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: The WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 11

By 1977 Warner Bros. had quite a stable of artists producing R&B, soul, funk and dance music – or disco, in the parlance of the time.  That is what sold and what managed to get on the radio, but in truth the Warner R&B artists were as varied as the label’s underground acts just eight years before.  Cook Book, a two-LP sampler focusing mainly on the WB/Reprise R&B acts (“black” music, in the parlance of radio programmers) had a little bit of everything: pop artists (Dionne Warwick), jazz artists (George Benson), gospel soul shouters (Candi Staton), Motown alumni (Undisputed Truth, Lamont Dozier) – all put into duty in service of the Great and Powerful Disco.

I must admit, I do not own Cook Book so I cannot judge its worthiness or faults.  The four cuts included here did appear on the sampler, however.  You know, I’m not sure how these Loss Leaders samplers were marketed in the mid-1970s.  I did see ads for some of the earlier albums in comic books and in Rolling Stone;  and truth to be told, I spotted an ad for one of the later Loss Leaders and after purchasing that one I filled in the missing back copies in my collection from a coupon printed on an inside sleeve of the record.

So let’s move on to Limo, also from 1977.  Ostensibly a return to the diversity of the earlier Loss Leaders, Limo transported the usual suspects (Ry Cooder, Van Morrison, Jesse Winchester, Jesse Colin Young, Little Feat, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris), chart-topping singles (“Tonight’s The Night” by Rod Stewart; “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” by Leo Sayer; “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac) as well as a collection of oddities and novelties (The Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band).  Another novelty was the sprightly British group Deaf School, brought to Burbank by the Beatles’ faithful press agent Derek Taylor.  Gary Wright followed his big hit “Dream Weaver” here with “Phantom Writer,” which to my ears sounds a little like “Love Is Alive.”

Sampler Daze: The WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 10

The world in 1976 looked and sounded a heck of a lot different than it did in 1969.  When you went to a club it was most likely a fern bar.  The ladies wore hot pants and halter tops, men wore stacked heels and checkered pants.  The 1970s had its own stupid haircut: the shag (later replaced by another all-star stupid haircut, the mullet).  Music was becoming more rhythmic and slick, it would be another year or so before we’d call it “disco.”  Music more often than not was made for dancing – even at a fern bar.

And so there was Supergroup, the first Loss Leaders sampler from 1976.  We had come a long way from the first Loss Leader sampler in 1969, from the underground to the dance floor.  The sounds of disco were unmistakable: First Choice updated the Philly Groove for a dance audience, and “Are You Ready For Me?” addresses the Big Question.  In answer, everybody seemed to be ready: even the Doobie Brothers, taking to the dance floor with “Rio,” and even a nominally jazz artist like George Benson gets into the groove with “Breezin’,” the title song for an album that would ride all the way to the top of Billboard‘s pop album charts.  Leon Russell had just gotten married, and he celebrated by cutting a record with his new bride.  Hit singles included Seals & Croft’s “Get Closer,” and former Lovin’ Spoonful leader John Sebastian crooning his No. 1 “Welcome Back.”

Sampler Daze: The WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 8

There was no denying that, by 1975, popular music was undergoing another change.  The advances of the late 1960s had sunk in, and rock had already gotten over the Beatles by introducing bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Foghat.  The second wave of hard rockers were honing their chops in 1975, and names like Aerosmith, Boston and Van Halen were waiting in the wings.

But the pop charts were showing a different shade: black.  Black artists had always been a part of pop music, of course: names like Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross regularly appeared on the Top 40, as did Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and the Staple Singers.  By 1975, soul music and R&B had been influenced by psychedelic guitar music, and the new music born from that was called funk.

Curtis Mayfield

One of the big artists of the early Seventies was Curtis Mayfield, who soldiered through the 1960s as the mastermind behind the Impressions and their groundbreaking hits like “People Get Ready,” “Keep On Pushing” and “We’re A Winner.”  Mayfield left the group in 1970 and as a solo artist he helped put black music on the top 40 with his classic soundtrack to the blaxploitation movie Superfly.   In 1975 Mayfield took his own label, Curtom, to Warner Bros., and he anchored the first sampler from that year, All Meat.  In 1990 Mayfield would be seriously injured by falling stage lighting, and he was paralyzed from the neck down.  After nearly a decade in this condition, Mayfield died in 1999.

Sampler Daze: WB/Reprise Loss Leaders, Part 7

By 1974, radio’s hard rock trend was going strong – Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Humble Pie dominated the FM rock airwaves.  Appropriately titled for the time, Hard Goods arrived in mailboxes with freshly minted rockers like Montrose, covering Roy Brown’s “Good Rocking Tonight” and Foghat, offering its cover of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be The Day.”  Ted Nugent and his Amboy Dukes show up, and the perfect marriage between glam and hard rock emerges in the then-new KISS (Casablanca Records were distributed by Warner Bros. until about 1976).

The Doobie Brothers were still rockin’ behind guitarist/vocalist Tom Johnston and they were fresh off their 1973 triumph The Captain and Me.  The Doobies’ new “Pursuit On 53^rd Street” had a guitar crunch similar to the monster single “China Grove” but behind the scenes, Johnston’s health was becoming precarious.  He was able to stick with the Doobies through late 1974 even as new personnel were added, most notably ex-Steely Dan guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter.  Finally in early 1975 Johnston had to quit the band, and a replacement was found in another Steely Dan alumnus, Michael McDonald.  The Doobies quickly became McDonald’s franchise, and everyone’s heard the rest of the story – with more than 30 million albums sold, the Doobies are still an active touring band with a rejuvenated Tom Johnston at the helm.