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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About the only reason why I still bother to watch awards shows is to catch the sequence of people who have died since the last show (and of late successive shows have contrived to fuck that up by going for “artistic” camera angles which don’t hep the TV viewer in identifying dead people). Here is my In Memoriam section, with mix-tapes, for 2009, including only musicians, in three parts. The second will run next week, and the third early in the new year to accommodate late entries. so please don’t shout at me for having failed to pick up that the little singer of the Jackson 5 has died; he’ll feature in the second instalment. Feel free, however, to shout at the Grammys for omitting many of the departed musicians I will highlight.

The order of musicians does not run in the chronology of death, but is dictated randomly by the requirements of mix-tape sequencing — and the total aptness of leading with the Jim Carroll song as the theme of the mix. The songs featured on the mix should remind us what a debt we owe to those who have gone, and in some cases how much we are going to miss them, or cause us regret that we did not get to know them better.

Rest in Peace, y’all.

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Jim Carroll, 60, post-punk musician and writer of The Basketball Diaries, on September 11.
The Jim Carroll Band – People Who Died (1980)

Willy DeVille, 58, punk musician, on August 6
Mink DeVille – Just To Walk That Little Girl Home (1980)

Al Martino, 82, crooner and actor (Johnny Fontane in The Godfather), on October 13
Al Martino – To The Door Of The Sun (1974)

Ellie Greenwich, 68, Brill Building songwriter and occasional singer, on August 26
Ellie Greenwich – I Can Hear Music (1973)

Rusty Wier, 65, country singer and songwriter, on October 9
Rusty Wier – High Road, Low Road (1976)

John Martyn, 60, singer-songwriter, on January 29
John Martyn – Ways To Cry (1973)

Jay Bennett, 45, multi-instrumentalist, engineer, ex-Wilco member, on May 25
Jay Bennett & Edward Burch – Forgiven (2002)

Taylor Mitchell, 19, Canadian singer-songwriter, killed by coyotes on October 28
Taylor Mitchell – Don’t Know How I Got Here (2009)

Mary Travers, 72, folk singer and a third of Peter, Paul & Mary, on September 16
Mary Travers – Five Hundred Miles (1973)

Gordon Waller, 64, half of ’60s duo Peter & Gordon (represented here with a Lennon/McCartney composition), on July 17
Peter & Gordon – I Don’t Want To See You Again (1964)

Estelle Bennett, 67, member of The Ronettes and sister of Ronnie Spector, on February 11
The Ronettes – Silhouettes (1962)

Dewey Martin, 68, Buffalo Springfield drummer, on January 31
Buffalo Springfield – Sit Down, I Think I Love You (1966)

Billy Lee Riley, 75, rockabilly singer on Sun Records (sometimes backed by Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, as on this song), on August 2
Billy Riley – Pearly Lee (1957)

Gale Storm, 87, actress and singer born Josephine Owaissa Cottle, on June 27
Gale Storm – Dark Moon (1957)

Huey Long, 105, last surviving member of the Ink Spots (whom he joined in 1944), on June 10
Ink Spots – To Each His Own (1946)

Chris Connor, 81, jazz singer born Mary Coutsenhizer, on August 29
Chris Connor – They All Laughed (1957)

Kenny Rankin, 69, pop and jazz singer, on June 7
Kenny Rankin – Sunday Kind Of Love (1975)

Koko Taylor, 80, blues singer, on June 3
Koko Taylor – I Don’t Care No More (1985)

Johnny Carter, 75, R&B singer with The Flamingos and The Dells, on August 21
The Dells – The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind) (1971)

Leroy Smith, 56, funder and keyboardist of UK soul group Sweet Sensation, on January 15
Sweet Sensation – Sad Sweet Dreamer (1975)

Viola Wills, 69, soul singer who made a comeback as disco diva, on May 6
Viola Wills – Gonna Get Along Without You Now (1979)

Eddie Bo, 79, funky blues legend, on March 18
Eddie Bo – We’re Doing It (The Thang Pt1) (1970)

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\In Memoriam Vol. 1

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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…