Review: For the Ladies

Get over it, football’s over and there’s no baseball for a while.  Do you really follow basketball?  Didn’t think so.  Prepare yourselves – Valentine’s Day is Sunday, and you already know this entire weekend is going to belong to the ladies.  And so will this batch of reviews.  Think of it as a favor: if you’re stuck for a little Valentine’s gift, you can always pick up one of these new CDs.

Between her highly successful eponymous 2006 debut album and its followup The Sea, Corinne Bailey Rae experienced the loss of her husband, who died of an overdose in 2008.   “Are You Here,” the first song on The Sea, comes face to face with her grief and then the singer begins to move on with the surprisingly rocking “The Blackest Lily” (featuring the Roots’ ?uestlove on drums).   Although there’s a melancholy thread winding through the songs, The Sea sounds like Corinne Bailey Rae is ready to take her music to a new level.

MP3: “The Blackest Lily’ by Corinne Bailey Rae

Sade also took a break between albums – in her case, it was about 10 years.  Soldier Of Love is less a comeback than a continuation, as the Nigerian-born singer picks up right where she left off.  Listening to Sade conjures a lazy afternoon on a sunny tropical beach, and the singer spins her slow-burning sensuality on standout tunes like “The Moon and the Sky” and “Morning Bird.”  Her songs often convey a feeling of longing and a hint of mystery, all wrapped in arrangements smoother than silk lingerie.

MP3: “Morning Bird” by Sade

Sampler Daze: The WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 13

A La Carte, the second Loss Leaders sampler from 1979, revisits the restaurant theme (remember Hot Platters and Appetizers?) but this time, with the sexy waitresses serving you on silver platters, they are much more … uptown.  But at least Burbank’s not being as evasive as in the past: they proudly trumpet Swedish-born songstress Madleen Kane as “disco dynamite” and for former gospel shouter Candi Staton, the liner notes warn: “Watch out disco lovers everywhere – here comes Candi!”

Norman Whitfield made his name at Motown, where he wrote and produced such classics as “Money (That’s What I Want),” “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” and “Papa Was A Rolling Stone,” among others.  About 10 years later, Whitfield had his own label that was distributed by Warner Bros., one of his acts was a hot eight-piece called Nytro.  “Nytro Express” is another song unashamedly touted as disco in A La Carte‘s liner notes:  “It is disco.  It is virtually unstoppable.  And it is tasty.”  Norman not only produced, but also wrote, this tasty bit of disco.  In the early 1980s, Norman Whitfield went back to working at Motown, where he  produced a later version of the Temptations and did other projects.  Whitfield died in 2008 at the age of 68.

Due to Warners’ distribution deal with Island Records, more of those artists began to appear: the Gibson Brothers” “Cuba” fused disco with tropical riddims, British rock band Runner offered “Sooner Than Later” and Robert Palmer rocked the house with “Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor Doctor).”  Another Brit, Duncan Browne, showed up with “The Wild Places,” which was a big hit in the Netherlands, of all places, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band takes on Dylan’s “You Angel You” and the B-52s represent New Wave with their definitive “Rock Lobster.”  The Bellamy Brothers took a country song and added enough pop touches to turn “If I Said You Have A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me” into a hit, while Emmylou Harris transformed the classic “Save The Last Dance For Me” into sophisticated roots music.

Sampler Daze: The WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 12

There was just no denying it, by 1978 two things were obvious: one, the Loss Leaders had definitely gone uptown.  And two, our buddies in Burbank were definitely in denial over the Disco Monster, at that time raging on radio stations across the country.

Check out this copy from Collectus Interruptus, the only sampler from ‘78: “This is unequivocable party music.  Danceable R&B by some of its premier practitioners – none of them, curiously, traversing the well-traveled terrain of disco.”  This was to introduce artists like Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the husband-wife team who wrote monster hits for Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross before jumping to Warner Bros. in the early ’70s.  Despite the denial, “Don’t Cost You Nothing” from Ashford & Simpson sounds suspiciously like disco.  And you can’t blame ‘em; pretty much everyone from the Bee Gees to the Rolling Stones to Kiss at least dipped their toes into the disco waters in 1978.

Collectus Interruptus also featured funk from Bootsy’s Rubber Band and the definitive “Bootzilla”, a tasty “Night People” from the great New Orleans master Allen Toussaint and selections from franchise players Gordon Lightfoot, Gary Wright, George Benson and Seals & Crofts.  But it’s an interesting sampler in that you can hear the first stirrings of a few contenders that would soon rise to tame the disco monster: there’s “Soft and Wet,” from the debut LP of an 18-year-old named Prince, the brothers Van Halen introduce themselves with “Runnin’ With The Devil” and this little band outta New Yawk, the Ramones, going to “Rockaway Beach.”

Sampler Daze: Let’s Hear It For The Women!

Bonnie Raitt

It occurred to me, while compiling this exhaustive survey of the Warner Bros./Reprise Loss Leaders series, that we might be giving short shrift to the label’s female artists.  Probably not, but this is a good excuse to listen to some more tracks from this great promotional series.

I know we’ve mentioned Bonnie Raitt and Maria Muldaur – but we should start with them anyway because they’re the two ladies that the Loss Leaders went to the most often.  Part of our Loss Leaders All-Star team, Muldaur appeared nine times in the series and Raitt eight.  Another Reprise artist (with six appearances in the series) is Joni Mitchell, the Canadian darling of the hippie set and writer of the song “Woodstock,” most famously covered by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

Emmylou Harris, with five appearances in the Loss Leaders series, is another perennial.  Harris was actually discovered by then-Flying Burrito Brother (and ex-Byrd) Chris Hillman, who was so taken with her voice that he considered asking Harris to join the Burritos.  But he recommended her instead to fellow Burrito Gram Parsons, who was seeking a backing vocalist for his first solo album.  Working with Parsons, Emmylou learned a lot about country music and its deep tradition and history.  When Parsons suddenly died in 1973, Emmylou was left without a mentor (and possibly a lover – nobody knows for sure).  She began recording for Reprise in 1975 and went on to become a top country-rock performer.  Here she is represented by “Ooh Las Vegas,” written by Gram Parsons.

30 Days Out (From Christmas): Country

 

Day 19 – Nothing goes better with Christmas than sadness.  And nothing goes better with a sad Christmas than cheap beer and country music.  The “classic” country music artists knew this, and they cranked out some of the hoariest tearjerkers of all time.

A word here about country music – we’re going to avoid the current so-called country music artists.  For one thing, I don’t know what the hell these people are doin’!  It sure doesn’t sound like country music.  And of course we’ll steer clear of Grandma and Reindeer crossings, so pull up a box of Kleenex and shed a few tears for Christmas.

MP3: “Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus” by George Jones & Tammy Wynette

MP3: “If We Make It Through December” by Merle Haggard

MP3: “Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy” by Buck Owens

MP3: “Hard Candy Christmas” by Dolly Parton

MP3: “Christmas Time’s A-Coming” by Jerry Reed

MP3: “Pretty Paper” by Willie Nelson

MP3: “Mommy, Look Santa Is Crying” by Stonewall Jackson

MP3: “Christmas Without Daddy” by Loretta Lynn

MP3: “Shut In At Christmas” by Charlie Louvin

MP3: “Truckin’ Trees For Christmas” by Red Simpson

MP3: “Light Of The Stable” by Emmylou Harris (with Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Neil Young)

MP3: “The Little Drummer Boy” by Johnny Cash

MP3: Johnny Cash Holiday Message

MP3: “O Come All Ye Faithful” by George Jones

MP3: “Silent Night” by Jim Reeves

MP3: “White Christmas” by Tammy Wynette

MP3: “Jingle Bells” by Chet Atkins

Review: “Join The Band,” Little Feat

If you don’t know Little Feat, you don’t know jack.  All but forgotten in the increasingly moldy museum of Classic Rock Radio and seemingly remembered only by hardcore old-timers, Little Feat was arguably the best band of the 1970s.  In an era when artists aggressively pigeonholed and categorized themselves (Led Zeppelin = Hard Rock; Journey = Arena Rock, etc.) Little Feat staunchly maintained their outsider status throughout the peak of their run.

That run was, of course, the years that the band was led by the brilliant Lowell George.  A great songwriter, singer and (maybe) guitar player as well as a hopeless junkie who flamed out and finally died in 1979, Lowell George was the cracked heart and soul of Little Feat.  The best albums he made with the Feat – Sailin’ Shoes (1972), Dixie Chicken (1973) and Feats Don’t Fail Me Now (1974) – are essential additions to any rock library.

Review: “All I Intended To Be,” Emmylou Harris

 

Emmylou Harris is a country music icon, but that doesn’t mean she gets played on the radio alongside Carrie Underwood and Kenny Chesney.  Harris is an artist of amazing grace and class, and every album she releases just reinforces that impression.  So All I Intended To Be, Emmylou’s first solo album in five years, fits comfortably alongside her past work.  Harris seems to work best when she has interesting collaborators – here, she sings with Dolly Parton, Vince Gill and Kate and Anna McGarrigle on 13 songs that shiver with the ache of melancholy and loss.  “Gold,” with Parton and Gill warbling behind Emmylou’s fragile vocal, is one of six that Emmylou wrote or co-wrote (a few with the McGarrigle sisters).  All I Intended To Be is a perfect mood piece for a cloudy winter’s day, and perhaps it could use a few livelier tempos.  But this music is transcendent and completely assured: even when Harris and McGarrigles cop the Carter Family riff for “How She Could Sing Wildwood Flower” they turn it into an original and emotionally affecting moment.  The covers, including Merle Haggard’s “Kern River” and Patty Griffin’s “Moon Song,” fit in perfectly with the originals.  With its folk/Americana sepia tinge, All I Intended To Be may appear to be down-home, but this is truly an uptown production. 

MP3: “Gold”

MP3: “How She Could Sing Wildwood Flower”

Emmylou Harris official website