby and Tommy. Through their good office the younger siblings, led by El DeBarge, landed a contract with Motown subsidiary Gordy. It would be an injustice if the group’s reputation were to hinge on the chart-fodder Rhythm Of The Night; the group produced some excellent soul music. Check out the acoustic guitar solo on All This Love.

I have been unable to find out anything about Lenard Lidell, or even if he ever released anything else but his 1983 four-track EP, Afternoon Affair, from which the lovely Sweetie Pie comes. It was released by the L.A.-based Jara Records. Likewise, I have no information on The Vosonics, other than that they apparently recorded in Oakland, California.
Beau Williams was going to become a replacement member of the Temptations, but was rejected because at 5’8” he was considered too short. In reparation, of sorts, the Temps appeared on George Benson protégé Williams’ 1983 debut album Stay With Me, on which Elvina appeared. The song is a classic in some Cape Town karaoke bars, invariably causing much distress to singer and listeners when it comes to the high note at 4:20.
Fred Parris was one of doo wop group Five Satins, who recorded the original version of In The Still Of The Night, and he still tours with an incarnation of the group. In the 1980s, he led the now unnumbered Satins on a very nice soul album. Homepage here.
Windjammer, from New Orleans, are probably best remembered for the 1984 hit Tossin’ And Turnin’. Stay is from their self-titled debut, released 1982. Five years earlier, guitarist Ken McLin had ambushed Tito Jackson on a hotel escalator with a Windjammer demo. To his credit, Tito listened to the tape, and two years later that charming man Joe Jackson became their manager.
Like Windjammer, Atlantic Starr were for a while produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, a period that produced gems like Silver Shadow and Let The Sun In as well as MOR ballads like Always. Circles preceded that period, with James Anthony Carmichael doing producing duty, with Sharon Bryant still with the Lewis brothers before leaving and replaced with Barbara Weathers.

TRACKLISTING
1. The New Birth – Time Is
2. Vernon Burch – Simply Love
3. The LIVE Band - A Chance For Hope
4. O.T. Sykes - Lonelines Inside Of Me
5. Roberta Flack – I’m The One
6. Gayle Adams – Don’t Jump To Conclusions
7. DeBarge – All This Love
8. Lenard Lidell – Sweetie Pie
9. Beau Williams – Elvina
10. Bloodstone – Go On And Cry
11. Fred Parris and the Satins – Let Me Be The Last One
12. Windjammer – Stay
13. Randy Crawford – In Real Life
14. The Vosonics – Set My Soul On Fire
15. Gwen Guthrie - It Should Have Been You
16. Atlantic Starr – Circles
17. Mtume – Would You Like To Fool Around

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As usual, here are a few bonus tracks of songs I was particularly disappointed to exclude from the mix (those not worried about the customary CD-R time limit of these mixes might want to add the bonus tracks to their playlist).

Randy Crawford appears on the mix; here she gets another outing in duet with Al Jarreau in their gorgeous version of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell’s Your Precious Love, recorded with the Yellow Jackets at the Montreaux Jazz Festival. The first side of the 1982 album of the festival, Casino Lights, consists of Crawford and Jarreau dueting (plus a rather nice version of Imagine by Crawford solo).
Keni Burke had initial success as one of the Five Stairsteps (Ooh Child) before going solo on George Harrison’s Dark Horse label, where he was produced by Billy Preston. He wasn’t very successful, and so worked as a session bass player for the likes of Curtis Mayfield, Gladys Knight, Bill Withers and Ramsey Lewis. In the early 1980s Burke signed with RCA on which he released two albums, including 1982’s excellent Changes, on which the oft-sampled Risin’ To The Top appeared.

Margie Joseph’s career went back to the 1960s, when she was a soul singer in the Aretha mould on Stax and then, under Jerry Wexler’s tutelage, Atlantic. Modest success followed in the 1970s until an album she recorded for Philly’s WMOT Records went unreleased because the label went bankrupt. Joseph briefly taught elocution at a school before making a comeback with her 1982 Knockout album, showing Aretha Franklin that you can do dance records without screaming.
Do I Do was Stevie Wonder’s final masterpiece before drowning himself in the schlock of I Just Called To Say… This is the full, ten-and-a-half-minute workout from his Original Musiquarium collection (which one cannot describe as a “best of” compilation, because a double album could never cover Stevie’s best), with Dizzy Gillespie guesting.
Anita Baker achieved her breakthrough with 1986 outstanding Rapture album. Angel comes from her 1983 debut, which never was much promoted. In fact, Baker was told early in her career to pack in the singing gig because she supposedly had no good voice. Whoever offered that piece of advice was not the brightest light on the A&R switchboard.
Finally, Melba Moore shows that she has lungs: check out that note she holds for 36 seconds at the end of The Other Side Of The Rainbow. And if you think 36 seconds is not very long, listen again.

Al Jarreau & Randy Crawford – Your Precious Love.mp3
Keni Burke – Risin’ To The Top.mp3
Con Funk Shun – Love’s Train.mp3
Womack & Womack – Baby I’m Scared Of You Baby.mp3
Melba Moore – The Other Side Of The Rainbow.mp3
Anita Baker – Angel.mp3
Margie Joseph – Knockout.mp3
Stevie Wonder – Do I Do.mp3

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’70s Soul