lotsa stuff from rolling country thread, earlier this year:
Listening to a pile of Southern soul discovered via CD-baby channels. The album by a jowly guy named Jimmy Taylor leans toward the blues end of things (with lady backup vocals not far from the ones on last year's Bobby Bare album); the EP by the lady named Candis Palmer ("All Men Ain't Dawgs,* since some are electric boogie dawgs apparently) leans toward the disco end; the single by Harold, "Chill Step Party," is steppin' music. He mentions Milwaukee, Chitown, Harlem, and Atlanta in it. More fun than R. Kelly, as far as I'm concerned, but mainly all this stuff obviously has a connection to county music too. (and though candis palmer is happy to have found a man who is not a dawg, jimmy taylor insists that when women say they're looking for a good man, they're lying. really, he says, they're looking for a fool.) (apparently the kinda fool who will let her spend all his money.) (he also directly quotes zz hill's "cheating in the next room in one of his songs.) (he's from alabama; I don't know where candis or harold are from. they're not actually on cdbaby.com per se, but i was sent their cds in the same package that the jimmy taylor CD came in.) jimmy taylor on his album is totally paranoid, and in just about every song he's either cheating or being cheated on or both, and as i said, he seems fully convinced that his woman is going to put him in the poor house (where, in real life, for all i know, he may already be.) in "you're busted" he hires a private detective to follow her around, and gets a photo of her cheating. "love catcher" has a pretty good sax solo. and though some songs sound more blues to me than soul, a couple (like "all i want is you") still veer more toward disco than anybody in country music has, i think, even shannon brown on her new album.
candis palmer, as i said, gets even more disco, but her disco is maybe 1975 where taylor's is 1973. (i think i wrote on the '05 thread that shannon brown's disco sounded 1979, but maybe that was hyperbole; i'm not sure. these two soul singers FEEL more disco.) but even at her most disco, in a song called "don't let someone else come and jingle my bell" or something, palmer gets backed by HARD blues guitar riffs, so the music really rocks. if i had to compare her vocal style to anybody, it'd be the staple singers in "i'll take you there."
-- xhuxk (xedd...), January 28th, 2006
glamorous bertha payne, *bedroom offer* EP: southern country soul millie jackson style (i.e., as many parts talked as sung, many of 'em bawdy), from memphis, via cdbaby.com. starts with a good riddance song where glamorous bertha (who on the cd cover is a big girl in her red dress with a red glass of wine) tells you "i don't need your face in my face" so "go away like a bad day" and "you might as well pack your rags." then the title track, which is not about her bedroom offer to him but the other way around, which offer she says isn't enough and the two backup singers (favorite artists: denise lasalle, mary j blige) chorus "bang! bang!" but by song's end glamorous bertha is saying "i need a man who will love me all night long. are you qualified? if not, get off the pot!" then one where she promises to shake it and break it (and maybe hang it on the wall) and she tells "all you womens with big elephant ears" that with her man every day is pay day. then supposedly "part two" of the same song, which means same slinky rhythm track as part one but now with sexy breathy pillow talk all over the top where bertha tells you to lift up her skirt. then finally another good riddance song, this one a tough and funky blues, where he leaves her with a sink full of dishes in a "one-room [some word i can't make out]", hence the best dishwashing song since ray parker jr's "bad boy" if not anita ward's "ring my bell." also she brings him food in bed, which means this might also be a breakfast breakup song in the tradition of the 5th dimension's "one less bell to answer" and karyn white's "superwoman." five songs total, but two around 4:00, three around 4:25, which means glamorous bertha takes her time and surely deserves a lover with a slow hand.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), February 23rd, 2006.
the legendary moody scott, *simply moody: we gotta bust outta the ghetto*: more cdbaby southern soul, from louisiana. cover has moody, a dapper old guy seemingly in his 60s, in front of a rundown rural shack; interesting, since "ghettos" are usually assumed to be urban, right? first track "bustin out of the ghetto" is a sort of james brown rip, five minutes long, where moody as i recall reels off some towns in the south train conducter style (am i imagining this? i THINK he did that, anyway) and ends singing "america america god grant his grace on thee." then he covers tyrone davis's great "can i change my mind," my favorite track. and from there the more soul oriented stuff ("last two dollars," the misspelled cheated-on song "one man's hppiness" which for some reason makes me think of billy stewart sitting in the park even though billy had a high voice and moody really doesn't, "something you got baby") is more likeable, to me, than the more blatantly blues stuff, but then again i always think that. both the soul and blues are generic, i suppose; with the soul i don't mind. best song title: "annie mae cafe." and the closer "son of a southern man" starts with moody telling his guitarist "tattoo" suarez ("my man from argentina") about his grandpa drinking corn liquor and singing "downhome blues". so yeah, country for sure.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), March 11th, 2006.
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He does get urban and/or urbane once, though -- a nice slinky silk-shirt early '80s style quiet storm soul croon called "The Best of Me." (Not sure if any songs other than the Tyrone Davis are covers. "Last Two Dollars" and "Annie Mae Cafe" are writing-credited to one George Jackson; wasn't there a soul singer of that name once? But if so, I never heard him, though.)
-- xhuxk (xedd...), March 11th, 2006.
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"something you got baby" wouldn't be chris kenner's "something you got" would it? since moody's from louisiana...and yeah, george jackson (I'm assuming it's the same guy--I don't know "annie mae cafe") wrote z.z. hill's "down home blues" and a lot of stuff for candi staton, clarence carter, pickett, james carr; a memphis guy who later worked for malaco and wrote for all them: johnnie taylor, latimore, shirley brown, bobby bland...
enjoying jace everett, so far. it's quite a collection of somewhat off-the-wall guitar effects, interesting guitar chromatics (as in the first song), definitely a '70s pop thing happening; and in my mode of concurrent listening (lately it's been dusty springfield/the latest numero group comp of obscure '70s female singers/the new, beautiful nara leão bossa "nara '67"; and jace/radney foster/jessi colter, partly because they all have cool first names, I guess) I notice that both radney and jace hark back to stiff records, which I find interesting.
xps
-- edd s hurt (eddshur...), March 11th, 2006.
George Jackson was an occasional great old soul singer on Goldwax then Hi, and kind of a house writer at both. I'll try to remember tomorrow (just in from a party, and why I'm doing this rather than going straight to bet I've no idea) to YSI his absolutely magnificent Aretha, Sing One For Me. He was among the greatest writers in southern soul - he wrote for Ann Peebles, O.V. Wright, Otis Clay, James Carr, Clarence Carter, Etta James, Denise LaSalle, Wilson Pickett, Candi Staton and even wrote the Osmonds' first hit!
-- Martin Skidmore (lonewolf.cu...), March 12th, 2006.
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if I'm not mistaken, Alvin Robinson recorded for AFO (All for One), a New Orleans label of the '60s that Harold Battiste started; house band included Toussaint and Red Tyler. And he had a hit with Kenner's "Something You Got" (which was later covered by lots of folks, including Bobby Womack, who did a reggae remake on his "Safety Zone" LP in the mid-'70s. Alvin Robinson also recorded for Leiber and Stoller at Red Bird in New York, and did a real classic called "Down Home Girl."
I gotta get that Moody Scott record.
-- edd s hurt (eddshur...), March 12th, 2006.
That YSI:
George Jackson - Aretha, Sing One For Me
It'd be in my top 100 favourite singles ever, I think.
-- Martin Skidmore (lonewolf.cu...), March 12th, 2006.
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>I gotta get that Moody Scott record.<
I have an extra copy, Edd! I'll send it to you.
-- xhuxk (xedd...), March 12th, 2006.
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great! thanks Chuck!
-- edd s hurt (eddshur...), March 12th, 2006.
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>I don't know anything much about Moody Scott, just a handful of tracks, <
So Martin, did Moody have regional hits or something? I never heard of him before I saw his cdbaby page, and haven't really taken time to research him. I'm surprised you even heard of him!
-- xhuxk (xedd...), March 12th, 2006.
I don't know, Chuck, but bear in mind that I've been a huge fan of soul for a long time, and do know quite a lot about it (though not as much as Eddie, I'm pretty sure). The odd track does get on compilations of one sort or another, which suggests that Moody isn't incredibly obscure - but I don't even know exactly where he worked or anything, so he isn't famous either, clearly.
-- Martin Skidmore (lonewolf.cu...), March 12th, 2006.
also really liking irma thomas's *after the rain* on rounder, the "rain" obviously being katrina, though i kind of hate the mooshy shelter-from-storm piano ballad the album ends with though i do hope it provides solace to new orleans. what i love so far is "flowers" (soul about flowers on roadsides after car crashes, with a sound that i swear reminds me of "uncle tom's cabin" by warrant), "make me a pallet on the floor" (cheating with a painter, wow), "till i can't take it anymore" (country music in a soul voice, about how "you work your thing so well/I dream of heaven and live here in hell"), "these honey dos" (vampy bawdy boogie woogie where the honey dos are at first temptations but wind up also being about manners like please and thank you), and "stone survivor" (which is just plain funky).
-- xhuxk (xedd...), May 5th, 2006.
And Irma also does an extremely gorgeous version of "I Count the Tears" (the "na-na-na-na-na-na late at night" song) by the Drifters..
-- xhxuk (xedd...), May 5th, 2006.
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And she also does "Another Man Done Gone," a trad blues tune I swear I've heard hundreds of times by some huge classic rock group (Creem? Zep? the Allmans? somebody...), though no classic rock groups seem to be listed on AMG as doing it, so maybe whoever did it (which will probably hit me as really obvious once I found out) did it under a different title or something, or maybe with different words? (Also, I'm thinking now that maybe "These Honey Dos" and "Stone Survivor" and the palette one aren't quite at the level of the Warrant one and the country one and the Drifters one, but they're close.) -- xhuxk (xedd...), May 5th, 2006.
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also liking (speaking of southern soul) *candy licker: the sex & soul of marvin sease* (jive/legacy) not all of which concerns muff diving, and at least "hoochie mama" of which has zapp-style robot-funk freakazoids reciting the names of several of the united states.
-- xhuxk (fakemai...), June 12th, 2006.
*Most of the Marvin Sease album is gloppy ballads which aren't all that good, but some of it is kinda fun. (The first track is awful though.)
-- Haikunym (zinogu...), June 13th, 2006.
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Marvin Sease CD is way less gloppy and ballady than Matt suggests (or maybe I just have a higher glop tolerance than he does; see also the Alan Bros!); most of it gets a good '70s smooth-jazzy funk disco groove going. And lots of the songs have pre-old-school "raps" (i.e., talking as singing, sometimes like a preacher's sermon) in them, which are really fun. And sure, the opening track "Do You Want a Licker?" is awful if you want it to be, but it's just too silly to complain about; ditto the other bookend, a five-minute live "Candy Licker 2005." Also, the ballads are pretty good, for the most part. "Don't Forget to Tell On You" sounds kind of like "Tell it Like It Is." But my favorite cuts are probably "I'm Mr Jody," the backdoor man song that starts with an ominous phone call, and the 12-step fix-your-life number "I Gotta Clean Up." (Has anybody ever written a good essay about Jody? He's the guy back on the block who's having sex to your girl while you're in the Army, and I get the idea he shows up in lots of Southern soul songs: Doesn't Johnnie Taylor have one about him, too*? As do, I would assume, other folks.)
* - yep, I just checked Whitburn: "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone," went to number 28 in 1971. (Hey, sounds like a good EMP proposal!)
-- xhuxk (xhux...), June 14th, 2006.
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having sex WITH (or) making love TO.
and courtesy of HIS new truck.
).
-- xhuxk (fakemai...), June 14th, 2006.
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Johnnie Taylor was the king of Jody songs. "Standing In for Jody" and "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone" are just two; I mean every song he does is kind of about Jody-ism in some way or another. I am a nut for Johnnie Taylor (I like Johnny Taylor a lot, too, and Ted Taylor, the Louisiana soul singer, is also excellent--so I think an EMP paper on the Sooper Taylors would be good!!), and Taylor is also the king of fucking-around songs. There are these nifty new Stax reissues that includes stuff by Frederick Knight, the Dramatics, etc., and if you ask me one of the very best Stax albums-as-albums is Johnnie's "Who's Making Love," which is the typical collection of singles but which really has variety and which totally hangs together. "Hold On This Time" has a great Cropper riff, cubist guitar, and "Woman Across the River" is one of the best Stax blues ever.
I only know the older, cunnilingual and happy to oblige, ma'am, Marvin Sease stuff--he's really good. "Marvin Sease" on London from late '80s is a good 'un. One of those artists who've been working the I-55 corridor from Memphis to the Louisiana border, forever.
-- edd s hurt (eddshur...), June 14th, 2006.
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Well, a Taylors EMP report would probably be really interesting, but I was thinking (theoretically, not volunteering!) more in terms of one about Jody himself. Who was he? And how far back do Jody songs go? Did Johnnie Taylor invent them? Or does Jody show up in blue songs during World War II or something? Was he a real person, like maybe Stagger Lee? (Was Shine who swam the Titanic a real person? I forget.) Seems like real *Mystery Train* mythology stuff, and I'm surprised nobody has tackled the research (unless they have and I just didn't notice, which is very possible. I haven't even done a google search.) (Also, do I only associate Jody with making cuckolds of military guys stationed overseas because I was *in* the military, and he was always showing up in cadences used while marching and/or running? Or is that his main deal? And otherwise, to what extent if any does he exist outside of the culture of Southern blacks--who, when I was in, seemed to make up a sizable portion of the Army?)
-- xhuxk (fakemai...), June 14th, 2006.
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This could really be hella interesting, absolutely. Is "Trapped in the Closet" the Ulysses of Jody songs?
-- Haikunym (zinogu...), June 14th, 2006.
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Here's some info I found while googling Jody songs:
http://soulfuldetroit.com/archives/10238/9918.html?1079610632
-- Sang Freud (jstrell...), June 14th, 2006.
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x-post. Taylor didn't invent the Jody song. Jody / Jodie / Joe the Grinder are pretty common figures in blues tunes.There's Louis Armstrong's "Jodie Man" which makes the "GI Joe de man" connection explicit. I wouldn't be surprised if that military connection is at the origin, though it's obviously gone through lots of transformations.
-- Roy Kasten (rfkaste...), June 14th, 2006.
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Yeah, I'd forgotten Joe The Grinder. I used to own a copy of that *Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me* prison-rap comp (on Smithsonian or Rounder or something?), and I think there might even be a Joe the Grinder rhyme on there (I *may* even have mentioned it in the pre-rap rap chapter of my second book). Anyway, this link from the link above has great stuff about Jody Army cadences; also says Johnnie Taylor himself learned about Jody while in the military:
http://p211.ezboard.com/fwordoriginsorgfrm4.showMessage?topicID=153.topic
-- xhuxk (fakemai...), June 14th, 2006.
― xhuxk (xheddy), Sunday, 19 November 2006 20:51 (seventeen years ago) link
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