Soul music site

If you're into soul and R&B, here's a site you might like, if you havent' been there before:

Soul-Patrol.com

Give Me Some Money

Relative to my earlier post regarding pop music in TV spots, I just noticed that Amex is using Spinal Tap's "Give Me Some Money."
What a delicious ironic twist; an inside joke that very few will get, and can't possibly be worth what the client is paying for it. But must have been fun for the creative director.
Made me grin just thinking about the song.

Raul Midón

Been listening to Raul Midón, a blind black singer/songwriter/guitarist who plays with a Latin percussive style and sings like Donny Hathaway with a little Stevie Wonder thrown in. Has two available CDs and one early hard-to-finder. Smooth voice and nice delivery; good songs. Has a duet remake with a lady (whose name I can't spell or pronounce) of "Where Is The Love." Even my 16-year-old, Jack, likes this guy because of the way he strums with a flailing motion of the tips of his fingers (long nails) just like Jack does (ala Lindsey Buckingham).

Also, thanks to Mr. Nicholson, I've been listening to my Mitch Ryder "Best of" CD in the car and really enjoying some of the songs I was less familiar with, like the one he mentioned, "I'd Rather Go To Jail." Nice.

Waiting for my copy of the new Puppini Sisters second CD to show up in the mail. Has a version of "Walk Like An Egyptian" done swing. Hmmm. I'll report when it arrives.

Ry Cooder

I've recently digitized six Ry Cooder albums, produced from the early 70's to the mid 80's.

In chronological order:

Into the Purple Valley

Boomer's Story

Paradise and Lunch

Chicken Skin Music

Bop 'til you Drop

Slide Area

Ry's a prolific guy; had a quite few more albums between and since then, including, but not limited to Jazz, Borderline, and Buena Vista Social Club.

Ry didn't write a lot, but really pulled some gems from the American musical canon, from obscure acoustic blues guys, Bachrach, Johnny Cash, Elvis, depression-era folk stuff, early funk, name a genre, he's probably mined it.

Our friend Mr. Mohney also gave me a CD of Talking Timbuktu with Ali Farka Toure, something completely different from all of the above.

That early era saw him working with Jim Dickenson a lot,, who produced and played on his first couple of albums. Again the LA session guys who were doing stuff for the Warner-Reprise stable get in on a lot of the earlier stuff. Keltner, Milt Holland, Red Callender, RussTitelman, a lot of those folks. John Hiatt sings background vox on Slide Area, a collaboration that later found great traction in Hiatt's own stuff and Little Village.

Obviously, I like the guy, and I'm happy to say this is some of the stuff that holds up. I like his slide playing--always tasteful, clean and innovative. But I think the thing that brings me back to his material is he had some monster grooves. Check out Down in Hollywood or Look at Granny Run from Bop 'til you Drop. Or go back to Paradise and Lunch and listen to Fool for a Cigarette or Married Man's a Fool. Just about any of the albums above are going to have at least one or two tunes that will pull all but the most hidebound white guys out of their seats. But, of course, I'm a fool for a groove. You could probably put Mein Kampf to a good groove and I'd be right there telling you it was okay. What did that song say? Who gives a s*&t, it was right in the pocket.

Randy Newman--Good Old Boys

Here's another one I pulled from the album stack.

Jesus! I'd forgotten what a fine piece of work this is. On so many levels.

I enjoyed listening to it in the '70s. But I also enjoyed listening to Grand Funk. I guess you have to go back and actually hear it all again to re-validate what's enduring and what's not (unless, of course, you had fully-hatched, impeccable taste in y0ur twenties--and I have pulled out a few albums that I gently put back in the stack without any more strain to my hard drive).

In the first place, that crew that was doing sessions in LA in the mid-70's deserves quite a bit of credit in its own right.

This one's got Jim Keltner, Andy Newkirk and Milt Holland on drums. Ry Cooder on guitar (more on him later--I've just converted 5 of his CDs from '71-'82). Willie Weeks, Russ Titelman and Red Callendar on bass. Bernie Leadon, Glenn Frey and Don Henley on bckg vox. When you go back and look at all the pop music all these guys created, it's quite impressive.

When you look at all of the tunes that endured from this album, it's also equally impressive: Rednecks, Marie, Naked Man, Back on My Feet Again, Guilty, Rollin', Back on My Feet Again...I don't think there's a piker in the lot.

Of course, Lousiana 1927 became the theme song for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. (BTW, I might recommend as a good read, Rising Tide: The Great Misssissippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John Barry. Really interesting if you have any interest at all in the Delta. A good library check-out. This album would be good soundtrack to the book if you want to be put in a cultural mood).

If you have this one hanging around in your collection and haven't listened to it in a few years, do yourself a favor and revisit it. The man can turn a phrase to music.

From the vault

The new turntable has me digging into a lot of different stuff. Pulled out the Wild Tchoupitoulas, (1976) which is, of course, the Nevilles and the Meters along with Mardi Gras Indians, the Wild Tchoupitoulas. Also, its successor, Fiyo on the Bayou, by the Neville Brothers,(1981) arguably the best album they've ever done. Both have versions of New Orleans mainstay "Brother John" ,with the Nevilles adding "Iko Iko" (same song, basically), to their version. Both have "Hey Pocky Way." (BTW, Gio, if you all play that again, get BJ to add about 20 BPMs to what it's fallen into). The Neville's album has a couple of Aaron Neville ballads--I gotta believe in 1981, they were still thinking they could maybe get another "Tell it Like It Is."

Also "CDing" a lot of my old Allman Bros. vinyl. (more on that later).

Tonight's project is All Mitch Ryder Hits. The Detroit Wheels were a great band. Jim McCarty on guitar. A bunch of white guys who played like they were on speed, but still kept it in the pocket. High energy meets Motown groove. It was really innovative for its time. I can still listen to this stuff. I still have the same album my buddy Dave Morton bought in the eighth grade. It was brought out at parties--always a dancing hit--from time to time in the 70's and 80's. This one's going to be a test to see just how much noise Audacity can remove.

Speaking of the '60's, I've also been catching Tom Petty's "Buried Treasure" show on XM. They've wised up and started playing his shows, along with Bob Dylan's and Marty Stuart's (both of which I also really like) all day long on one of their channels. Petty's show replays all day on Thursday. He pulls out some cool stuff: chestnuts you haven't heard in a while, and some other eclectic stuff. Those three shows are worth the price of XM for me.

Footnote---Interesting Vintage Guitar interview with Jim McCarty.

New life for vinyl

I just bought off eBay (one of the best transactions I've ever had--the guy delivered FedEx free) an Ion USB turntable. It's a lightweight little thing--not like the Duals and Luxman I had in earlier days. But it's pretty cool.
It came with Audacity , letting you record vinyl into your computer and convert to wav or mp3, and remove clicks and pops.
Test project was Derek and the Dominoes, which was the wife's favorite college album.
I looked into the closet with all the vinyl I have and I'm starting to get kind of stoked. I know originally we thought maybe this blog would promote us getting into some new listening, but I have some really good old stuff on vinyl. Currently converting Ry Cooder's Into the Purple Valley, Dusty in Memphis, Light as a Feather by Chick Corea, and Church Street Blues by Tony Rice.
Now, how to explain about all the dusty shit that's falling out of all of those double album covers I haven't opened since the '70's.
So, Gio, I'll try to send you something interesting out of the collection to repay you for Lester Roadhog Moran. Which I've enjoyed immensely (the stuff holds up really well--but maybe that's because I spent every Saturday night in 1972 playing at the Shirley VFW club.)