RIP Clarence Clemons

RIP Clarence Clemons

(and the kozmic significance of the ordinariness it all)

by Bob Davis | Soul-Patrol.com

I have written about Clarence Clemons many times in the past, however it has never been enough. I say that simply because people like him simply never get quite enough credit because their accomplishment is in the extraordinary manner that they go about doing what should be ordinary, but isn't.

1973 - FRESHMAN ORIENTATION

Next fall my daughter will be a college freshman. That means later this summer, she will be attending something called "freshman orientation." Here in the Davis household the topic of "freshman orientation," has been the topic of much conversation over the past few days. The passing of Clarence Clemons takes me back to my own "freshman orientation," at the University of Pittsburgh way back in 1973.

Freshman orientation is supposed to be a period of time when you as the recent high school graduate, but not yet college freshman can be introduced to your selected institution of higher learning in earnest. You get to live in the dorms, you get to learn about the administrative procedures in registering for classes, you get to learn about the support system available to you at the institution and more. It is designed to assist you with the transition between high school & college. I am all but certain that they vary from college to college, yet are all designed to be somewhat similar.

In 1973 my freshman orientation at the University of Pittsburgh was all of the above, strongly enhanced by something else that was quite unexpected, and yet at the same time something quite significant. You see perhaps because it was 1973 or perhaps it was the University of Pittsburgh or perhaps for reasons that I am completely unaware of, the memory of my own freshman orientation of almost 40 years ago is completely filtered thru the haze of "sex, drugs & rock n' roll." And at the very center of that "haze" is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

You see the University of Pittsburgh has arranged for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to perform in nearby Schenley Park for what seemed like morning, noon and night for all 4 days of freshman orientation. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were onstage performing whenever I happened to be in the park (which was as often as I possibly could be…..LOL)

The first thing that I noticed was that while the band was integrated, the crowd was almost 100 percent white. The music however seemed rooted in 1950's/1960's R&B and Doo Wop, so it was "retro." Yet at the same time it was contemporary and fresh. During that freshman orientation weekend I returned to that park many times, because I dug the whole scene (it was much like I had envisioned Woodstock to have been,) yet each time I returned, I was stunned by the fact that while there were many Black students attending freshman orientation weekend, almost none of them were in the park. One one occasion I did see a Black student in the park and we sought each other out. His name was Kevin Amos, who has been my friend ever since that day and whose name you will recognize from his many contributions to Soul-Patrol.com over the years.

1984 - JERSEY SHORE

In 1984 I found myself living in Red Bank New Jersey. I been living and working as an operations manager in Houston Texas for a well known "enormous nationwide public utility." As you all may recall 1984 was the year when the "enormous nationwide public utility" was deregulated and broken up. This "break up" created opportunities for employees who were willing to relocate to the New Jersey headquarters of the "enormous nationwide public utility." And I was one such employee. I headed for New Jersey for not only a new home, a new career and yet another intersection with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, at a transitional moment in my life.

As things would turn out I ended up living in Red Bank for no particular reason other than the fact that a friend of mine from HS was now living there and he offered me a place to crash, during my transition. Many of you will recall that 1984 was also the year when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band became a nationwide/worldwide musical and cultural phenomena. And I found myself living in the very place that was the heart & soul of the culture from which sprang Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

In fact Clarence Clemons was from Red Bank, New Jersey. If you were to drive down the main drag (RT 35) thru Red Bank New Jersey, you would think that you had somehow been transported to a place in the Middle America. On RT 35 you will see beautiful early 20th century homes, tree lined streets with children playing, leading to a downtown area that looks like it could be in a Jimmy Stewart movie.

However if you peel back the onion just a bit you will find a small city where quite literally the Blacks live on one side of the tracks and the whites live on the other side of the tracks. Despite that legacy of segregation, the flip side of Red Bank as well as all of the dozens of other towns/cities stretching along the coast of New Jersey that make up this mythical place called "The Jersey Shore," is that it's probably among the most liberal places that you could possibly find in the United States. You see the real life "Jersey Shore" (not the TV show) is the complete antithesis of current day "2011 Tea Party Amerika."

As such race relations are quite a bit different then they are in almost anyplace else that I have ever lived in the United States, north, south, east or west. The reality of the Jersey Shore is that you have a large geographical area, with a large Black/White population where there is in fact something that approaches racial harmony. Oh to be certain, the Jersey Shore is by no means perfect, but it approaches the very ideal of what the people who fought so hard for something called "integration," during the last century had envisioned during that fight.

An understanding of what life is like at the Jersey Shore provides a quick answer to not only the "concept of "Bruce Spingsteen/Clarence Clemons," but also to their reality. I have seen "music/culture experts" at publications like Rolling Stone Magazine, eMpTVy, etc. describe the relationship between Bruce/Clarence as being somewhat analogous to that of Huck Finn & N*gger Jim. I would suggest that while that description might sound ok, that it is somewhat misleading (and also panders to a lingering kind of racism.) Huck & Jim weren't "equals." Not only were Bruce/Clarence "equals," but based on my own personal observation of 1984 Jersey Shore life, they weren't all that unusual either. I can tell you for a fact that wherever you went in the summer of 1984 you could see Black kids and White kids hanging out together. You could see Black families and White families hanging out together. You could see the vision of America that many Americans had been hoping for many generations would become a reality in actual practice all along the streets and boardwalks of the mythical place called "The Jersey Shore."

The music of the Jersey Shore is the same way. It harkens back to the roots of Rock n' Roll itself, where the guitar and the sax were at the heart of the music. The integrationist 1950's notion that lies just under the surface of rock n roll, "equal parts blues & country," serving as a musical metaphor for "equal parts black & white," serves as a revolutionary concept for a nation whose very creation is rooted in slavery of those who were constitutionally declared as "3/5 th's of a human being."

Only a place like the Jersey Shore, could give to us an integrated musical entity like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to remind us all not only what Rock n' Roll is supposed to sound/look like, but more importantly to remind us all what we are supposed to be like. To remind us all of just how "ordinary" our "extra-ordinariness" is actually supposed to be.

2006 - ROCK N' ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTIONS

In March of 2006 I traveled from New Jersey to NYC to do my then annual coverage of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductions at the Waldorf-Astoria. The primary reason I went was to interview the family of Miles Davis, who was being inducted that year. I had done the interview the night before the day/night of the induction. As I written before here on Soul-Patrol, it is the daytime of the induction, when the rehearsals take place that is my whole reason for being there as opposed to the actual awards ceremony at night. The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Induction REHERSALS are perhaps the very best LIVE PERFORMANCES that I have ever been personally a witness to in my life. On top of that, the opportunities that I have had to speak with the legends of music in such a casual setting have provided me with experiences that I simply are unable to describe to you in words.

One of the most memorable of many such experiences was in 2006, when I spotted Mr. Clarence Clemons inside of the rehearsal hall (actually the same ballroom where the awards ceremony was to take place later.) I walked up to Clarence Clemons and I introduced myself. I mentioned to him during my introduction that I had once lived in Red Bank, NJ for a period of time in the 1980's and Clarence hugged me.

He said "I don't really know why you are here, and yes I have heard of your publication, but you do realize the kozmic significance of you and I being here at this place, at this moment in time, don't you?"

As I looked around the room, of course I knew EXACTLY what Clarence meant. Although the room was packed with people, very few of them besides Clarence, our friend Greer Brooks-Muldoon and myself were Black Americans.

I said to Clarence, "this meeting has the EXACT same kozmic significance as the very first time that I ever saw you perform live, during freshman orientation at the University of Pittsburgh, back in 1973."

I then told Clarence the story of me seeing the integrated Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, perform over the course of an entire weekend, during my freshman orientation.

He smiled and said "I told you it was kozmic.."

We then proceeded to have a one hour conversation about music, life, race, money and a whole lot more in a way that if you had been listening, you would have no idea that it was the very first time that Clarence & I had ever spoken with each other. Instead it sounded like two people who had known each other for 35 years. About ¾ of the way thru the conversation, I realized that I hadn't turned on my tape recorder and that this had in fact been one of the very best interviews/conversation that I had ever conducted. I also realized that if I had turned the tape recorder on, that the conversation would have been nowhere near as good or life effecting. (But I was able to get him to cut a Soul-Patrol Radio Station id.

6/19/2011 - TODAY

Clarence Clemons passed away yesterday, but today is also Fathers Day. This past Friday, I got the best Fathers Day present that I could possibly get as I watched my daughter walk to the podium and receive her HS diploma.

As I am sitting here composing this piece about the passing of Clarence Clemons, I can't help but to think of how the people who fought so hard for integration in the 1950's weren't doing so, just for the sake of doing so. They did so because they believed that integration would lead to equal opportunity for all of those who wanted to fully participate in American society. I too am a believer in that concept, have tried to live my life accordingly and tried to extend that notion to my daughter. My hope is that as she moves forward in her life that she will understand that the only restrictions on her are the ones that she places upon herself.

Clarence Clemons in his public life was a real life symbol for that philosophy. He was also one hell of a nice person, that I was privileged to admire from a far for decades and when I finally got the chance to spend some time with immediately connected with and in one day learned that although we had never met prior to that day, we had indeed been friends all along. That's because we had been "kindred spirits." And I say all of this simply to say that, if you have led your life in a certain kind of way, you are also probably a "kindred spirit," with Clarence Clemons, and most likely would have become his frind if you were ever to meet him, just like I did...

At the 2011 Soul-Patrol Convention on July 23 in Philadelphia, one of our panel discussions will be a topic entitled "WHO STOLE THE SOUL FROM ROCK N' ROLL." I have absolutely no doubt that Mr. Clarence Clemons will be listening in to that conversation and smiling. I also have absolutely no doubt that his name is going to be mentioned at least once or twice :)

***

Bob Davis is co-owner/creator (with his brother Mike) of the award winning http://www.soul-patrol.com/ website. He is also the web master/moderator/editor/radio program director of Soul-Patrol.

All the Rock Gods are White, All the Soul Men are…well Black Men, but Some of Us Are Aretha Franklin

All the Rock Gods are White, All the Soul Men are…well Black Men,but Some of Us Are Aretha Franklin

Roses for Aretha
by Mark Anthony Neal

“A Rose is Still a Rose,” released in 1998, was Aretha Franklin’s last major hit single. Produced by Lauryn Hill, who was poised to release the generation defining The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill later that year, the song represented a metaphoric passing of the torch—a torch that was also passed to Mary J. Blige, when Franklin appeared on the latter’s “Don’t Waste Your Time” from Blige’s Mary. Unspoken in both of these performances is that Franklin remains the most important Black Woman artist that the Unites States has ever produced and few among current fans of American popular music really have an appreciation of what that means.

In the annals of American Pop music, to paraphrase Barbara Smith, Gloria Hull and Patricia Bell Scott, “All the Rock Gods are White, All the Soul Men are…well Black Men, but Some of Us Are Aretha Franklin.” It is simply too easy to forget that Aretha Franklin was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. That Ms. Franklin wasn’t included among the 16 men who were inducted in the first class (The Everly Brothers, really?) in 1986 only illustrates the point that Ms. Franklin’s achievements are often taken for granted, even among so-called fans of Black music.

Though the term “Diva” existed well before Aretha Franklin walked across a stage, in many ways she is the ultimate embodiment of the term. More than simply a celebrated vocalist, at her commercial peak in the late 1960s, Ms. Franklin could have legitimately been called the most popular Black woman of the 20th Century. The 18 Grammy Awards, including eight straight years in the Best Female R&B/Soul category (1968-1975) tell only a part of the story.

Ms. Franklin’s stature existed well beyond the Pop charts that she dominated in the 1960s and 1970s as she is part of a handful of African-American artists responsible for mainstreaming Black spirituality at a time when the ethos of that spirituality was at the cutting edge of progressive politics in the United States.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

The Radical Soul of Curtis Mayfield

special to NewBlackMan

National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta Celebrates the 'Radical Soul' of Curtis Mayfield

Quiet Legend: The Radical Soul of Curtis Mayfield
by Stephane Dunn

This ain't no time for segregatin' (we people who are darker than blue)
I'm talking 'bout brown and yellow two
High yellow girl, can't you tell
You're just the surface of our dark deep well

Some musicians – not many – just have it - a timelessness that means whenever you hear their music you are moved to sing along or rock or in the case of Chicago native Curtis Mayfield, to go to church and say uh huh, alright now. He was a soft-spoken gentleman with an instantly recognizable vocal sound – at once soulful and mellow but tinged with that gut-wrenching emotion definitive of black gospel music. This wasn’t surprising since Mayfield was a church boy who taught himself the guitar and dropped out of school and turned professional musician at the very young age of fifteen.

Pianist Dr. Guthrie Ramsey, a professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania, says Mayfield’s “unforced, persuasive falsetto” offered a “dose of gospel-blues.” Mayfield proved to be an old soul and ahead of his generation. By the time his group The Impressions reached soul music fame with such albums as It’s All Right (1963) and the hit Keep On Pushin 1964, Mayfield had come to define the group’s sound, writing and producing many of their songs. While Mayfield is a name that any soul music lover or American music aficionado will know, he remains a sort of quiet legend and this despite the sampling of his music and tributes, both compilations of his music and concerts.

The most recent tribute by Atlanta’s National Black Arts Festival saluted Mayfield in song with legendary O’ Jay Eddie Levert, Joi, Dion Farris, Van Hunt and at night’s end, the Impressions leading the crowd in “Movin’ on Up.” It was particularly apropos that on the heels of Black Music Month, the 2010 festival chose to highlight Mayfield’s music both because of the sheer velocity of his work as well as his consistent musical investment in social introspection that unabashedly spoke to the black American experience in the 60’s and early-70’s. While Marvin Gaye’s 1971 album, What’s Goin’ On and the single by the same name are deservedly designated one of the top best of twentieth century pop music and revisited during times when the national consciousness is shaken (September 11th, the Hurricane Katrina aftermath), the socially radical musical genius of Curtis Mayfield is not referenced nearly enough . Perhaps this is in part because there is no singular song that sort of stands as his iconic socio-political critique – there was a whole catalog of such songs in the Mayfield repertoire. “People Get Ready”; “Keep On Pushin’’; We’re a Winner”, “This Is My Country” and “Choice of Colors” are just a few.

Several months before Gaye dropped his What’s Goin’ On (1971), Curtis Mayfield released his solo debut album, CURTIS in September of 1970 . Mayfield interrogated racial oppression, challenged the status quo, and inspired the young with a number of powerfully poetic songs - “Miss Black America,” “Moving on Up; “Don’t Worry if There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go” and “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue” – which Peter Burns describes as on “par” with Billie Holiday’s “strange Fruit.” Even before this solo point in his career, Mayfield had already built an extraordinary cache of politicized music with Impressions albums like People Get Ready (1965) and We’re A Winner (1967). Taken together, the Mayfield songbook is a powerful narrative record of the struggles for black liberation in the 60s to early 70s. CURTIS reached the top of the charts where it was unseated by Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On.

Mayfield’s movie soundtrack work further demonstrated his socially insightful voice and emphasized that part of his lyrical genius was his ability to capture the beauty, pleasures, and pain of black ghetto life. For Claudine (1974), starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll as a struggling single mother raising six children in Harlem, he penned such critically sharp tracks as “Mr. Welfare Man.” Despite its controversial cultural legacy, the music for the drug themed Superfly, Mayfield’s most enduring soundtrack score, was more than a narrative accompaniment. It humanized and dramatized one of the most serious problems plaguing the black urban community with the memorable “Pusherman” and “Freddy’s Dead.” Like Superfly, The Bill Cosby and Sydney Poitier film, Let’s Do It Again (1974), continued to showcase Mayfield’s genius with creating sultry, magnetic songs like the hit title track. He offered up more of this in Sparkle, a 1977 movie starring Irene Cara, which included such sexy, alluring singles as the much performed “Giving Him Something He Can Feel.” He teamed up with the reigning Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin to do the re-cut version of the Sparkle soundtrack; it revitalized Franklin’s career and they went on to do her album Almighty Fire in 1978.

Mayfield’s collaborations with the likes of Franklin, Donnie Hathaway, and the Staple singers provide an impressive body of work on it’s on and is further distinguishable because much of it occurred on Mayfield’s successful Chicago based label, Curtom. The ownership Mayfield took over his work when the Impressions finished their ABC contract in 1968 further signals his radicalism. On the surface, it is perhaps easy to reach for familiar terms like “message music” to characterize Mayfield’s 1960s-70s body of work. Such a tag might obscure the profound thematic depth, lyrical genius, and musical artistry of Curtis Mayfield who could captivate us with achingly, beautiful songs [“The Makings of You”] or get us moving and flirting [Let’s Do It Again”] or call us to action [“People Get Ready.”] Dr. Ramsey notes that Mayfield’s “understated personality” countered “the massive influence his musicianship held over the music industry for years.”

In August 1990, a freak accident at an outdoor concert paralyzed Mayfield from the neck down. He recorded a little again from his bed as renewed interest and tributes to his work appeared in the ‘90s. In December 1999, the quiet legend passed away. Tributes have a greater use than just providing feel-good sing along evenings and technology assists mightily. Pop culture memory is notoriously short-lived; recovering the great ones who offer a compelling window into a historical period and high artistry is ongoing work. Curtis Mayfield offers one of the loudest, most deft nods to the marriage of musical profundity and thematic consciousness; in that his radical soul is timeless.

***

Stephane Dunn, Ph.D, MFA, is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Morehouse College. She has also taught at Ohio State University. A scholarly and creative writer, she specializes in film, popular culture, literature and African American studies. She is the author of articles and commentaries and the book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (University of Illinois Press 2008). She can be reached at musesd@netzero.com.

Teddy Pendergrass: Life Was a Song Worth Singing

Teddy Pendergrass: Life Was a Song Worth Singing
by Mark Anthony Neal

Hearing the soothing voice of the late Teddy Pendergrass singing lead on the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes classic, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” conjures the aura of possibility that marked the beginning of the 1970s in Black music. The single, which went to number three on the pop charts in August of 1972 and eventually sold a million copies, was one of the first releases from the fledgling Philadelphia International Records (PIR). The story of PIR is legendary—their groundbreaking distribution deal with Columbia Records, then under the leadership of Clive Davis, would impact the trajectory of black music for some time. The label found it’s musical direction in the triumvirate known as the Mighty Three—Thom Bell, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff—and some of Philadelphia’s most accomplished studio musicians, who themselves recorded as MFSB. By the end of the decade of the 1970s though, it would be Pendergrass who would be the face of the brand, becoming the most bankable symbol of an imagined black masculinity during the era.

Born Theodore Pendergrass on March 26, 1950, the singer came of age in Philadelphia, during an era when Motown records began to dominate the pop charts and the city was increasingly becoming renowned for its vocal harmony traditions—a sound that Thom Bell would later translate into success with groups like The Delfonics and The Stylistics. Ordained as a minister at age ten, Pendergrass found his vocal inspiration via the example of Marvin Junior, the lead singer of The Dells. As Pendergrass observes in his memoir Truly Blessed (1998), “Marvin Junior’s romantic, soulful voice was a gift from God. He could sing as smooth as honey one moment, then tear out your heart with an anguished plea.” (124) Pendergrass, in fact, got one of his first breaks as a performer, singing a rendition of The Dells’ classic “Stay in My Corner” in Atlantic City. Music historian John A. Jackson suggest that it was Pendergrass’s vocal affinity to Junior that led to Gamble and Huff’s desire to sign Harold Melvin and Blue Notes to their new label, after the duo were rebuffed in their efforts to wrest The Dells from Chess Records. Pendergrass became lead vocalist of The Blue Notes, after a short stint as their drummer that began in 1970.

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes were chitlin’ circuit staples, doing cabaret tunes when they signed with PIR in 1971. To the group’s surprise Gamble and Huff packaged them with bluesy and lush ballads, the first of which “I Miss You” was released in March of 1972. Though the track made inroads on the Soul charts of the day, if was deemed “too black” for crossover radio. “Too black? What the hell did that mean?” Pendergrass recalled in his memoir, noting that artists like Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers and the Temptations (behind Norman Whitfield’s “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”) all topped the pop charts in that era. Despite the setback, “I Miss You” with Harold Melvin’s spoken word narrative about a love lost interspersed with Pendergrass’s soulful ad-libs on the full eight-minute version of the song, was a harbinger of PIR’s signature sound.

With the follow-ups “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and “The Love I Lost,” the Blue Notes became one of PIR’s first major stars. “The Love I Lost” started out as a “Be For Real”-styled ballad, but was eventually recorded in an upbeat tempo that led many to claim it the first Disco recording (Eddie Kendricks’s “Girl You Need A Change of Mind” is a better claim). From 1972-1975, The Blue Notes found success with both ballads and dance tracks, with Pendergrass providing the majority of the leads, to the extent that by 1974, the group was known as Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes featuring Theodore Pendergrass. The group, like their label brethren The O’Jay’s, benefited from Kenneth Gamble’s interest in having strong patriarchal voices parlay his lyrics of Black pride and self-determination. Tracks like “Be For Real”—an extended musical dissertation on black social class divisions, camouflaged as an after-dinner argument between a couple—and “Wake Up Everybody” (see Alexander Weheliye’s brilliant analysis of the song’s intro in Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity) helped establish PIR as one of the artistic centers and a leading example of a developing mainstream discourse of blackness in the 1970s that was unapologetic in its nationalist sentiment and political critiques.

The Blue Notes’ “Bad Luck” (1975) is perhaps most emblematic of this moment, as Gamble, via Pendergrass’s lead offers a stinging critique of the Watergate era. Logging it at six-minutes plus, it is in the song’s closing minutes where Pendergrass literally screams the lyrics "Guess what I saw? I saw the president of the United States / The man said he wasn't gonna give it up / He did resign / But he still turned around and left all us poor folks behind / They say they got another man to take his place / But I don't think that he can satisfy the human race." As the song begins to fade, Pendergrass can be heard "The only thing that I got that I can hold on to is my God, my god, Jesus be with me and give me good luck, good luck,” tapping into the religiosity that had been largely dormant in Pendergrass’s work with The Blue Notes. One of the strongest performances by Pendergrass during his tenure with The Blue Notes, “Bad Luck” and other tracks like it unwittingly linked Pendergrass’s voice to the political aspiration espoused in Gamble’s lyrics. This connection would serve Pendergrass well, when the inevitable tensions and disputes within The Blue Notes forced him to pursue a solo career in late 1975.

Teddy is Ready

Not everyone was convinced that Teddy Pendergrass was bankable as a solo artist, given the struggle that some lead singers have had when they left the comforts of a highly established group. Diana Ross was perhaps the best known Soul singer to have made such a move at the time that Pendergrass was considering his break from the Blue Notes, and up to that point Ross’s solo career had been a mixed bag. Pendergrass suggested that Kenny Gamble was particularly adamant about keeping the group together, fearing that audiences had built a bond with the group and not necessarily Pendergrass; audience often mistook Pendergrass for Melvin, since the latter was the group leader. One person who had faith in Pendergrass was his then manager Taaz Lang, who told The Philadelphia Tribune, shortly before the release of his solo debut Teddy Pendergrass (1977), that “Teddy has the talent of Stevie wonder, and the sex appeal of a Tom Jones or Johnnie Mathis.” Even if Gamble and Huff weren’t sure how such appeal would translate to audiences, they had no doubt about who Pendergrass was as an artist. As Pendergrass recalled, “It was easy to record and believe in the songs, because they wrote them for me. It’s impossible to describe , but when I sang their songs they immediately became my songs.” (158)



Aided by Columbia/CBS Records’ “Teddy is Ready” campaign, where Pendergrass did radio station drop-ins and recorded phone messages for women fans in the various cities on his promotional tour, Teddy Pendergrass was released in the spring of 1977. The lead single “I Don’t Love You Anymore” rode the crest of the Disco wave, though Pendergrass was quick to distance himself from the trend, telling The Amsterdam News, “disco music is just a craze and I’m about longevity.” Though Gamble and Huff would continue to package Pendergrass with dance tracks like “Get Up, Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose,” and “Only You,” (which Eddie Murphy would later spoof in his standup routine) on later albums, he would largely establish himself on the strength of his sultry ballads. Tracks like “Somebody Told Me,” “The Whole Town’s Laughing at Me,” and the brooding “And If I Had,” never helped Pendergrass garner the kind of crossover success that he experienced early on in his career with The Blue Notes, but as it turns out he didn’t need a crossover audience.

In a review of a Teddy Pendergrass concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall in April of 1977, New York Times critic Robert Palmer admitted the singer’s obvious appeal and talent, but cautioned, “his on-going popularity will depend on the songs, productions and packaging the people at Philadelphia International come up with.” Solely thinking about Pendergrass’s music, Palmer—as astute a critic as there was in the late 1970s—was incapable of reading what Pendergrass’s cultural appeal was. Pendergrass’s quick ascent to becoming the most recognizable male Soul singer of the 1970s, went against prevailing logics. The Disco craze damaged the careers of many a Soul singer in the late 1970s, including established acts like Isaac Hayes and Bobby Womack, who both tried unsuccessfully to get in on the developing scene (it took years for both to recover), yet Pendergrass managed to raise the bar in this environment. Pendergrass succeeded in part because of an emerging black consumer base, that PIR itself helped to cultivate. With crossover historically deemed as the most likely route to success in the recording industry, PIR bucked the trend and tapped into the increasing buying power of a post-Civil Right era black middle class that was just beginning to flex its economic might—an audience less interested in watered-down cross-over blackness, but something more “authentic” (owing in part to the obvious anxieties produced by their new found class status). In the late 1970s, Teddy Pendergrass was that voice of authenticity and the proof was in the sales; Pendergrass first five studio albums all went platinum or multi-platinum—the first black male artist to achieve the feat—selling primarily to black audiences and garnering little if any airplay on mainstream pop stations

Perhaps more powerfully, Pendergrass represented an idealized black masculinity in the late 1970s. Though his work with The Blue Notes had political connotations, Pendergrass’s popularity as a solo artist lie in his performance of a masculinity that was virile and potent and tailor-made for a cultural discourse that had moved beyond the struggles for Civil Rights and fixated on establishing acceptable images of black masculinity within an integrated society. Though such images existed via the form of mythical cinematic figures like Superfly (Ron O’Neal) and Shaft (Richard Roundtree), Pendergrass made such performances real and accessible, in an era partially defined by cartoonish performances of black masculinity in popular culture, like Antonio Fargas’s “Huggy Bear” and Jimmie Walker’s “J.J. Evans.” What made Pendergrass’s performance of black masculinity palpable was, in part, the physical limits of his vocal instrument. Never technically strong as a singer—he never possessed the vocal dexterity of his peers Marvin Gaye or Al Green—there was an earnestness in Pendergrass’s baritone that helped soften a hypermasculinity that was off the charts. Still in his late twenties when he became an icon, Pendergrass’s full beard and sonorous voice evoked a man twice his age.

Pendergrass was also of a generation of black male performers, who were the first, who could publically express a distinct sexual identity, with examples ranging from the aforementioned Richard Roundtree, to Marvin Gaye and even Sylvester. With the sexual revolution in full swing, sex became one of Pendergrass’s calling cards. As such Pendergrass’s rise coincides with communal anxieties produced in response to Al Green’s rejection of the very secular sexuality that helped establish the popularity of the male soul singer, dating back to Sam Cooke’s emergence in the 1950s. If Al Green was no longer invested in the hyper-sexualized black masculinity that he and an aging Marvin Gaye (who later saw Pendergrass as a rival) helped cultivate in the 1970s, Pendergrass was a suitable and unequivocally masculine (by the standards of the era) replacement. Indeed Pendergrass was clearly cognizant of the stakes, rebuffing Amsterdam News reporter Marie Moore in a 1977 interview when she insinuated that Pendergrass had “something against women” in response to his suggestion that he didn’t want women to “get next to him.” (“Now you are implying I’m a faggot because I said that. I said that because I’m selective.”).

Though Pendergrass was often ambivalent about his sex-symbol status, telling Moore in a 1978 interview that “it’s something that sort of happened. I don’t deal with that crazy shit, I’m not like that…I guess it was women themselves that invented that image of me,” his record company understood this dynamic as they went forward with Pendergrass’s career, beginning with “Close the Door,” the lead single from Pendergrass’s second release Life is a Song Worth Singing (1978). When asked by The Amsterdam News to describe “Close the Door,” Pendergrass simply replied “panty wetter,” an apt description for many of the ballads on Life is a Song Worth Singing (the title track, a remake of Thom Bell produced Johnny Mathis recording from 1973) and his follow-up Teddy (1979) including “It Don’t Hurt Now,” “Come On And Go With Me,” and “Turn Out the Lights.”

With the release of the multiplatinum Teddy (1979) and Live Coast to Coast (1979) and Pendergrass’ well publicized “women only” concerts, where attendees were given chocolate teddy-bear shaped lollipops (“so that she’ll have something to lick” as quoted in The Amsterdam News), Pendergrass’s musical image was quickly degenerating into the type caricature befitting the 1970s—the type of caricature of black male singers that befell figures like Barry White and Isaac Hayes (creating the context, for example, for South Park’s “Chef” or White’s appearances on Ally McBeal). Pendergrass seized upon the opportunity presented by the deterioration of Gamble and Huff’s working relationship to work with new producers (Dexter Wansel and Cynthia Biggs) and writers, and to begin writing some of his own songs. As John A. Jackson writes in A House On Fire: the Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul (2004), “The production assignments for the album called TP hinted at significant internal problems at Philadelphia International.”(233) To his credit Pendergrass’s albums, TP (1980) and It’s Time for Love (1981) find the singer at the peak of his artistic powers.

“Can’t We Try,” the lead single from TP was penned by former Motown staffer Ron Miller (see Diana Ross’s “Touch Me in the Morning”) and Pendergrass handled the production himself. One of the singer’s most exquisite performances, the song’s popularity was boosted by its inclusion on the soundtrack for the film Roadie (1980), which starred Meatloaf. TP also featured Pendergrass’s first collaborations with the songwriting and production team of Womack and Womack (Curtis and Linda Womack) on the track “Love T.K.O.” and Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson (“Is It Still Good To You”). Additionally TP features Pendergrass’s pairing with touring partner Stephanie Mills on a cover of Peobo Bryson’s “Feel the Fire.” Mills recorded the track on her breakthrough album Whatcha Gonna Do with My Lovin’ (1979) and according to Pendergrass, “Stephanie and I were rehearsing for a show when I heard her sing ‘Feel the Fire’…Singing the song to myself as I listened to her belt it out during her soundcheck, I couldn’t help wondering how we would sound performing it as a duet.” (198) The song resonated with audiences—“our duets were so hot that, as with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, folks who didn’t know us assumed our passion was more than an act,” Pendergrass confided—and the duo recorded “Two Hearts” year later.

If TP gave indication of Pendergrass pursuing nuance in his recordings, It’s Time for Love (1981) was confirmation of that fact. The introspective lead single, “I Can’t Live Without Your Love” and follow-up “You’re My Latest, Greatest Inspiration” (with Womack and Womack on board) gives the strongest indication of the direction that Pendergrass wanted to pursue going forward. Pendergrass admits in his memoir that “with my fifth studio album…the Teddy Bear was doing more purrin’ than roarin’.” (211) Critics also noted the shift, as Stephen Holden observed in The New York Times: ““It was an open question as to whether Mr. Pendergrass could smooth out the roughest edges and develop a ballad style that was anywhere as potent as his ferocious shouting style….the strongest cuts on last year’s TP were all ballads that showed Mr. Pendergrass developing long narrative laments with unprecedented subtlety and emotional conviction.”

Pendergrass supported It’s Time for Love with a tour of England, with Mills, and was primed for the kind of crossover success that had eluded him during his solo career, when a winding road outside of Philadelphia placed his life, his career and his embodiment of an imagined black masculinity in jeopardy.

This Gift of Life

According to Teddy Pendergrass, it was on his birthday, March 26th 1982, that he first began to grasp the gravity of what had happened, more than a week earlier: “the eight days between the accident and my birthday passed a dark, painful blur…I had no idea where I was, who was in the room with me, what time of day it was, or sometimes even who I was.” (215). Officially, Pendergrass was driving his 1981 Rolls Royce, late in the evening of March 18, 1982 with a companion Tenika Watson, when he lost control of his car. Pendergrass and Watson were trapped in the car for more than forty-five minutes, with Pendergrass sustaining spinal chord injuries that would leave him paralyzed from below the waist and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. As Pendergrass reflects in Truly Blessed, “In one single stroke, my body had been changed forever in ways that I could not even imagine, much less bear to think about. In my mind, though, I was still the same man I was when I started the drive back to Philadelphia that spring night.” (218)

If Pendergrass could assert that he had faith that he was the same man, as he looked beyond his accident, the same could not necessarily be said about communal faith in the meanings behind that body. If Pendergrass’s hyper-masculine and sexually potent body previously served as a salve for the anxieties produced in the midst of Disco’s decidedly queering of popular music, Pendergrass’s broken body became the site for a new set of anxieties about black masculinity. The source of that angst was the revelation that Pendergrass’s companion that night, Tenika Watson, was transsexual. Well before there was remotely a politically-correct way to address transsexual and transgendered people in the public realm (as if that’s the case even now), Watson was immediately positioned as some sort of freak. As Watson told The Philadelphia Tribune two months after the accident—which she escaped with minor injuries—“I can’t get over how people treat you, how they turn everything around…what really made me upset was the fact that the papers made me seem as though I was some kind of animal or demon and that I was not a God fearing person.”

Tellingly, Pendergrass’s accident marks a shift in black masculine performances within R&B, best exemplified in the increasing popularity of Luther Vandross (who would later produce “You’re My Choice Tonight (Choose Me)” for Pendergrass’s first post-accident recording session), Prince, Rick James, El DeBarge and Michael Jackson who all trafficked in androgynous and asexual performances of masculinity that were the antithesis of Pendergrass’s version of the Black Macho. Additionally, the period saw the emergence of a generation of rank-and-file falsetto R&B acts like Lillo Thomas, Richard “Dimples” Field, O’Bryan, a young Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Paul Lawrence and Ready For the World. These shifts were in motion before Pendergrass’s accident, but his accident put a fine point on the matter. In the two-plus decades since Pendergrass’s accident, R&B has featured few singers who have been successful singing in Pendergrass’s lower register, save the late Gerald Levert, who sang in a register higher than Pendergrass.

With Pendergrass in need of money for mounting medical expenses and PIR struggling in the aftermath of a recession and facing the prospect that their most important asset was literally shelved, Pendergrass’s manager Shep Gordon, located tapes of unreleased recordings that formed the basis for This One’s For You (1982) and Heaven Only Knows (1983). Though John A. Jackson suggest in A House on Fire, that the two albums contained “material originally deemed too inferior to release,” some tracks give a clear indication of how Pendergrass was imagining the trajectory of his career. The eerily titled “This Gift of Life,” the lead single from This One’s For You, had been previously released as the B-side to “Can’t We Try.” The title track to the album was a cover of the Barry Manilow hit, highlighting Pendergrass’s desire to interpret some of the pop standards of the time—a desire first articulated with his cover of Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” during his 1979 concert tour. Pendergrass’s a capella performance at the end of “This One’s for You” gives the song a depth that Manilow could have never imagined. Heaven Only Knows even includes Pendergrass venturing into Country music, with the track “Crazy About Your Love.” The song seems an odd choice for Pendergrass, but it was likely recorded with Pendergrass keeping an eye on the fortunes of country music star Kenny Rogers (another noted baritone from the era), who was crossing over to the mainstream and Black audiences with Lionel Ritchie penned and produced tracks like “Lady” and “Through the Years”—tracks the helped Ritchie establish a mainstream presence when he went solo in 1982.

After a period of rehabilitation, Pendergrass was ready to return to the studio in 1984. With PIR no longer viable, Pendergrass signed with Elektra and released Love Language. Pendergrass’s voice was noticeably “lighter” and much of the production lacked the layers of lushness that was PIR’s signature, even in the years after the departure of its core musicians. The notable exception was Vandross’s production on “You’re My Choice Tonight (Choose Me),” a song that was later featured in the film Choose Me (1985). Love Language was also notable for the pairing of Pendergrass with a twenty-year old unknown named Whitney Houston. Pendergrass even managed to make a music video for the lead single “In My Time.”

Pendergrass returned a year later with Workin’ It Back, which featured Womack and Womack’s “Lonely Color Blue.” It was during the summer of 1985 that Pendergrass made his symbolic return to the public, performing live for the first time as part of the Live Aid Concerts. The concerts were the product of Rock artist Bob Geldof’s effort to raise money for famine relief, with performances broadcast from London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia JFK Stadium. Pendergrass appeared alongside his long-time friends Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, performing a rendition of their classic song “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hands).” As Pendergrass recalls, “with Nick and Val on either side of me, I began to weep.”



Pendergrass never looked back. The strength of his voice had largely returned when Joy was released in 1988. Pendergrass eventually earned his first Grammy Award, after three previous nominations, for his 1992 cover of the early Bee Gees classic “How Do You Mend a Broken Heart,” which was also covered in the early 1970s by Al Green (arguably, the definitive version). Pendergrass’s last recording was the live From Teddy with Love (2002). In the aftermath of his accident Pendergrass became an advocate for people with spinal cord injuries, citing the inspiration that Johnny Wilder, Jr. the late lead singer of Heatwave, provided after Wilder became a quadriplegic in the aftermath of an auto accident in 1979. It was under the auspicious of Pendergrass’s non-profit organization The Teddy Pendergrass Alliance that many gathered in Philadelphia in 2007 to fete him and his 25 years of living since the accident. In an interview with The Philadelphia Tribune Pendergrass admitted “This is not a cartoon. This is not a movie. This is real life. I want to know, after something happens like this, how do you have a productive life in the meantime? That’s what this is about. I’m asking people to help me help others like me.”

Teddy Pendergrass may have once sang “Life Is a Song Worth Singing,” but in the last 28 years of his life, he proved that his was a life worth living.

***

Mark Anthony Neal is author of several books on music and popular culture, including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy, which will be published in 2011 by New York University Press and The TNI-Mixtape which will be available on-line for free download later this year. Neal is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University.

The House that Willie Mitchell Built

The House—and Man—that Willie Mitchell Built
by Mark Anthony Neal

There are many reasons to note the passing of Memphis-based trumpeter and producer Willie Mitchell (1928-2010), including his solid career as a Rhythm & Blues performer in the 1960s and his ownership of Royal Studios in Memphis. Mitchell, though, will forever be remembered as the architect of the sound of Hi Records. In its heyday in the mid-1970s, Hi-Records was home to musicians like Ann Peebles (“I Can’t Stand the Rain”), Syl Johnson, O.V. Wright, Otis Clay and most famously Al Green.

Willie Mitchell was born in Ashland, Mississippi in 1928 and began playing music during high school . In his formative years in the 1950s, when he settled in Memphis after a stint in the Armed Services, Mitchell played with or behind a who’s who of Memphis based musicians including Al Jackson, Jr. (future drummer for the groundbreaking Booker T. and the MGs) and young jazz giants like Phineas Newborn, Jr. and Charles Lloyd. By the end of the 1950s, Mitchell was a well respected session musician, though he harbored a desire to be a leader in his own right.

In the early 1960s, Mitchell released a few instrumental singles on the fledgling Hi Records, but also began to produce artists for the label. At the time Mitchell, whose musical sensibilities were geared to Jazz, began, like most of the nation, to become enthralled with the burgeoning Soul sound that was exploding in places like Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and of course Memphis, where the Stax label was a singular force.

In 1966 Don Robey, head of Duke and Peacock Records asked Mitchell to produce O.V. Wright. The session produced Wright’s great “Eight Men, Four Women” (”Eight men and four women, lord, they found me guilty of loving you”). The success of that single led Robey to ask Mitchell to work with Bobby Blue Bland, who recorded portions of A Touch of the Blues (1967) at Royal Recording Studios. The Touch of the Blues sessions produced one of Bland’s great ballads, “Chains of Love.” According to Peter Guralnick in his classic Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream for Freedom (1986), this period is when Mitchell’s “vision of R&B really began to crystallize.” As Mitchell told Guralnick, “I wanted to cut a record that would sell black and white, combine the two, you know, in a pleasant kind of music. With O.V. Wright and Bobby Bland, their style was too strong in one direction, it was too rough. I wanted to add more class to it” (302). It would a be a few years before Mitchell would find that singer in the form of Al Green.

Mitchell was touring in support his highest charting single, “Soul Serenade," a cover of the King Curtis track, when he first heard Al Green in Midland, TX. Green was the opening act and still living off his one hit single at the time “Back Up Train.” As Mitchell recalls upon hearing Green that first time, “This guy has got the style, he’s got the sound to really be something.” Mitchell brought Green into the fold and though it was an initial struggle to get the singer on board with the style that Mitchell envisioned, they eventually hit with Green’s idiosyncratic cover of the Temptation’s “I Can’t” Get Next to You” (1970). With the follow-up “Tired of Being Alone” and then the classic “Let’s Stay Together” the Hi Soul sound was fully developed.

With singer’s like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and James Brown serving as a template for a particular kind of hard-driving Soul, Mitchell was looking for in Green, something that was softer and more nuanced, reflecting his desire to wed certain jazz sensibilities with the aesthetics of Soul music. The Hi rhythm section, with musicians like Hodges Brothers (Teenie, Charles and Leroy), Howard Grimes and Al Jackson gave Mitchell the Soul bottom that he needed. As Green recalls in his memoir Take Me to The River (2000), “‘Slow it down’ [Mitchell] would tell me during those sessions around the piano, leaning uphill on that crazy tilted floor at the Royal Studios. ‘Soften it up. Feel what you’re singing’…Let [the rhythm section] be gritty. You be smooth. Remember Al, It’s silky on top. Rough on the bottom” (239).

As Guralnick explains the collaboration, “Willie Mitchell and Al Green came up with an old idea phrased in a new way, the last eccentric refinement of Sam Cooke’s lyrical, gospel-edged style as filtered through the fractured vocal approach of Otis Redding and the peculiarly fragmented vision of Al Green himself” (304). Mitchell and Green rode their collaboration to significant heights, as Green established himself as one of the most important singers of his generation, notching more than a dozen top-ten pop singles in the 1970s. Though Green’s well detailed turning away from secular music ended their collaboration until the mid 1980s, Mitchell pressed on at Hi Records with acts like Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson, and Otis Clay holding up the blood-stained banner for Southern Soul as national taste gravitated towards the more polished corporate sound of the Mighty Three (Thom Bell, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff) , the Funk of the Midwest and Disco.

Green always trusted Mitchell’s instincts, so it was natural that he sought out his former mentor in 1985 to bring some of the old Hi sound to his Gospel enterprise with He is the Light. When Green decided to return fully to the secular world in 2003 with I Can’t Stop and Everything is OK (2005), he did so with Mitchell behind the boards. Even when Lay it Down, Green’s most recent—and most successful recording in three decades—was released in 2008, producers Ahmir ?uestlove Thompson and James Poyser essentially created a soundscape that paid tribute to Mitchell and Green’s many collaborations. For Green, as Michael Awkward suggest in Soul Covers: Rhythm and Blues Remakes and the Struggle for Artistic Integrity, “from the beginning of his association with Mitchell, Green’s sense of his own artistic maturation was tied, not only to perfecting a specific sort of vocal delivery, but also to his becoming a song writer.”

Mitchell did, what few contemporary producers continue to do; he took a novice singer and produced a fully-developed artist—arguably one of the greatest of the late 20th Century. Mitchell deserves every accolade for what was a significant career in his own right, but in the end it will be those sides he cut with Al Green that will make him immortal.

A Silky Soul Tribute

Silky Soul Tribute
by Mark Anthony Neal

In a room filled with mixed-company, mention the group Frankie Beverly and Maze and watch hundreds of years of racial segregation reproduce itself right before your eyes. In a world where many whites are still coming to terms with the insular realities of black life and culture, Frankie Beverly and Maze may be one of the biggest secrets of all. Virtually unknown to white audiences, save the summer barbeque at a black colleagues house, Frankie Beverly is the closest thing that Black America has to the Grateful Dead. But whereas “Dead Heads”—the traveling band of fans who follow the group around the country—were seeming only looking for music to accompany their purple haze, most of Frankie Beverly’s fans are simply looking for good times and community. It is in that spirit that several contemporary R&B and Gospel stars, including Mary J. Blige, Joe and J. Moss, came together to pay tribute to Black America’s favorite band.

Frankie Beverly and Maze was founded in 1969, when Philadelphia native Beverly, formed a jazz-rock band known as Frankie Beverly’s Raw Soul. Though the band had some minor regional success in the City of Brotherly Love—a city that was teeming with Soul music at the time—Beverly and members of the band packed up in 1972 and moved across the country to the Bay area. Perhaps hoping to take advantage of the popularity of Psychedelic Soul in the area, as best represented by the high visibility of Sly and the Family Stone, the band struggled for few years until Marvin Gaye called on the band to back him when he was touring in the Bay Area.

Gaye was impressed by the musicians and their lead singer and brought a copy of their demo tape to his friend Larkin Arnold, who was then an executive at Capital Records, also label home to Natalie Cole. Changing their name to Frankie Beverly and Maze, the band released their self-titled debut in 1977. The band would pay tribute to Gaye’s guiding hand a decade later with their classic “Silky Soul Singer” which serves as inspiration for the title of Silky Soul Music: An All-Star Tribute to Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly.

The new tribute recording comes on the heels of Interpretations: Celebrating the Music of Earth Wind Fire (2007), but whereas Earth, Wind, and Fire had many crossover hits, Frankie Beverly and Maze’s success has been comparatively limited by most commercial standards. What helped the band build such a huge following though was their amazing and energetic live shows, where Beverley is dressed in his requisite all-white attire, embodying the sex symbol status of his mentor, even today, a few years past his 60th birthday. Though the group hasn’t released any new material since 1993, have been without a recording contract for more than a decade, and have never had a single break into the top-20 pop charts—to put in perspective “Laffy Taffy” once topped the charts—Frankie Beverly and Maze continue to sell out arenas, often headlining festivals like the Essence Music Festival where they are a yearly highlight.

Ultimately what keeps people coming back to Frankie Beverly and Maze is the timeless quality of the music. While no one will ever mistake their music for the funky intricacies of artists such as Prince or even the aforementioned Earth, Wind and Fire, there was always an accessible and infectious quality about the music of Frankie Beverly and Maze. The group’s music is rooted in a belief of family and the beloved community as expressed on tracks like “We Are One,” here covered by Raheem DeVaughn or “I Wanna Thank you” the decidedly obscure b-side of the 1980 release “Southern Girl” which is given a fine treatment by The Clark Sisters, Kiki Sheard and J. Moss on the tribute recording.

Of course Frankie Beverly and Maze has recorded a veritable mix tape of barbeque and graduation party classics beginning with classics such as “Joy and Pain” and “Back in Stride.” Though Avant’s version of “Joy in Pain” will not make anybody to forget the original or Rob Base’s remake for that matter, he captures the general spirit of the song. More successful is Mint Condition’s version of “Back in Stride.” The two bands toured together in the summer of 2007 and no doubt the younger band learned a few things about longevity.

Two of the bands most well known songs, “Can’t Get Over You” (the band’s most successful single) and “Before I Let Go” are reserved for two of the best known acts on the collection. Joe is in fine form on “Can’t Get Over You,” the project’s first single. Though Mary J. Blige’s version of “Before I Let Go” never quite gets you free like the original, her hip-hop Soul swagger captures why the song might be the only R&B song recorded in the last thirty years that resonates across generations. Some of the other highlights include Ledisi’s take on “Happy Feelings” and Kevon Edmonds’ return on the 1983 single “Never Let You Down.” In the end Silky Soul Music: An All-Star Tribute to Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly stands as a solid celebration of the only band, perhaps, capable of getting all of Black America on its feet at the same time.

Channeling Womack

Channeling Womack
by Mark Anthony Neal

Facts of Life: The Soul of Bobby Womack, finds R&B crooner Calvin Richardson at a career crossroads. A decade into his recording career, Richardson has not quite lived up to the glimpses of promise exhibited on his stellar, if uneven debut Country Boy (1999) and it’s follow-up, 2:35 PM which was released on Disney’s Hollywood Label in 2003. On the surface, covering the songs of Bobby Womack, a newly minted member of the Rock & Roll Hall Fame, might not seem like the best strategy for a 30-something R&B singer trying to find his footing in the world Auto-tune.

Mentored by brothers and former Jodeci lead singers KC and Jo-Jo Hailey early in his career, Richardson and his decidedly down-home sound never quite found an audience—he was dropped from Universal after the release of Country Boy, as was the case with 2:35 PM. Richardson’s best chance at a mainstream following occurred with his cameo on Angie Stone’s “More Than a Woman” which appeared on Stone’s Mahogany Soul (2001). When the song was released as a single and subsequently nominated for a Grammy Award, Richardson’s vocals were inexplicably replaced by Joe’s, the by-product of the break-up of a long rumored romance between Richardson and Stone. When Richardson released his third project When Love Calls on the independent Shanachie label last year, he was worse than an afterthought; he had been forgotten.

Like Johnny Gill more than two decades ago Calvin Richardson’s sound consistently undermines his appeal to the age demographic that record labels think he should be pitched to. Simply put, Richardson sounds like an old man—more Bobby “Blue” Bland and Sam Cooke, than Akon or Usher. And yet despite the same limitations, Richardson’s contemporary Anthony Hamilton has managed to survive and even thrive because his label has allowed him to write songs that highlight his strengths as an artist. I suspect that Richardson was drawn to Womack, because he has lost some faith in his own songwriting skills—one of the clear strengths of his first two releases, despite their meager sales figures.

Within the history of Soul music, Womack is one of the more compelling figures. Mentored by the greatest of all Soul singers Sam Cooke, Womack’s longevity, like that of Ronald Isley, is remarkable. Womack has sustained himself , in part, because of his skills as a songwriter; Womack’s music has been recorded by artists as diverse as the Rolling Stones, George Benson, the J. Geils Bands, KC Hailey, the New Birth (whose version of “I Can Understand It" might trump Womack’s) and most recently Leela James, who offers a brilliant cover of Womack’s “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” on her latest Let’s Do It Again. Perhaps more important than Womack’s songwriting, is the fact that he is simply a fabulous storyteller—peerless within the tradition of Soul music save the example of Bill Withers. Not quite there yet himself, Facts of Life allows Richardson to find a muse—a musical mentor if you will—that gives his voice meaning.

Richardson is no stranger to Womack’s music covering his “I Wish You Didn’t Trust Me So Much” on Country Boy. The title track, “Fact of Life/He’ll Be There When the Sun Goes” is a somewhat obscure track from Womack that gets to the essence of heartbreak and disappointment (and shame) that fuels his best music. The song presents a first-person narrative of Womack’s experiences on the road, away from his family and seeking company from a female fan. In the story Womack is offended when the woman mistakes his desire for companionship, for an attempt to simply have sex with her. Given the mythology surrounding performers and so-called “groupies”, “Fact of Life/He’ll Be There When the Sun is Gone” offers a unique point of view that highlights the vulnerability experienced by many popular performers. It the kind of vulnerability that is often missing in contemporary R&B, particularly among male vocalists—Maxwell notwithstanding—but that Richardson own vocal prowess consistently evokes. Richardson wears Womack’s vulnerabilities well and manages to make them his own.

On most of the cuts, Facts of Life’s production and arrangements hold on to the integrity of Womack’s original recordings. As such, Richardson’s choices are fairly conservative—tracks like “That’s the Way I Feel About Cha,” “Across 110th Street,” “Harry Hippie” and “I Can Understand It” would be on any introductory collection of Womack’s music. Richardson finds more interesting material from Womack’s often neglected later period (at least by mainstream Rock critics), recording a version Womack and Patti Labelle’s sweet balled “Love Has Finally Come at Last” with Ann Nesby and “American Dream,” Womack’s homage to Martin Luther King, Jr. Both tracks appeared on Womack’s Poet II (1984) recording. Still Richardson manages to stay away from what is perhaps Womack’s most well known tune “If You Think You’re Lonely Now” and that's probably a good thing.

Facts of Life: The Soul of Bobby Womack, breaks no new ground, but it is a deserving tribute to one of the most distinctive Soul voices of the last 50 years—and it just might make a forgotten R&B crooner from this generation, matter again.

Black Music Month '09: Remembering Ronnie Dyson

BLACK MUSIC MONTH 2009

Why Can’t I Touch You? : Remembering Ronnie Dyson
by Mark Anthony Neal

A few years ago, I sat in the lobby of a Greensboro, NC hotel, talking with R&B singer Rahsaan Patterson about his artistic influences. Patterson cited Eddie Kendricks, Frankie Lymon and Russell Thompkins, Jr. as obvious exemplars of the falsetto style that he represents so exquisitely today. But when the name of Ronnie Dyson is mentioned, Patterson is almost beside himself: “Dyson had a beautiful [expletive] voice. Beautiful,” exclaimed Patterson, adding that the late Pop-Soul singer was “one of the first voices that I remember hearing that possessed this quality in a male voice that was different from even some of the falsetto guys that I mentioned before.” Patterson was not alone. As Earl Calloway, longtime arts critic at the Chicago Defender wrote of the singer, “Dyson has the voice and talent to become the supreme super star of the ‘70s in the manner of Nat “King” Cole, Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra or even greater.” Yet some 35 years after Calloway's prediction, Ronnie Dyson, who died in 1990, has remained, at best, an afterthought and at worst, totally forgotten. What happened?

Born in Washington, DC in 1950 and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Dyson spent his early years singing in the choir at the Washington Temple in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of the borough. Dyson’s big break came in the spring of 1968 when he was cast, at age 17, in the Broadway production of the groundbreaking “rock musical” Hair. Dyson’s star-turn in the musical occurred at the opening with his rendition of “Aquarius”—a song purportedly written for him. That audiences are most familiar with The Fifth Dimension’s medley version of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” which topped the pop charts for six weeks in 1969 and earned the group two Grammy Awards in 1970 as “Record of the Year” and “Best Vocal Performance by a Group” (both mainstream pop categories), speaks volumes about the difficulties that Dyson faced very early in his professional career.

Dyson had the misfortune, perhaps, to emerge in the late 1960s recording in the same era as signature Soul Men such as Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, and Donny Hathaway. Unlike many of his peers, Dyson’s musical sensibilities were more geared to the theater and the cabaret as than the Chitlin’ Circuit of the day. Dyson was above all, a song stylist who was most comfortable singing tunes in the vein of aforementioned Fifth Dimension, Nancy Wilson, Dionne Warwick, and Johnny Mathis. At the dawning of the 1970s and with Stax and Motown defining the sounds of Blackness for mainstream audiences, pitching the youthful Dyson to mainstream audiences with show tunes and 1960s pop standards was going to be a difficult sell. As such, Dyson spent the better part of the first decade of his career trying to find his voice. Nevertheless, it was a show tune, “(If You Let Me Make Love To You) Why Can’t I Touch You?,” from the musical Salvation! that gave Dyson his first taste of pop stardom in 1970, peaking at #9 on both the Pop and Soul charts.

Dyson followed up “Why Can’t I Touch You,” with a cover of Chuck Jackson’s (another progenitor of “white bread Soul”) “I Don’t Wanna Cry,” which made a tepid entry into the pop charts. Dyson then began to work, on what would be the most ambitious project on his career. In 1973, Dyson released One Man Band, working with the production and songwriting duo of Thom Bell and Linda Creed. Though Bell had earlier success with his work with The Delfonics and The Stylistics, his skills were in particular demand in 1973 after he had resurrected the careers of Motown cast-offs The Spinners and turned the group into the epitome of 1970s era Corporate Soul. Clearly Dyson’s record company, Columbia, was hoping find such success, not just for Dyson, but also Johnny Mathis who recorded I’m Coming Home with Bell and Creed in 1973. Dyson expressed excitement at the time telling the Atlanta Daily World, “I feel very good about the new product I recorded with Thom Bell. He’s probably the hottest producer in the world today…[and] his writing partner Linda Creed also helped a great deal,” adding that “they’re both dynamic people.”

Bell’s work with Dyson and Mathis was arguably some of the finest of his career and One Man Band is one of the best testaments to Dyson’s own talents, but neither recording found an audience. To add insult to injury, the second single from One Man Band, “Just Don’t Wanna Be Lonely” barely charted for Dyson, though the same song would become a major crossover hit for The Main Ingredient six months later. Granted, The Main Ingredient, then led by Cuba Gooding, Sr. was a known pop entity—their 1972 single Everybody Plays the Fool peaked at #2 on the pop charts—and their version of the song was arguably a better product, but there’s still little explanation as to why the song didn’t help Dyson find more success.

It would be nearly three years before Dyson would capture audience attention again and in the interim there were minor shifts in the black musical landscape as the so-called Philly Sound, culled by The Mighty Three outfit of Bell, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff (using the same Philadelphia based musicians) and disco began to catch the attention of the major labels. Part of that shift also included the emergence of the duo of Chuck Jackson (not the legendary singer) and Marvin Yancy, who initially met in Chicago at one of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s (Chuck’s brother) Operation Breadbasket gatherings. After recording some deep Soul with The Independents, Jackson and Yancy found mainstream success with Natalie Cole who became a major pop star courtesy of Jackson and Yancy compositions like “This Will Be,” “Mr. Melody” and “I’ve Got Love on My Mind.” Indeed, Dyson’s work with the duo allowed him not only an re-introduction to Black audiences, but a another shot at crossover success. As Dyson noted at the time, “those times I fell from the public eye made it hard to get the acceptance back…but meeting Chuck and Marvin was like a whole new life.”



The initial product of Dyson’s work with Jackson and Yancy was The More You Do It (1976). The lead single and title track became Dyson’s highest charting single ever on the R&B Charts and in the parlance of record company executives, easily the “blackest” recording in Dyson’s oeuvre. Dyson followed up The More You Do It with Love in All Flavors (1977) and both recordings are testament to Jackson and Yancy providing, perhaps, the best musical environment for Dyson’s talents. Highlights from the recordings include a stellar and jaw-dropping rendition of Major Harris’s “Love Won’t Let Me Wait” (the likely template for Luther Vandross’s later version of the song) and Jackson and Yancy originals “Ain’t Nothing Wrong” and “No Way” which are on-par with the best of any of the Soul and R&B ballads produced at the time.

For the next decade of his career, Dyson essentially followed trends, mainly to the dance floor, though his subsequent recordings If the Shoe Fits (1979), Phase 2 (1982) and Brand New Day (1983) all contained glimpses of Dyson’s vocal genius, particularly on the track “Say You Will” from Phase 2. “All Over Your Face” was Dyson’s last foray onto the charts, finding some favor among audiences congregating in spaces like The Paradise Garage and The Loft. After a brief appearance on the soundtrack on Spike Lee’s first theatrical release She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Dyson disappeared from the public eye. After years of chain-smoking and other excesses, Dyson died at the age of 40 in November of 1990.

There are lots of reasons to speculate as to why someone with Dyson’s talents never achieved more lasting success; indeed the recording industry is littered with exceptional talents who never find the right material or audience. As a singer who craved mainstream success, at a historical moment when mainstream record companies were more concerned with selling “black” music to black audiences and much less interested in selling black artists to white audiences, Dyson had a difficult path to follow. His were difficulties that were shared by figures like Johnny Mathis (after the 1960s), Clint Holmes (“Playground in My Mind’), Al Wilson (“Show and Tell”) and a host of other black male singers from the era. When acts like Lionel Ritchie, Michael Jackson, and to a lesser extent, Jeffrey Osborne began to generate a mainstream appeal in the early 1980s and transcend the black music divisions at the major labels, they did so after cultivating a strong following among black audiences—audiences that in some instances they never recovered after they crossed-over. In the case of Dyson, he was a black pop singer that really had to cultivate a black following, and he never quite found that balance.

But Ronnie Dyson, if we are to be honest, was also challenged by his quite different investment in the performance of black masculinity at the time. This is part of what Rahsaan Patterson alludes to in his remembrance of Dyson as possessing “this quality in a male voice that was different.” Dyson, like Jimmy Scott before him and Rahsaan Paterson after him, possessed a vocal instrument that deconstructed and collapsed our notions of the hyper-sexualized black male soul singers of his era like Teddy Pendergrass and Barry White and Wilson Pickett from an earlier generation. In an arena in which the range of black male emotions continued to be restricted by corporate desires for only certain mode of black male expression, Ronnie Dyson was simply too emotive. In light of his own singing style Patterson admits “The fact that I can consciously sing a song in falsetto, knowing that people are gonna ask, 'Is that a girl?' doesn't bother me at all… It's scares them, because it's raw and it's real and it's human and it has no contrived phony bullshit on top of it. It's raw emotion." As Ernest Hardy brilliantly argues in his two volume collection Blood Beats "naked emotionalism renders almost any male in American culture suspect, but especially if he's of the Negro persuasion, and most especially if the emotion is not exaggeratedly countered with macho or thug signifiers." In simple terms, Ronnie Dyson was too suspect for much of his career.

In the end, Ronnie Dyson left an incredible body of work—much of it unavailable commercially at this time—and offers an example of a black male singer who was comfortable in his body—or rather, comfortable in his voice. Rahsaan Patterson perhaps says it best when he says that Ronnie Dyson “had this really independent spirit and freedom to just sing and express who he was.”

***

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1999) and Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (2003). He is currently completing Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities for NYU Press.

Remembering Linda Jones

from WUNC's The State of Things

Aretha's Favorite Artist
Thursday February 19, 2009

In 1967, singer Linda Jones was making a name for herself with a soulful tune called "Hypnotized." She died just five years later at the age of 27, but not before she made great impressions on other female singers of the day, including Aretha Franklin. Inspired by her story, Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke professor of African-American studies, wrote an essay on Linda Jones called "Bodies In Pain" from the collection The Best African-American Essays, 2009. He joins Frank Stasio in the studio to talk about the greatest singer you've never heard of.

Listen HERE

R. Kelly’s Closet: Shame, Desire and the Confessions of a (Post-Modern) Soul Man

R. Kelly’s Closet:
Shame, Desire and the Confessions of a (Post-Modern) Soul Man

A Public Lecture by Mark Anthony Neal

Professor of Black Popular CultureDepartment of African and African-American Studies
Duke University

Tuesday, October 7^th, 2008
The Annenberg School for Communication
University of Pennsylvania
3620 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Room 109

Reception: 5:15 – 6:15pm

Lecture: 6:15 – 7:30pm