Archive for the 'Covers' Category

Creepin’ (In My Dreams)
Tamiko Jones
7″ Single, 1975
Arista Records

Another gem from the 45 vaults. This is Tamiko Jones’ sultry cover of the Stevie Wonder classic that came out the year before. I don’t know much about her, I’ve had her song “Let It Flow” (which came out a year after this record) on my shopping list for years.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Be My Husband
Joy Jones
Unreleased, 2009
(I highly recommend that you check her album Godchild here on iTunes)

I almost posted this song a few weeks ago but I didn’t know why it wasn’t on Joy’s album and whether or not she wanted it circulated. After last night’s interview I know it’s “something for the people” so I am more than happy to spread the love.

This is a stellar cover of one of this Nina Simone song I posted a couple years back. To my very pleasant surprise, Joy produced this song herself. Nina’s version consists of just voice and one hand clap/cymbol combo at the end of each bar. Joy keeps that clap and builds a full song’s instrumentation around it complete with layers and layers of vocals and yet manages to keep the song sounding stripped down and simple.

I am kicking myself for missing her show at S.O.B.’s on Saturday night because she did this song live and apparently it was out of control.

Be sure to check my interview with her on The Main Ingredient last night (the Sept. 22nd show). I think you will be able to tell we had a lot of fun together in the studio.

I have one other cover of this song that I have no artist info for. Can anyone ID the artist on this version?

Shout to Trees for Breakfast for putting me onto this song.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Something To Hold On To
Bilal
Love For Sale (Unreleased), 2006

I’m 3+ years late on this one. This album was leaked online in 2006 and then shelved by Universal and has never come out officially in the U.S. (more details here). Apparently it’s available on vinyl in Europe. I don’t know if this is the actual artwork.

Wow, I like this album so much more than his first (don’t get me wrong I like the first album too, especially “You Are” and “Sometimes”). This album has that Like Water for Chocolate / Mama’s Gun Soulquarian circa 2000 vibe but it was actually made much later (in relative terms).

It was hard to decide which song to post. I opened my radio show last night with the 7:00 minute afrobeat/soul track “Sorrow, Tears & Blood” which features Common. “All for Love” is also really lush but I picked this track which is one of two that have showed up elsewhere. “Something To Hold Onto” was produced by Nottz and was also recorded by Jay Electronica (this is a crappy 128 kbps version for reference – all I have sorry). The year listed in the Jay Electronica track is earlier than the Bilal track but I have the feeling it happened the other way around – I have another track with the same tags where Jay is rhyming over “Love Is” by Common. Also, Bilal was more likely than Jay to have the budget for a Nottz Track in 2005/6.

There something really hypnotic about this track starting with the bass line and, of course, ending with the organ (I am a sucker for anything organ).

Bilal is featured on the excellent “Cheeba” on Shafiq Husayn’s forthcoming “Shafiq En A Free Ka” album coming out October 6th on Plug Research. You can hear it on my September 8th radio show.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Inside Out (Live)
Eska
Download Only, 2009

Inside Out
Odyssey
12″ Single, 1982
RCA Records

One of my favorite singers covered one of my favorite records of all time and she did it damn well. This cover game has rules (or at least I have rules that I judge covers by), I’m sure I’ve mentioned them before: do it different, do it better or don’t do it. Chances are if the song is good enough to cover, you aren’t going to do it better (there are exceptions, for sure). Eska completely flipped this song and extended the already lengthy 6+ minute original to 8+ minutes, all of which completely hold my attention. Instrumentally, the original is almost inappropriately peppy under fairly somber lyrics. Eska slows it down and completely changes the instrumentation to almost a campfire vibe but then builds it up in waves. My favorite part of the song is at 5:19 where, after dropping everything down to percussion, hand claps and voices for a full minute it seems like the song is going to end (it would still be a stellar song if it ended there) but instead everyone comes back in and they go into an unexpected climax (at 6:15). This is another song that puts me back in my band days because they use dynamics in such a powerful way that I can’t help but notice.

Eska’s paragraph on the song:

I loved this song from childhood when pops used to play this Odyssey album called Native NewYorker. I thought those 3 angels with bejeweled and woven hair where from another planet. They sang about ‘roots’ – things my dad would continually remind us about: I’m first generation Afropean (Born Bulawayo, Zimbabwe). There weren’t many Zims in the UK back then, not like now, since Zim suffered a catastrophic exodus over the past 5 years! I have always loved the lead singer’s vocal delivery, sincere and relaxed. The musicianship on this record is stellar. I mean, check the bass line for ‘Inside Out’. What is that?????? As a frustrated bass-player, I can only play air-bass to this tune, and even that feeeeeels gooooood…don’t you just wish you were in that band???? But as a kid, the thing that struck me was the lyrics. I didn’t know what this song was about, I couldn’t relate to it but I wanted to – you know that moment when you understand the words to every love song and you hear them completely differently when it’s accompanied with experience ‘….I wanna be inside out, oh darlin’, I wanna be so deep that you’ll be turning inside out, oh darlin’…’ Ouch! Can’t get better than that, it really can’t.

My love Eska is well documented on this site. I (and many) have been looking for an album from her for years and according to her myspace blog, she’s set a mastering date which means it really must be (almost) done.

Shout out to Jonesy for reacquainting me with this song years back and to Put Me On It for alerting me to the Eska version.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Work To Do
The Main Ingredient
Afrodisiac, 1973 (not available on iTunes)
RCA Records

Since I seem to be naming everything The Main Ingredient, I figured I should give some love to the namesake. The Main Ingredient are from Harlem and the best-known member is the original Cuba Gooding (Sr.). The group was formed in 1964 but he wasn’t part of the group until 1971 when another member died unexpectedly. The early 70′s recordings that feature him on lead vocals became their best selling material.

This is their 1973 cover of The Isley Brothers classic “Work To Do” which came out the year before (it was also covered by the Average White Band in 1974). The Isley Brothers version will always be the definitive version but I like the way Main Ingredient took it down a notch and added the classic 70′s illustrative spoken interlude:

(phone ringing)
her: hello
him: it’s me baby
her: when you you comin’ home?
him: well i ain’t tonight
her: but why? baby why?
him: because you know, i got to stay out here and take care of this business i’m doin’
her: but i had something good for you tonight baby
him: i know, i know it’s good but i just can’t make it tonight, i got to take care of business
her: but i need you, i need you now
him: i need you too but we need the rent too, listen!

Also have give them props for being a little risqué for 1973 with the art work. It’s no Ohio Players album but that is a nipple.

Shout to Nat/Busquelo for giving me this record.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Still Miles
DJ Day & Miles Bonny
(Download Only), 2009
[via fresh selects and/or like a throttle]

I’ve featured DJ Day on this site before. Last month he posted two great covers of songs from Instant Vintage, Raphael Saadiq’s solo debut, for free download on his blog. Be sure to visit one of the links above and download “Can You Feel Me.” The other song is “Still Ray” which is a collaboration with DJ Day and Kansas City DJ/Singer/Producer/Trumpet player Miles Bonny and features his singing and trumpet playing. There are so many good songs on Instant Vintage that “Still Ray” didn’t stand out to me but revisiting it after hearing this cover, I fear I’ve slept on it a little, especially the tuba baseline.

DJ Day talks about how how the songs came about on his blog.

The Saadiq song is based on Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.” which may or may not be based on this Grant Green song.

Miles made a video for the song, here are few stills from it that I think are kind of funny. Click on the images to see the video.

p.s. – I’ve since found the song sampled for my last DJ Day post.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Sea of Tranquility
Kool & The Gang
Kool Jazz, 1973 (iTunes)
De-Lite Records

This track may have minimal impact if you aren’t a D’Angelo fan but…who isn’t a D’Angelo fan? I might be late to the party on this one but I was listening to my “K” records late last night and my jaw dropped when this song started. It took me about ten seconds to place what it was because it was so out of context for me. Aside from the track that DJ Premier produced, I didn’t realize that there were any samples (or interpolations) on D’Angelo’s Voodoo album; especially one as big as this, he basically edited out some parts and added lyrics to this song. I was hoping the sample wouldn’t be credited but, of course, I’m not that cool, it is.

Am I wrong to be let down that he didn’t write the (whole) song? I always loved that it was one of his only songs that was in 3/4 (the other being “Untitled/How Does It Feel?” / as regular readers know, I’m a sucker for any good song not in 4/4).

This is recorded from The Kool Jazz compilation that came out in 1973 but the original version is from the collectable Kool & the Gang self-titled debut from 1969. This is one of my scratchier vinyl recordings, sorry. The song is available on iTunes.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Houstatlantavegas
Little Bit
The Calm
Drake
So Far Gone, 2009

I’ve recently stepped up my RSS game and subscribed to the feeds of 30 or so music blogs and I’ve realized one thing so far: a lot of them post the exact same stuff. I guess there are only so many releases, wait, is that true? (no, but I guess 1 of each 50 unknown producers/artists are actually decent and a hustler as well). This is definitely a highly blogged about mixtape (1,2,3,4,5…although there isn’t much editorial past announcements of the release) and I’m sure I look horribly out of date (two months late!) to anyone who keeps score but I always post whatever I’m listening to (Julian actually put me up on this before the RSS deluge) so why stop now?

I don’t know much about Drake other than he’s from Toronto and Lil’ Wayne is a big fan (he’s on at least four songs on this mixtape). There’s a lengthy interview with Complex Magazine’s Blog that I just found and haven’t made it through yet. I’m having a hard time pinning down what makes this mixtape so compelling to me, probably not the production, although I do love the 3:00 a.m. feel of the whole thing. It’s probably the contrast between the commercial packaging and the (many) honest moments like:

Hopin’ Western Union doin’ currency exchange
Cause my dad called and got me feelin’ guilty and ashamed
Like, how I had a Rolls and I went and got a Range
And he payin’ for his cigarettes with dollars and some change?

You can download the whole project for free from what appears to Drake’s blog, October’s Very Own. It’s also available as of right now on mediafire. The zShare link that most of those blogs link to appears to have expired.

While looking for the blog links above I found a great tip on Smoking Section. If you download a lot of music from zSHARE, you’re very aware of that annoying 50 second wait time before you get the actual download link. Apparently, when the counter starts, you can paste javascript:var%20time=0 into the address bar and skip the wait. Say word.

Songs are available for two weeks.

You Need A Change Of Mind
Brooklyn Express
12″ Single, 1982
BC Records

This is one of those mysterious New York club classics. I had always thought it was just a re-edited version of Eddie Kendrick’s “Girl You Need A Change Of Mind” (that came out 10 years earlier) under a different name but it appears that I was wrong.

I’m just researching this for the first time right now and apparently a Yugoslavian guy named Began Cekic was behind Brooklyn Express and BC Records. He worked with Tee Scott and there is one short interview with Scott that seems to be everyone’s reference point on the web. Scott indicates the records were of dubious legality but says “Of course he did cover records, really because he didn’t sample anybody else’s records – it wasn’t possible then, he just did things that sounded close to them.” As discussed in this post, I’m pretty sure re-edits were happening at that point but it sounds like Cekic wasn’t doing them.

“You Need A Change of Mind” is the B-Side of this 12 inch. The A-Side is “Back In Time” which is a starts out sounding just like the B-Side but eventually morphs into what sounds like The Fatback Band’s “Do The Bus Stop” and then into some combination of the two with the bass line from “Bra” by Cymande. That side is definitely re-played and not just a reconstruction of pre-existing records, supporting what Scott said.

That leaves me to wonder who his musicians were and who’s singing on this record. Does anyone know more about this?

Songs are available for two weeks.

Walk Away From Love
David Ruffin
Who I Am, 1975

Walk Away From Love
Bitty Mclean
On Bond Street, 2004

I haven’t listened to vinyl in a few months; I decided it was a good idea to give all of my iTunes mp3s (36,500+ and growing) one of those 1-5 star ratings. But last night, after a tough conversation, I sought the counsel of handful of soul records I didn’t know well. The first one I put on was ex-Temptation David Ruffin’s Who I Am album. I’m not someone who thinks things happen for a reason but it felt strangely time and space specific when the the third song came on.

I’ve been playing to Bitty Mclean’s “Walk Away From Love” pretty consistently for the last few months and I didn’t realize it was a cover until that familiar melody came through the headphones last night (almost like that father & son Coke commercial where Method Man and Mary J.’s “You’re All I Need” morphs into the Marvin & Tammi original). Ruffin’s version is produced by Van McCoy (the guy who made “The Hustle“) so some parts of the production haven’t aged well, especially the “gonnawalkaway/gonnawalkaway!” part. The song could also easily fade out at 3:54 (a minute and half before it actually does) and you wouldn’t miss anything but Ruffin’s delivery of the “breaks my heart” line is easily worth the price of admission.

According to wikipedia, this was the last top 10 hit of Ruffin’s career. He didn’t write the song (McCoy collaborator Charles Kipps did) but it seems that his version is definitely the original recording. I can’t find any other significant covers.

There is a video of Bitty performing the song live but I don’t like it that much, he tries to turn it into a party jam…and he’s smiling too much (it’s a sad song!).

Songs are available for two weeks.