Archive for the 'Vinyl Recordings' Category

I Can Stand a Little Rain
Esther Phillips
Esther Phillips w/Beck, 1975
CTI Records

After last week’s vinyl session, I had my requisite ‘oh my god – why did I stop listening to vinyl?’ moment that I have every time I listen to only mp3s for a while (and consequently stare at my computer screen way more than is necessary). I’ve been listening to records everyday since and in one week I’ve come across samples from Ghostface Killah, Common, Tanya Morgan, Brand Nubian, Nickodemus & Osiris and Charlie Dark (that’s what I call positive reinforcement). Unfortunately, none of those songs quite warrant posting in their entirety. But there have been plenty of other jewels, including this one by Esther Phillips.

The few songs I know of hers are from the 70′s but apparently they are from her second comeback. She had a bunch of hits in 1950 at the age of 15 but record label changes and heroin addiction quickly put an end to that (I guess they started young even back then). Kenny Rogers (of all people) helped bring her back to prominence in the early 60′s. That was followed with another bout with heroin. Her third coming was in the early 70′s when she recorded the song that I know her for best – her cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s brutal (see lyrics below) and classic “Home Is Where the Hatred Is.” Half of the people that I’ve talked to about this song thought that her version was the original which isn’t surprising after reading about her long term addiction (she died from liver and kidney failure at the age of 48).

A junkie walking through the twilight
I’m on my way home
I left three days ago, but noone seems to know I’m gone
Home is where the hatred is
Home is filled with pain and it
Might not be such a bad idea if I never went home again

Stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why
Hang onto your rosary beads
Close your eyes and watch me die
You keep saying, kick it, quit it
Lord, but did you ever try?
To turn your sick soul inside out
So that the world
Can watch you die

Home is where I live inside my white powder dreams
Home was once an empty vacuum
That’s filled now with my silent screams
Home is where the needle marks
Try to heal my broken heart
It might not be such a bad idea if I never went home again

[Repeat verse 2]

That album, “From a Whisper to a Scream” earned her a Grammy nomination in 1972. This album contained her disco-y version of Dinah Washington’s “What A Diff’rence A Day Makes,” which was her biggest hit in 12 years (but sounds like a misguided reworking from the Verve Remixed series – her voice just isn’t suited for it). This song, on the other hand, seems perfect for her weathered vocals. I was hoping the Beck in “w/Beck” was Jeff Beck but it’s Joe Beck who I don’t know anything about.

Record companies renaming albums to get more sales is on my list of useless pet peeves. All indications point to this album being called “Esther Phillips w/Beck” and Esther Phillips being the listed artist but after “What A Diff’rence A Day Makes” became a big hit, it appears the album was re-branded as “What A Diff’rence A Day Makes” by “Esther Phillips w/Beck.” And by “all indications” I mean, well, um, one indication – that my album cover has one of those add-on red corner-banners that says “Includes What A Diff’rence A Day Makes!” So…I’m taking a stand for historical accuracy! …talk about not knowing when to pick my battles.

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.

We’re On Our Way Home (Part 1)
Brainstorm
Journey Into The Light, 1978

This songs seems perfect as I and many other folks get ready to hit the road the holidays. I posted another song from this album a year and half ago but I recently recorded the entire LP and every few days, I’ve keep returning to it and thinking about how good it is and how sad it is that these guys didn’t get more recognition.

Admittedly, this track starts out a little non-descript but when the verse starts at 1:00, the lead vocals totally draw me in (Belita Woods, I know you are probably in your 50′s or 60′s now, but…can I holler at you? Oh wait, damn, you’re on myspace too? So I can holler at you…ok, now I’m shy). I know fame is only fractionally based on talent but I really feel like she could have been a contender. She could have at least been on a Betty Wright/Gwen McCrae level, they got nothin’ on her.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Seis Por Ocho
Nuspirit Helsinki
Montana Roha Jazz EP, 2001

This track is enough to make me start playing saxophone again. “Seis Por Ocho” refers to the 6/8 time signature of the song (95% of songs western music is in 4/4, meaning four beats per bar). I love how the 6/8 rhythm makes the song feel fast and slow at the same time. Clearly it sounds fast (the ill drum pattern) but when you tap your foot to it, you’ll see it ends up moving pretty slow.

Nuspirit Helsinki are actually from Helsinki, as opposed to Architecture In Helsinki, who are from Australia. I don’t well them well enough to really talk about them so I’ll quote from their Compost Records page:

On the flip side the track Seis Por Ocho is an exploration of 6/8 beats and Latin influenced horn arrangements. Again the beat is based on the phenomenal work of live drums and percussion provided by Teppo Mäkynen and Mamba. The horn section featuring Jukka Eskola on fluegelhorn, Aleksi Ahoniemi on sax and Jay Kortehisto on trombone is flavored with the high voice of the young Cuban vocalist, Erick Jon. Seis Por Ocho has also a groovy live acoustic bass line performed by Anssi Växby.

This mix isn’t available on iTunes but you can get the “Original Jazz Session Mix” which is also great here (that link will launch your iTunes).

Songs are available for two weeks.

Hope That We Can Be Together Soon
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (Featuring Sharon Paige)
To Be True, 1975

In my ongoing systematic effort to “lock down” my record collection (listen to every record, mark and record every good song, etc., see pics below) I get reminded of the foolishness of my task. That happened recently when I went back through my Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes records that I had I had originally marked five or more years ago. I looked at my old ratings with “I didn’t know any better” nostalgia. I can see how I was listening to records trying to find something I was looking for as opposed to just listening to hear what was there. Case in point, I pretty much passed over this song because (I’m guessing) it didn’t sound gritty. Of course, the rhetorical question is will my taste shift/expand to in the next five years?

Ghostface borrowed this for his “Teddy Skit” on his 2001 album Bullet Proof Wallets.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Pains of Love
The New Birth
It’s Been a Long Time, 1973

And This Is Love
Gladys Knight & The Pips
Neither One of Us, 1973

My Man’s Gone Now
Nina Simone
Nina Simone Sings The Blues, 1967

Love (Your Pain Goes Deep)
Frankie Beverley And The Butlers
The Sound Of Philadelphia, 197?

This is a response/continuation of a post on Captain’s Crate, one of my favorite mp3 blogs. The post is called “Desperate Times Call For Desperate Pleasures” and the four songs posted are about “The kind [of anguish] that can reduce a grown man to pathetic teary desperation.”

“The Pains of Love” by The New Birth was the song that immediately came to mind and gave me the idea to do a Part 2 on this theme. I love how this guy’s woman left him and he’s giving her a lecture on the pain that she’s going to be in. He’s just projecting away, “Why am I hurting this way?…you will say.” He ends the songs whispering “You’ll be lost, you’re gonna need me…”

The Gladys Knight song was sampled on “It Takes More” by Goapele. This one is definitely over the top. It’s basically a list of things objects/memories like “drinking too much pink champagne” that remind her of her former man. There are few interesting items like “how you used to cheat at checkers” and “a TV Guide.”

The Nina Simone song is a slow burner but builds to an intense ending. I actually recorded this from “The Best of Nina Simone” on RCA but wanted to give the original album info.

I found this pre-Maze Frankie Beverly track on The Sound Of Philadelphia compilation. It’s originally from this 7″. Not sure if there is an album or not. I love how he slow he says “now the pain keeps getting deeper” at :52, its as if the pain is affecting his speech.

Anyone up for doing a Part 3 on this theme? Send me a link if so.

Songs are available for two weeks.

Everything Good To You (Ain’t Always Good For You)
B.T. Express
Do It (‘Til Your Satisfied), 1974

I’ve been meaning to do a post about bootleg vinyl breaks compilations for a while…and this isn’t really the post I was writing in my mind but that’s ok (as I can’t really remember it). I feel like I have to say that what write is inevitably going to be colored by DJ Premier’s tirade on breaks records on Gang Starr’s Moment of Truth album (text below).

That aside, I have to give respect, well, at least acknowledge that a lot of my early record shopping was fueled by the names and tracks found on those compilations. That said, the producers of these compilations take some serious liberties when preparing the tracks for release. This B.T. Express song is a great example. It appears on Strictly Breaks Vol. 5 which come out in 1998. Its listed, like the rest, with a subtitle that says who sampled it, in this case, “Used by DMX for ‘Get At Me Dog’” (it was also sampled on “Get The Bozack” by EPMD 9 years earlier). The Strictly Breaks folks knew that DJs would want to play it right before or after the DMX song which was getting a lot of attention at the time so they went ahead and decided it was ok to slow the song down from 117 beats per minute to…104 (i.e. a lot, making it much closer to tempo of the DMX song – 97) and repeat the first bar four times (creating a clumsy 11-bar intro).

To expect more integrity from a compilation who’s “copyright” line says “Warning: Unauthorized duplications of this joint will end you up with cement shoes at a river near you!!!” is perhaps foolish. But that it doesn’t say “Re-Edit” or “*Remix by Louis Flores” like the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series seems irresponsible. I guess the lesson is that if you are going to get your samples the “lazy” way then you are getting something on par with the amount of effort you are putting out but something about it still bothers me. I guess its that the state of affairs is only getting more sloppy in the internet age of “crate digging.” I haven’t been djing that long but I felt like a senior citizen when a young DJ recently asked me “where do you get all those samples? because they’re really hard to find at good quality [read: download at good quality], trust me I looked…do you [pause] dig?” with a tone that implied he expected me to laugh, say ‘hell no” and tell him the right place to look online.

…and one other thing, what’s the deal with you break record cats that’s putting out all the original records that we sample from, and snitchin’ by putting us on the back of it saying that we used stuff – you know how that go – stop doing that – ya’ll are violatin’, straight up and down! word up man, i’m sick on this sh-t; ya’ll motherf-ck-rs really don’t know what this hip hop’s all about; so while you keep on fakin’ the funk, we gonna keep on walking through the darkness, carrying our torches…

Songs are available for two weeks.

Sunday and Sister Jones
Roberta Flack
Quiet Fire, 1971
wikipedia | official site

I came back across this album in my collection this week while recording a bunch of borrowed records and was aghast that I hadn’t recorded this song yet. I’ve shared my love of early Roberta Flack before but am glad to give another example of how her easy-listening reputation is unfortunate or at least not all there is (the duets with Peabo Bryson and Maxi Priest are hard to dispute).

This is her second sultry song about a preacher, not coincidentally both were written by Eugene McDaniels. “Reverend Lee” (the other song, some lyrics here) is intentionally lyrically provocative whereas the seduction of this song is all in the performance.

The basic plot of the song is that Reverend Jones is sick and his wife prays to the Lord for him to save him, saying “if you take him away i don’t want to live another day.” He dies and she dies the next day. I don’t know if they recorded this song at 4:00 a.m. or what but (tell me if I’m wrong) somewhere beween Roberta’s delivery of birth, death, kneeling, and “Life was crying (?) from her body / Like water from a drying well,” this song has a clear sexual vibe to it.

It was early Sunday evening
Just before the death of day
All the family friends were grieving
Reverend Jones just passed away
Sister Jones had seen it coming
She was familiar with the signs
Late one night I heard her hummin’
While strolling through the Georgia pines

She said, Lord if you take him away
I don’t want to live

It was early Sunday morning
Just before the birth of day
I can hear the rooster crowing
Sister Jones knelt down to pray
She said Lord he’s slipping through my fingers
Is death the master of us all?
She said Lord I’m humble here before you
Just grant this life and don’t let him fall
She said, Lord if you take him away
I don’t want to live another day

Later on that Sunday evening
Just before the midnight dawn (?)
Sister Jones was heavy breathin’
I still hear the mourning song
Life was crying from her body
Like water from a drying well
Well, I heard her whisper thank you Jesus
Just before midnight ___

Sister Jones was taken away
She didn’t live
Sister Jones was taken away
She didn’t live another day
Sister Jones was taken away
She didn’t live
Sister Jones was taken away
She didn’t live another day
Sister Jones…taken away
She didn’t live another day

Looks like Roberta Flack is selling the piano that she used to record her masterpiece debut First Take. Times must be tough…

Perry, thanks for this record.

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [6.9 MB] or here for the 320 kbps version [11.5 MB].

You and Me
Stevie Wonder
My Cherie Amour, 1969

I was putting the full court press on a lot of my friends to come to the WONDER-Full™ party this year and at the last minute (when I was eating a burrito across the street from the Hammerstein) I got nervous that I might be overselling it. I got there pretty early (9:30, doors opened at 9:00) and was surprised to find out that the event was in the actual ballroom (“Hammerstein Ballroom”) on the 7th floor, not in the concert venue on the first floor. I was quite a shift from last year’s all concrete warehouse setting. The ballroom featured carpeting and an expansive wedding-style wood cube dance floor that was placed in the middle for the occasion.

As usual Keistar/Spinna/Bobbito brought in their own sound which, in my estimation, has been really heavy on treble for the last two years. I brought 8 pairs of earplugs for friends after Ben was so kind as to save me the morning-after-ear-ringing last year.

There were maybe 100 people there when I got there and a quarter of them were already dancing (mostly alone on the huge almost empty dance floor) and I felt better about my campaign already, remember how serious the Wonder-Full crowd is about dancing. By 11:15, the entire dancefloor was full but the real treat came around 1:00 a.m. when Stevie showed up. There was a commotion as he (and his daughter Aisha and the rest of his entourage) walked along the side of the ballroom making there way to the front and very quickly, what had been a free-moving dance party turned into a uni-directional cell-phone-camera wielding semi-reverent mass.

That picture doesn’t do justice to the number of recording devices being used. As has been pointed out on other blogs, people seemed so consumed with trying to capture the moment that a lot of them seemed to forget to be in it. After endorsing Barack Obama and mentioning that the party was a month late (it’s traditionally been within a week of his birthday, May 13th) among other things, he sang “That Girl,” “Uptight (Everything’s All Right),” “Superstition,” and “Do I Do” more or less a capella with intense crowd participation.

He left the stage after that but came back 10 or 15 minutes later to just sit down and hang out. The funny thing was, people couldn’t handle it. Everyone rushed back up to the front and starting taking pictures…of Stevie sitting…and it went on for a while. It was a little silly. Someone asked me “why is he just sitting there?” to which I more or less replied “he’s hanging out, the real question is, why are we just standing here?” Just when people finally went back to dancing, Spinna played “Master Blaster” and Stevie got up and sang with it [insert rush-to-stage part 3]. Then talked about Syreeta (his first wife) who died in 2004. Then he left (for 15 seconds) and Spinna played “Isn’t She Lovely” (written for Aisha) which he came back and sang for her.

I thought I would post this song, one of my favorite Stevie album cuts, as a tribute to the party and his concert at Jones Beach which I saw last night. This song is also on my Music For My Funeral list. As it says on that page and it worth repeating, “You and Me” is not to be confused with the (also awesome) better known and more predictably sentimental “You and I” from Talking Book. “You and Me” instantly makes me picture sunshine and hills. It’s very much a “closing credits” song and therefore perfect for the list.

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [3.7 MB] and here for the 320 kbps version [6.2 MB].

I Ain’t Got Nothing
The Temptations
All Directions, 1972

This album was best known for “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” but there are some other great songs on it as well, including a cover of Isaac Hayes’
“Do You Thing” from the Shaft Soundtrack that came out a year before, and this song. This album also contains the surprising “Run Charlie Run” — as in “Run Charlie run, the niggas is comin’!” I guess they felt like they needed to up the ante after their less incendiary 1969 song “Message From a Black Man.”

“I Ain’t Got Nothing” is one of those songs that is totally ridiculous and undermines itself at every turn, yet still somehow achieves the desired effect, in the case, being sad. It would be perfect for a Will Ferrell movie.

You know, every house has a door and every room has a floor
Every fence has a gate and every beast has a mate
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me…I ain’t got nothing

Every stove has a fire and every car has a tire
Every fish has a bowl and every shoe has a sole
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me…I ain’t got nothing

Now I don’t care about politics and things across the see
All I want, all I want to do is love, and have somebody love me

I need, I need somebody

Every lion has a den and every little pig has a its pen
Every road has a way and they tell me every dog has its day
Everybody, everybody’s got something but me

I ain’t got nothing
I ain’t got nothing
Oh no…

(repeat)

>> right-click –> here to download the 192 kbps version [5.2 MB] and here for the 320 kbps version [8.6 MB].