Some Interesting Musical Commentary

[JSngry]

http://www.kalamu.com/bol/

Navigation takes a little gettting used to, but the guy's tastes are broad and deep. And there is plenty of jazz deep inside, if that's what you're looking for.

Not necessarily "profound" or anything, but I like the "flavor" of much of what he says and how he says it.

Check it out for yourself.

[Joe G]

Thanks, Jim.

[JSngry]

Hey, you gotta love this, right?

Mtume ya Salaam

Mtume ya Salaam is a published writer, voracious reader, dedicated father, professional truck driver and degenerate poker player whose homeowner’s insurance policy has a separate rider for ‘music CDs,’ ‘vinyl record albums,’ and ’stereo equipment.’ He lives in New Orleans and can be reached at mtume_s@yahoo.com.

[Big Al]

Very nice indeed. The article on "The Girl from Ipanema" is very insightful.

[Tom Storer]

Very cool site - thanks, JS!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Good site that, thanks Jim.

MG

[JSngry]

AMEL LARRIEUX / “Try Your Wings”

Source: Lovely Standards (Blisslife/ADA - 2007)

Amel Larrieux first gained notoriety back in the mid-nineties as half of the neo-soul duo Groove Theory. Since then, Amel has released three more albums that are similar in style to her work with Groove Theory, but to my ears at least, much more nuanced and rich in their presentation. After the first of her post-Groove Theory albums, Infinite Possibilities, failed to produce any radio hits, Amel parted ways with Epic/Sony. I still don’t know for sure whether she was dropped by the label or chose to leave on her own. Either way, I was both surprised and pleased when Amel’s third release showed up on Blisslife, an independent label, instead of on another major label.

Blisslife recently released Amel’s fifth album, Lovely Standards, and it is exactly what the title suggests it to be: a collection of pop/jazz standards. What I find intriguing about the album as a whole is that Amel sings the songs as if they’re pop songs. And of course, most of them originally were pop songs. It’s just that we’ve gotten used to hearing these songs in a jazz context. So ironically, Amel gives these songs a fresh reading by performing them the ‘old’ way.

When I first saw the track listing, I expected Amel to be showing off the range of her voice (including those famously off-the-charts high notes she’s capable of) while talented young instrumentalists did their best to show off their virtuosity as well. But along with her husband/producer Laru and pianist/arranger Yakir Ben-Hur, Amel took almost the opposite tack. Lovely Standards is subtle, tasteful and understated…almost to a fault. With the exception of the album-closer, Ellington’s “I Like The Sunrise,” the band never accelerates the tempo past a leisurely stroll and Amel’s voice never rises above a pleasant croon. Compared to the rest of Amel’s work, these are damn near lullabies.

Of course, I mean that in a good way, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of Amel’s existing fans actually are put to sleep by her new CD. It’s background music for people who hate background music. It’s the sort of thing that I only wish they played on elevators. It’s the kind of CD you can put on, then actually forget it’s playing. The catch is, you’ll also find yourself skipping back to track one to listen to it all over again.

—Mtume ya Salaam

Halfway home

Catholics have a name for a place between heaven and hell—and, no, it’s not earth. The midway point is called purgatory and that’s what this recording is. It’s not simply pop but then neither is it really jazz, and that’s both its strength and its weakness.

On first listening, except for the acoustic guitar/voice duet of “The Shadow Of Your Smile,” this recording sounds like a supper club act—a tuxedoed jazz piano trio backing a fetching vocalist.

One of the deepest paradoxes of the genre known as jazz is that the majority of what jazzheads call standards were pop tunes that jazz players chose to use as the foundation for improvisation and investigation. What turns standards into jazz is how the songs are interpreted and performed. The weakness of this recording is that on most songs Ms. Larrieux chooses to take a pop approach. Except for Duke Ellington’s “I Like The Sunrise” and “Lucky To Be Me” Amel declines to take the deep plunge into jazz.

I kept wishing for more. You can feel that there’s a deep well of passion beneath the placid facade but Amel chooses not to plummet the depths. Nevertheless, although it’s a couple of steps to the right of the kind of jazz vocals I love, there’s still a bunch to admire about this effort, not the least of which is that, in an age of computer-generated instrumentation, Amel decided to buck the dominate sound and record in an all-acoustic format. This is one brave, brave recording.

In addition to its format, I also like what Amel does with her voice. Often she sounds like she singing at the edge of her range when actually she has a stronger and wider range than she is using. Again, except for the aforementioned “I Like The Sunrise” and “Lucky To Be Me,” every other song is understated, awash with sexy, seductive whispers.

It sounds like the engineers used a close-mic recording technique which enables us to clearly hear Amel’s micro-shifts in tone and timber. Close mic-ing also captures the intimacy of Amel’s airy sound: fragile, trembling, sotto-voiced tones; coy moments when she seems to reach for a particular note but only produces sighs and warm exhales.

Paradoxically, part of reason the record works is because of Larrieux’s stunning physical beauty. Although her looks are not her sound per se, this is still the season of the attractive mulatto in the American music industry. (Amel’s mother is African-American, her father a Euro-American of French, English and Scottish descent.) Amel had the option of exploiting her beauty, that’s obvious, but she chose to take the far more difficult path of being a serious artist.

In a brief but revealing interview she said:

I would say the one surefire way to get to your own sound is to be oblivious to trends, or at least steer clear of them. I love live performance and improv, so I’m sure I’ve honed my singing skills and adopted a style of sorts by doing stuff like two sixty-minute sets a night, three nights in a row at smaller jazz venues.

(Amel Larrieux interview)

Here we have Lena Horne’s musical grandchild. As attractive as she is, Amel is more serious about her music than her looks. She is not interested in merely presenting herself as a sex object. Like Lena Horne, Amel Larrieux’s mix of physical beauty and social consciousness is a winning combination.

None of Ms. Larrieux’s peers have produced anything as serious as this recording of Lovely Standards. On that basis alone Amel deserves both kudos and encouragement. As a pop recording this is near the top of the current offerings. As a jazz recording (measured against the high standards of predecessors such as Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae and more recently Dianne Reeves and Dee Dee Bridgewater), Amel has produced a very promising debut.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

Labels and notes

Two quick things I wanted to add. First, Kalamu mentioned to me that he thinks Blisslife is Amel’s and Laru’s own label. I hope so. That’d make a good story even better. Second thing is, I want to agree with Kalamu about the close mic-ing and Amel’s vocal range. More than once, I’ve seen Amel compared with Minnie Riperton because of the two singers’ proficiency with extreme high notes. But over and over on this album (as Kalamu mentions in his comments), Amel misses high notes instead of hitting them. I kept wondering, did she have a sore throat that day? A cold? Or was she doing that on purpose? I really couldn’t tell. Whatever the reason was, it actually doesn’t hurt the songs. There are lots of great vocalists like Joan Armatrading, Jimi Hendrix and Sidsel Endresen who are unable to hit certain high notes, but sing them anyway. When their voices dissolve into that breathy rasping sound, it carries with it a certain emotional impact that clear, clean notes just don’t have. Whether Amel was missing notes on this album on purpose or because of some circumstance beyond her control, in the end, I think it worked just the same.

[JSngry]

Gotta love this:

NUYORICAN SOUL feat. GEORGE BENSON / “You Can Do It (Baby)”

Source: Nuyorican Soul The Remixes (MCA Import – 1998)

“You Can Do It (Baby)” is one to boogie down to. Just a hard rhythm and George Benson doing his scat-guitar thing for almost a quarter hour. “You Can Do It (Baby)” is on Nuyorican Soul The Remixes, an extremely hard to acquire import album. Good luck finding it at a reasonable price. It’s all club music.

I’m just dropping this one for everybody who likes dancing around the kitchen on Sunday morning fixing some eggs and cheese grits with some orange juice and toast, and it’s cold outside so you ain’t going nowhere no time soon, and you got good music on your computer, and you ain’t danced like this in a long time, and hey, everybody needs a good workout from time to time.

And I ain’t got nothing more to say except ENJOY!

—Kalamu ya Salaam

Grits and eggs

This is a schizophrenic record. The first third or so, with the beautiful guitar and scatting, has one feel…and I like it. The rest of the record, after the beat drops, has a quasi-disco thing going that I can’t get into. Masters At Work / Nuyorican Soul is a hell of a collabo and the original Nuyorican Soul album is well worth checking for, but this one track is too all over the place for me. Not to mention at damn near sixteen minutes (?!) in running time, way too long. … But you know what? I wrote that before reading what Kalamu wrote. And now that I read what he said, I can see where he’s coming from. Every Sunday morning, I listen to the BoL jukebox, mostly to make sure everything is working right. Tomorrow morning, I think I’ll fire up the jukebox, fix myself some grits and eggs and see what’s what.

—Mtume ya Salaam

[JSngry]

NAT ‘KING’ COLE & NATALIE COLE / “Unforgettable”

Source: Unforgettable...With Love (Elektra – 1991)

For 13 months I was the Jackie Robinson of television. I was the pioneer, the test case, the Negro first….On my show rode the hopes and tears and dreams of millions of people….Once a week for 64 consecutive weeks I went to bat for these people. I sacrificed and drove myself. I plowed part of my salary back into the show. I turned down $500,000 in dates in order to be on the scene. I did everything I could to make the show a success. And what happened? After a trailblazing year that shattered all the old bugaboos about Negroes on TV, I found myself standing there with the bat on my shoulder. The men who dictate what Americans see and hear didn’t want to play ball.

—Nat King Cole

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/N/htmlN/...natkingcole.htm

Some people don’t much remember Nat ‘King’ Cole. Some people never really knew about him. But, once you really heard him, he was in a word: Unforgettable.

Decades after his death, a miracle resurrection occurred. It was one of those odd quirks of fate, one of those things that is not supposed to happen, not supposed to work, but it does. A daughter revives her father’s memory by the use of modern technology. On paper this sounds like an ultimate ego trip or some shady producer’s morbid idea of how to milk a legend for all it’s worth. Natalie Cole re-recording her father’s music including a duet with her renowned progenitor. And what do they choose as the major track? Unforgettable.

I, and I am sure thousands of other old heads, shuddered when we heard about the planned recording. What desecration. Talk about digging up the dead. But, give credit where credit is due, somehow this half-baked idea ended up being a success, a bold experiment that really, really worked. Indeed, it too was unforgettable.

The only other thing I have to say is: thank you Nat ‘King’ Cole, not only for being a major force in the development of our music, but also for being a man, a Black man willing to face down white power at a time when lynching was an American sport. You are truly: unforgettable.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

A very classy recording

Back in ’91 when Elektra released the Unforgettable…With Love album, I was still working for Time-Warner’s music distribution division, WEA. (Elektra is the ‘E’ in WEA.) I don’t recall there being much talk about this record before it came out. At the time, Natalie Cole was in the process of resurrecting her career, but she was still chasing the under-thirty fanbase with uptempo pop-dance records while simultaneously courting older fans with ballads. She was enjoying a few hit records, but the comeback was tenuous. There’s only so long you can pretend to be a kid when you’re not. So when Unforgettable showed up in the new release books, we sales reps responding with something of a sigh. OK, we though, fine. Another halfway decent album that might sell, might not. We were about as wrong as wrong gets. I might be remembering this wrong, but Unforgettable (the song and the album) was a massive hit from the moment the song hit radio and the video hit TV. Every customer I had—even the little boutique-type shops—were ordering it by the box. And the thing about records that hit with adults is they don’t stop selling. When kids like a record, they have to have it NOW. They drop everything to get to the record store, or nowadays, to get online—they simply have to have it, and they have to have it now. Then, once they have it, they move on to the next thing. Adults are different. Even if they’re crazy about a record, they’re content to pick it up whenever they get the chance, whenever they happen to be going to the drycleaner’s or something and there’s a record store nearby. And, they don’t buy just one copy. If they really like a record, they’ll buy multiple copies and make gifts out of the extras. They’ll give it as Christmas presents, anniversary presents, just-because presents. They’ll tell their friends about the record years later and they won’t care if it’s popular on the charts or not. Anyway, Unforgettable sold and sold and sold until it was eventually certified 8X platinum (8 million copies sold). Pretty amazing, considering that Natalie Cole has never before or since had an album that even went double-platinum.

I never was crazy about the album or the song personally, a bit too syrupy for my tastes. Still, you’d have to be deaf not to hear that this very classy, very cool recording was going to be likeable to an awful lot of poeple. So I always thought it was strange that Natalie’s old label, Capitol-EMI actually passed on Unforgettable and let Natalie leave the label to shop the project somewhere else. I was thinking, "How could they hear something so obviously hit-bound and pass on it?" The thing is, as Natalie explains here, it wasn’t that the folks at Capitol heard "Unforgettable" and didn’t like it. They never gave her the chance to make the record in the first place.

—Mtume ya Salaam

[JSngry]

SIMPLY RED / “It’s Only Love”

Source: A New Flame (EastWest - 1989)

I know it’s uncool to like pleasant music. As a certified music junkie, I’m supposed to only listen to deep music or obscure music or difficult music or something like that. But sometimes, a pleasant ditty is just what I want.

Simply Red is a band from Manchester, England. Actually, Simply Red’s lead singer Mick Hucknall is from Manchester. I don’t know where the rest of the band is from and it probably doesn’t matter all that much anyway since Mick changes bandmates the way the rest of us change bedsheets. Here in America, Simply Red is best known for “Holding Back The Years,” a 1985 single that remains popular enough that it still gets played on Quiet Storm and Adult FM radio shows. While they may be considered one hit wonders in the US, in the last twenty years, Simply Red has actually sold some 50 million records worldwide.

Mick is a decent songwriter (he penned “Holding Back The Years” when he was still a teenager), but Simply Red is best known for their covers. I can’t honestly say that the band brings anything new to their remakes – what they actually do best is select good records to remake. Even before you hear a Simply Red cover, you know what you’re going to get. A faithful, pleasant sing-along that gets all the big things right while forgoing any attempt at doing anything new or unusual. It sounds like a recipe for musical disaster – like a night out at a karaoke bar – but I actually like Simply Red’s remakes.

First up is “Night Nurse,” the quintessential Lovers Rock record by the legendary Jamaican crooner Gregory Isaacs. (Isaacs’ version is available on his 20th Century Masters collection.) Some of the success of the cover (from 1998’s Blue) is due to the similarity of the two singers’ voices and styles. Mick sings with the same mix of smooth romance and slight insolence that made Gregory Isaacs’ such a popular singer of love songs. It also helps that Jamaican veterans Sly & Robbie are on the riddim. When thinking about this record, you also have to consider the well-known UK/Jamaica connection. Over the years, Simply Red has done several other roots reggae covers and Mick Hucknall is one of the people behind the excellent reggae reissue label Blood & Fire.

In 1986, Mick Hucknall did a piano and strings version of the Cole Porter standard “Every Time We Say Goodbye” (from Men & Women). Back in the early Nineties when I first got into Simply Red, I knew of the tune because it shows up on John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things album. For me, it was fascinating to finally put lyrics to melody. I’m a big fan of the way Mick sings the tune straight, without worrying the melody at all.

A few years later, Simply Red covered Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes’ soul classic “If You Don’t Know Me By Now.” (The original is available on Harold Melvin’s Greatest Hits, the cover is from 1989’s A New Flame.) It became their biggest single to date, going to #1 on the U.S. pop chart. (So I guess they aren’t one hit wonders after all.) You might think that black folk would recoil at the idea of a high-pitched redhead from England covering a record originally voiced by the commanding baritone of Theodore ‘Teddy’ Pendergrass. But you’d be wrong. Simply Red’s cover of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” not only topped the pop chart, but if memory serves it also topped the R&B chart. (And in case you’re wondering, the original Harold Melvin/Teddy P. version was a #1 R&B hit too.)

Over the years, Simply Red did many other R&B and soul covers but I want to mention just one more because it’s one that I listened to for years before realizing that it was a remake. The song is “It’s Only Love.” I’d always thought of it as one of Mick Hucknall’s better originals. I really like the instrumentation of this song. If you listen closely, it sounds like there are two guitars and they’re playing different melodies. Years later, I was surprised to find that “It’s Only Love” (also from A New Flame) was originally called “It’s Only Love Doing It’s Thing” and was written by Jimmy and Vella Cameron and performed by another baritone-voiced legend of soul music, Barry White. Barry’s version (from 1978’s out-of-print LP entitled The Man, available on the Soul Seduction compilation) is good, but of all of Simply Red’s covers, this is the one where they may have actually outdone the original.*

By the way, if you’re digging these Simply Red covers but don’t want to chase down all the original LPs, all four are available on The Very Best Of Simply Red, a 2-CD import set that you can get for under $15.

—Mtume ya Salaam

P.S. Anyone else notice that Barry’s version rips off the bells from the Brothers Johnson’s (via Shuggie Otis) “Strawberry Letter #23”?

===========================================================

There’s something in the air

My son lives in San Diego. He fled Katrina’s 2005 flood waters and ended up looking at the 2007 sky turn hellfire red. Don’t worry, he lives in one of the poorer (relatively speaking—poor for San Diego) sections. No beach-front property. No on-a-cliff on-the-coast view. No hot tub set to boiling.

I checked on him earlier and he said he was cool. All was well.

I recently read that the air out that way is three times the normal pollution.

Some of that shit must have got to Mtume. What else would explain why he would want to post Simply Red “trying” to cover some exquisitely hip music. I trust that BoL readers have ears. The originals and the Simply Red shortcomings are in the jukebox one behind the other.

Of the four selections, there is not one reason to listen to the Simply Red.

Perhaps it was just the fact that fire is red that made Mtume pick simply anemic (iron deficient, weak-ass red corpuscles) treatments and place them next to the blue flame beauty of these soul classics.

These ain’t covers. They’re saran wrap, smothering all the life in plastic.

Mtume, son, you need to seek professional help.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

===============================================================

I know I’m not alone

You know what? I definitely need some professional help. I don’t think that has anything to do with Simply Red or the fires though. I’ve been listening to Simply Red since the late 80s. And like Kalamu said, these wildfires are one of the rare disasters that are impacting moneyed people more than poor folk. Here where I live in City Heights, it’s business as usual. The taco shops and liquor stores are still open, the fruit sellers and mobile ice cream carts are still going up and down the streets, and over on El Cajon and 30th, the girls are still hard at work doing the hardest kind of work there is. Other than smoke and ash all over the place and a lot of overtime, I can’t say things are all that different. But folks in the nice suburbs like Rancho Bernardo, Poway, Rancho Santa Fe and Carmel Mountain are catching hell. Almost literal hell. You ever seen 50-foot flames race across a 12-lane freeway in less than 30 seconds? Jesus.

Anyway, the Simply Red thing is kind of weird, I admit that. Back in the late Eighties and early Nineties, they actually sounded pretty soulful. These days they do sound kinda saccharine, so I know what Kalamu means when he talks about plastic and Saran Wrap and all that. But everytime their version of "Night Nurse" kicks in, I can’t help it, I just start rocking back and forth, mellowing out. Is it better than Gregory Isaacs’ classic? Hell, no. Please. But Gregory’s cut is deep, deep soul. Simply Red’s cover has the same vibe but it’s lighter on its feet, more nimble. Gregory’s cut makes me want to put the kids to bed and turn on the blue lights. Mick’s cover gives me the same vibe except that I can listen to it at two in the afternoon. Maybe that makes sense, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know.

Hey, if any of y’all are feeling Simply Red, write in and say so. I know I’m not alone.

—Mtume ya Salaam

Edited October 28, 2007 by JSngry

[JSngry]

Been a while since I checked in on these guys, but HOO BOY do they have a good one here: http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2008/05/05/nina-...woman%e2%80%9d/

To get there w/the jukebox (recommended), go thru the main frame: http://www.kalamu.com/bol/

Check out this opening commentary:

What impels us, damn near forces us, to do wrong? I’m talking about those moments in our lives when we knowingly cross the line and do something we would never want anyone to do to us.

After the teenage years, lust is not a good enough answer. Nor is it good enough to simply say we thought we could get away with it. I’m not talking minor infractions and miscellaneous misdemeanors. No. We are well past the city limits, indeed, we have crossed all (and any) borders to engage ourselves in something that generally turns out awful, or at least the results nowhere near compensate for the price we eventually pay, even if the bill never comes publicly due and remains simply our own private shame.

Why?

I don’t think there is a reasonable explanation for every thing we do.

Notwithstanding how common the occurrence, in the context of personal relationships, cheating invariably hurts or harms us, diminishes us and yet… we do it.

Time and time and time again we have seen how awful the mess turns out in the long run (sometimes don’t even be that long of a run) but we engage in ruinous activities believing in the moment when we are caught up that the laws of reciprocity, karma and gravity will all be suspended for us.

I suppose the answer to the question of “why” is found in its inverse, i.e. at the time of the occurrence when the “why” question was most pressing, for whatever reason, we simply could not come up with a good answer to the immediate, even more important, most fundamental query: why not?

When we can not tell ourselves why not, all bets are off.

[rpklich]

I recall Kalamu was a DJ on WWOZ a while back. It was a good show.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Interesting African stuff on this week.

MG