Archive - November, 2007
Saturday, November 24th, 2007
During the summer when Concord hosted concerts celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Stax Records, there were inevitably some surprises. Audiences expected primo performances by folks like the (re-formed-for-the-occasion) Booker T. & The MGs, Eddie Floyd, William Bell and Mavis Staples and for the most part, they were not disappointed. Isaac Hayes, dealing with recent health challenges, did the best he could; newer Stax artists Angie Stone, Lalah Hathaway, N’Dambi and Soulive rose to the occasion. It was left to three ‘lesser’ known acts to really make the shows – in particular the Memphis event – super super soulful. The appropriately-named Soul Children were superlative and the Rance Allen Group showed why they’ve been fixtures on the gospel scene for decades.
While both groups had the Memphis crowd feeling the spirit, It was the diminutive Mable John who captivated each and everyone – both in Memphis and L.A. – with her storytellin’ realness. Reprising her one U.S. hit single, the 1966 Hayes & Porter-penned “Your Good Thing (Is About To End)” classic, Mable was ‘on,’ giving the audience the kind of earthy honesty that has always been the trademark of her solo recordings and her in-person performances…
Seeing Mable - a longtime friend going back to the early ‘70s when she came to Britain for the first time as the leader of Ray Charles’ Raelets, a stint she took on following her years with Stax Records – perform, then at a couple of film events in Hollywood connected with the Stax anniversary and most recently, reading her fine second novel, “Stay Out Of The Kitchen” (a follow up to 2006’s “Sanctified Blues,” penned with David Ritz) prompted me to go back and listen to her one-and-only Stax album – with the same title as her 2007-published book.
Originally conceived and created in by Roger Armstrong of Ace Records in the UK (where Mable has long been much revered among die hard R&B fans) in the early ‘90s, “Stay Out Of The Kitchen” is a 26-track virtual musical guide to Southern soul singin.’ You could move to virtually any cut to hear Mable in her element during the sessions she cut for Stax between 1966 and 1968, most produced by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. Check out any one of the sixteen previously unissued sides such as the John-penned “That’s What My Love Can Do,” a version of “I Love You More Than Words Can Say” (recorded before Otis Redding cut the song in ’67) or Mable’s tribute to her late brother, the ‘50s R&B star Little Willie John via “I Need Your Love So Bad.”
Listen to one of the seven tracks issued by Stax such as the Ashford & Simpson tune, “Running Out,” Mable’s ‘theme’ tune “Able Mable” (written during her early ‘60s years as the first female singer signed by Berry Gordy Jr. to his then-fledgling Tamla label) or the brilliant “Left Over Love” (a Hayes-Porter song also recorded by the likes of Judy Clay, Ruby Johnson and Carla Thomas, a trio of Stax soulstresses of the first order) – and hear Mable John testify with tell-it-like-it-is authenticity. “Don’t Get Caught” is stone-to-the-bone real, a logical follow-up to “Your Good Thing,” a true hidden gem, “I Taught You How,” another slice of life from a woman who has experienced life to its fullest and “The Man’s Too Busy,” a bluesy swnger.
Track-by-track, “Stay Out Of The Kitchen” is Memphis soul at its best and thankfully, Concord
has kept the album in its catalog: it’s a CD that deserves the attention of any self-respecting Stax music fan. Oh…and the book of the same name is cool reading too! Enjoy!
David Nathan
Aka the British Ambassador Of Soul
Owner, www.soulmusic.com, www.soulmusicstore.com, www.soulmusicglobal.com
Posted in Music | No Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2007
Classic Stax Single of the Week
Booker T. & the MGs “Hip Hug-Her”
From the album Hip Hug-Her, May 1967
#6 R&B, #37 Pop single (released February ‘67)
“Green Onions” is admittedly the most popular Booker T. & the MGs single from the chart perspective (#1 R&B, #3 Pop single) and undoubtedly a cornerstone of their musical legacy.
But my favorite MGs single is found snuggled deep in the middle of disc one of Time is Tight. “Hip Hug-Her” was the MGs first Top 40 Pop hit since “Onions” and sold about 400,00 singles. It is the first cut on Time is Tight to showcase Jones on what became his trademark voice, the Hammond B-3 organ (previously, he most often played the smaller spinet model).
Hip-huggers were a late 1960’s / ’70s style of blue (denim) jeans that the wearer didn’t pull up to the waist, they rode up (or down) only to the hips. Cast on a certain type of female form, especially when that form undulated in the basic even primal rhythm of walking, hip-huggers attracted the eyes to certain feminine curves and could prove quite alluring.
Though credited to Jones, Cropper, Dunn and Jackson, Jones recalls in the Time is Tight booklet that, “I can remember I was in college when I wrote ‘Hip Hug-Her.’” One smiles at the thought of the collegian Jones, sitting on a sun-shined bench or perhaps under a tree, and discovering the inspiration for his song’s swaying, almost sensual, rhythm and sharp melody. Cropper’s barbed-wire guitar cuts out the opening, then a mid-song solo, like stiletto heels, while Jackson and Dunn bounce out a simply swinging rhythm.
Just like the old saying: It must be jelly, ’cause jam don’t shake like that.
Posted in Music | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
You’ll discover the real Booker T. & the MGs motherlode on the first disc of the three-CD Time is Tight retrospective compilation: 28 tracks beginning with their breakout 1962 single “Green Onions” (#1 R&B, #3 Pop) and ending with their ‘68 cover of Bobbi Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe.” This disc faithfully represents the true glory days of Stax in general and the MGs in particular; during this same period, Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, and Al Jackson Jr. were also writing, arranging, performing on and producing other hit records that made Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd and other Stax artists into stars. (Lewie Steinberg played bass for the MGs until November ‘64, with Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass thereafter.)
But this first Time is Tight disc marches through Booker T. & the MGs’ own hit parade, musical riches too abundant to fully detail here but highlights of which certainly include:
- MGs versions of “Summertime,” the sound of “Philly soul” (”Expressway to Your Heart” by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff) and the Rascals’ summertime classic “Groovin’.”
- Two of the first documented collaborations between the Memphis Group (MGs) and the Memphis Horns: “Chinese Checkers” (#78 Pop), where Jones blows trombone, and “Boot-Leg” (#10 R&B, #58 Pop), with Isaac Hayes guest-starring for Booker on keyboards. Cropper’s guitar burns the “Boot-Leg” intro raw and hot, then for some reason he never repeats this riff again; Jones picks it up on organ then passes it to the horns, but Cropper never plays it again (Most music that passes a riff between instruments or sections gets called “jazz.”)
- Listen closely to the drum and keyboard intro to “Can’t Be Still,” and with much benefit from hindsight, dig the roots of Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up.”
- Original MGs compositions that flew under the cover of their chart-toppers, such as “Blue on Green,” “Slim Jenkins’ Place” and my personal all-time favorite MGs tune, “Hip Hug-Her.”
Posted in Music | No Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Disc two of Time is Tight compiles many Booker T. & the MG’s hard-driving yet supple cover versions drawn from the top of the Pop and Rock 1960s and ’70s singles charts: The Isley Brothers (”It’s Your Thing”), Simon & Garfunkel (”Mrs. Robinson”), Motown’s Marvin & Tammi (”You’re All I Need to Get By”), even Stax’s own Eddie Floyd (”I’ve Never Found a Girl to Love Me Like You Do,” with which they were well familiar - Booker co-composed, Cropper produced, and the band played on, the original).
Disc two also includes “Willow Weep for Me” through which Jones seems to honor pianists Nat King Cole and Charles Brown, plus Jones’ rare vocal performance on “Johnny, I Love You.”
But this second disc mainly demonstrates what happens when you bring the world’s most successful and versatile R&B band together with the music of the world’s most successful pop band, The Beatles. We’ve already discussed the MG’s version of “Something,” George Harrison’s lush love song, included here; disc two also includes their McLemore Avenue suite in honor of the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Sgt. Peppers albums, “Sun King / Mean Mr. Mustard / Polythene Pam / She Came in Through the Bathroom Window / I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” It’s expertly arranged and performed from beginning to end, but pay special attention to its finale, where Cropper’s blue guitar stings like blue acid with primal hurt and longing.
Disc two concludes with the original full-length (eight minute) version of the title track to the MG’s final Stax album, and their final Stax single, the jam-bangin’ “Melting Pot,” released in February ‘71.
Posted in Music | No Comments »
|
