Howard Tate.

So he still has that voice? Did he sing in falsetto?

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dre900/e959/e959822wo3n.jpg

Anyway, yeah I pulled out the Get It While You Can Sessions cd last night while I was cooking chili, and goddamn if it didn't sound great. I hadn't listened to it in a while - silly me. It struck me how urban blues/B.B. King/Bobby Bland the material was; for some reason I had remembered him as being in more of a boogaloo/early-funk vein (probably because of "Look At Granny Run Run"). I had completely forgotten he did the original "Stop", man what a great song that is.

Ragavoy's production is cool aside from the echo on the vocals (what're you gonna do), but I'd love to have heard what he'd have sounded like set against the Atlantic/Stax style of the time. I've never heard his later 70's lp for Atlantic, but now I really need to.

Also, is "Look At Granny Run Run" presaging Viagra?! What is this "pill" referred to:

"Look at Granny run-run, and Grandpa runnin' close behind
Look at Granny run-run, there's something on Grandaddy's mind
went to the doctor, got a brand new pill
the doctor said 'son, you ain't over the hill'
Now he can't sit still, great-gosh almighty
look at Granny go-go, faster than a Greyhound Bus
look at granny go-go, now grandpa's getting serious"!!

Howard Tate -- Howard Tate's Reaction . . . CD . . . Around September 23, 2003
A pretty great album, and one of the few rare LPs cut by 60s soul legend Howard Tate! The record was issued on Lloyd Price's Turntable imprint -- and it was recorded by Price in Jamaica, with a style that takes on occasional rocksteady influences, but which also stays pretty darn close to the deep soulful vibe of Tate's Verve recordings! The production is dark and spooky, and Tate's voice has this excellent heartbreaking hard soul quality. Titles include "My Soul's Got A Hole In It", "Come Into My Heart", "Hold Me Tight", "These Are", "Little Volcano", "Question", and "Plenty of Love".

Here's hoping the Get It While You Can sessions are reissued soon.

Just got the '72 s/t on Atlantic and it's killer. I think the strongest, most affecting song may be the only one he wrote himself: the closing "The Bitter End". sneaky title for a song that's so poignant and uplifting .. his performance totally convincing and scary good.

I got his new one the other day--interesting tale to tell about that one, e-mail me if you want more info, it's kinda delicate so I'd rather do it that way. Suffice to say, I got a kinda inside line on it and want really really badly to write about it, which I'm working on right now...

Just got the Hip-O-Select reissue of Get It While You Can. Very happy.

I need to get that.

I ended up writing about Howard Tate for a No Depression piece. I met him at a performance he did in Nashville and interviewed him a couple times over the phone. This was all around the release of A Portrait of Howard. Suffice to say that his life and career represent a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks the music business is fair, equitable or caring about its talents--and also for anyone who thinks it's enough to have talent to become a justly rewarded performer. In other words, Tate got screwed, and might've done it at least partly to himself. His career also supports my theory that soul music has always been a producer's medium. I think Tate's a magnificent singer who got derailed along the way; and now, he is working with a producer in Nashville who might or might not impose his thing on Tate--his songs and his production style, which let's hope are not going to be wildly inappropriate.

Thanks for the update, Edd - greatly appreciated.

Looking at the number on my copy, looks like there about a thousand left, Steve.

So you'd better...

...get it while you can.

Most tracks arranged by Artie Butler. Who is all over that Brill Building book by Ken Emerson which I will take the opportunity to recommend on this thread as well, especially to Joe and Edd.

Ha, I tried to google that Edd Hurt article in No Depression and hit a page about a Bobby Purify album produced by Dan Penn.

No Depression's back pages aren't on line. yeah, that Bobby Purify record is a good one--in fact that piece on him was the very first thing I ever wrote for the Nashville Scene...at the show I saw Tate do (record-store instore w/ Steve Weisberg on piano [producer of Portrait]), Howard sang great, indulged in a long rap about drugs and Jesus and stuff, which I found fascinatingly crazy but which the audience probably saw as, er, uhhmm...but that's soul music, what would it be without craziness? But, he told some stories afterwards about touring the South in the wake of "Ain't Nobody Home," which was his first big hit (and, recently done rather well on Sterling Harrison's South of the Snooty Fox, in case any of the other soul fanatix 'round here haven't heard that fine record [whose high point is Jim Ford and Bobby Womack's "Surprise, Surprise"]).

and, not recently re Sterling Harrison, who died a few years back but whose record just got released last year. Good singer with more than a trace of Johnnie Taylor. (btw, last night I heard this Johnnie Taylor track from '82, with strings, atypical for JT, that's on a Northern Soul comp--and, wondering if any of Tate's stuff ever shows up as Northern Soul [a maddeningly inclusive "genre," am I right about that?]).

Yes. And I better move on getting the Tate cd. Edd, I must confess to reading and skimming your well written Howard Tate article in NO D at Borders and then not buying the issue. So I was just trying to find it online as well and see it's not available.

July 16 2011 NY Times

Ragavoy wrote and produced Tate:

Jerry Ragovoy, Writer of Soulful Ballads, Dies at 80

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Jerry Ragovoy, who wrote or collaborated on some of the most soulful ballads of the 1960s, including the Rolling Stones hit “Time Is on My Side” and the Janis Joplin signatures “Piece of My Heart,” “Cry Baby” and “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 80.