Love Comes In All Colors
Staple Singers
Be What You Are, 1973
I was over at my musical-partner-in-crime’s apartment a few weeks ago and came across this record in her collection. I pulled it out and we both looked at each other and, at the same time, said “Love Comes In All Colors!” This track is every bit as good as “Respect Yourself” or any other known staple singers track but due to reasons unknown to me, it remained an album cut and never came to prominence.
This uses somewhat unique instrumentation for soul music in 1973 in that it has both acoustic and electric guitar as well as the more customary organ and horns. The strength of the vocal harmonies in the chorus is what makes this song great instead of good but those vocals become chill-inducing when all the instruments drop out at 2:32. I also love how the horns maintain a subtle call and response pattern through the choruses until the song starts to taper down (3:18) at which point they break out and announce their presence. Surprisingly it’s not jarring. It’s just another thing that makes this song unique and noteworthy. The strings similarly hit there most intense moment even further into the denouement (3:33).
The lyrics of also provide an interesting time capsule. The third verse starts with, “If somebody told you you had one more week to live, you’d run over each other trying to help your brother but today you turn you back on him.” When I first heard “you’d run over each other trying to help your brother” I was confused. I thought, did I miss the part where they mentioned what the brother needed help with? But as the verse continued and I heard “Act like you got one week left and your trying to save your soul,” I understood. I guess helping others to save your soul is its own version of selfishness and maybe I’ve spent too much time in this godless city but I do think people’s outlooks have fundamentally shifted in the last 30+ years. Doing good in the greater community ain’t what it used to be and everything, including people reckoning with mortality, seems much more solitary. Well, at least enough that this lyric, which resonated in 1973, doesn’t really resonate anymore.
Play this with some volume…
>> songs are available for two weeks [6.4 MB]
