lush post-1970 soul music from motown / tamala / atlantic is the best shit ever

Yeah i don't know much about Barry White so I'm not sure how he fits! I guess what I was trying to go for with this thread was to find more stuff from this period of Soul/R&B where you had these labels that were generally doing these <4:00 pop songs start stretching out and really pushing into this new creative territory. It seemed to happen around the same time as some of the bigger name talents like Smokey and the Miracles and the Temptations were breaking up and trying something new - https://youtu.be/f1fRlHSA3bw. I curious about what was fueling this. Was it internal? I mean Marvin and Stevie are clearly trailblazing in a lot of ways. Also I think I'm more interested in the period right before the Quiet Storm era when they were still going for POP and less vibing out, but I love that stuff immensely too and it's hard to draw a line there. Anyway I've been obsessed with this recently and want to know more.

gonna drive around and blast this all summer with my windows down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bctA5oPNj4Y

Didn't realize that it's DC's own the Young Senators backing Kendricks on "Keep on Truckin'"

Heez, would this qualify as what you're talking about, for example?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kochGJdqvcg&list=RDkochGJdqvcg

speaking of DC's own, picked this record up at the friendly CDepot just this morning:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sk-Mn0C_bxE

oh god yeah! never heard this. only heard later period barry white maybe.

yeah that record is prob my favorite barry white

he had a 40-piece orchestra called the love unlimited orchestra. yes that definitely qualifies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev2QTgehWkM

dc, i found a record store in district heights, md called memory lane records and it's basically heaven for this type of shit

Heez you might also like early Hall & Oates (h/t sund4r for this vid):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si03zdG6Twk

There goes all my money. Thanks!

whoa who is 21st century? that's great

Actually the album version might be closer to the sound you want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-msVGwWIh8U

nice i've always wondered about hall & oates but never dug in.

I got 3 eddie kendricks albums, blue lights in the basement, the isaac hayes movement, pure smokey, and fullfillingness' first finale in like 5 minutes at this record store and had to make myself leave

Also you may find some overlap with the stuff recommended in this thread that I started a while back:
Recommend me some simmering soul tracks like "Thin Line Between Love and Hate" and "Walk on By"

Somehow I manage to do damage even at cdepot, which is kind of a mess. Mostly jazz today, though.

That 21st Century is great.

nice. i was having a hard time finding threads on this. this gladys knight and the pips live album is really worth checking out

https://open.spotify.com/track/78jtejv9Uic44cE2ndNBhb

How did we get so deep into this thread without someone mentioning The O'Jays?

And the chi-lites!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIfQpzzTfio

here's another good one from 21st Century

yeah o'jays are one i've been meaning to check out. for some reason i associate them with the psychedelic side of this stuff

chi-lites a letter to myself album sounds perfect!

jesus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkPdOxUBGwU

^great track

I got to think that getting to 16 track recording is a big part of this type sound. You have a similar thread of strings being used on classic blues artists like BB King and Bobby Blue Bland along with the 'countrypolitan' productions of Billy Sherrill for Charlie Rich and George Jones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olKfUfB3GEI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJe8Q6912NM

best listening to that album all week. lots of gwen guthrie songs. every motown and philly soul trick in the book.

Yeah, speaking of Philly soul, I thought of it while listening to the new Bonnie Raitt---she still sometimes seems like she's assimilated elements Ganble-Huff's approach over the years---and thinking I still need to check out albums by MFSB, who were pretty much the house band on a lot of G-H productions right? Also thinking about psychedelic Soul, what a 70s Creem reviewer dubbed the Norman Whitfield Experience. A lot of hits and deep album excursions on this 2-CD set:
http://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Soul-CD-The-Temptations/dp/B00009V7U8

Dunno why it won't let me post the righteous cover, but here's the tracklist etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Soul-2-CD-Temptations/dp/B00009V7U8/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1459710067&sr=1-1&keywords=psychedelic+soul

yeah the sister sledge is nice. phily soul is probably what first hooked me on the stuff. i remember the arrangement to "ready or not" flooring me when i first heard it.

and yes charlie rich and a lot of the pre-outlaw stuff hit's the same vein for me. in fact, wasn't it this stuff that inspired the stripped down outlaw period?

this is my fave rich/sherrill jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Azui-cs9DQ

wow, Kendricks is great (I also love how it rhymes with Hendrix)

I could listen to the beat on this one for days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg48iWKKC0s

That album is probably the best of his, but they're all so good.

Heez blowing my mind with this thread. CHI-LITES

http://youtu.be/EqMk57Scxu0

want to play bass like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_iOr49DJ8U

and this one's a beauty. the drums!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBZ9jgvcCqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X23t2MCZsHE

mandrill doing some good shit around this time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIoQDDoVElg

i swear someone sampled this but i'm not finding anything. maybe the beginning just sounds like a portishead song or something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK8F51cIFn8

This is a good retrospective of Kendricks's solo career: http://soultrain.com/2015/12/22/soul-retrospective-eddie-kendricks/

Sounds like co-producers Leonard Caston and Frank Wilson played a big part on his better early material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5BJmtHCyc8

wow, that's beautiful

This track by Buddy Miles is one I recently came across. It's lush.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCwBhbhbok8

Dunno if these fit entirely (too gospel? too disco?) but they are 1970s and they are lush and I love them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKEdTikamG4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp1HdiRGA7Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcz_TG-qY_8

niiiiiiice. i totally support disco era lushness here. it gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite songs ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ_0sof4kLE

That Caston & Majors track is stunning.

The Caston & Majors album is great all the way through. Think it got reissued a couple of years ago.

Bookmarkers: have you noticed that we have a poll going on about all this stuff and much more?

LET'S GET IT ON! It's the ~~~ 1970s SOUL ALBUMS POLL ~~~ NOMINATIONS AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD

Voting thread:

~~~ ILM 1970s SOUL/FUNK/DISCO ALBUMS POLL ~~~

Papa was a POLLING STONE: It's the 1970s SOUL/FUNK/DISCO ~~~ TRACKS POLL

So much funk, so little time

plus soul and disco, with nominations due by March 27

Props to this thread for making me aware of the brilliance of Eddie Kendricks.

This is beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcdAuxmohv8

It's a shame most of these links are dead. I heard an Eddie Hendricks tune I liked a few months ago and was hoping for some help navigating his very large catalog. All I know is "Keep on Truckin'"

people...hold on is a classic, i'd start there. if you haven't heard 'girl, you need a change of mind' before, i'm jealous.

Thanks!

if you haven't heard 'girl, you need a change of mind' before, i'm jealous.

This is what I posted before the time jump. I'm also very fond of Date With the Rain and Goin Up in Smoke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAjNgDt-10s

Let the beat build

Smokey duet with Claudette Robinson - Wine, Women and Song

https://youtu.be/_iRiGqYeoQ4

The Main Ingredient - "Euphrates"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXB1Ys7367M

Stylistics haven't been mentioned, do they count? I don't think I'd heard the long version of "People Make the World Go Round" before, and I'm now listening to it for the third time today.

these are some of the finest lyrics to a quiet storm sex jam i've ever heard

smokey robinson "travelin through"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCFs1WSN5ro

pleased to see love for mid-late 70s smokey here. those albums are so underrated.

really like smokey's family robinson. the first cut finds smokey deep in the funk. flute solo!

his first proper solo album still hangs high as my favorite though. not least of all for this amazing medley.

also: inventor of quiet storm whose forgotten deep cuts blow away most of the competition. hell yes.

I've started cross-reading Tim Lawrence's massive Love Will Save The Day---A History of New York dance Culture: 1970-1979 and Vince Aletti's The Disco Files 1973-1978: New York's underground, week by week: so far, a lot of what yall are talking about here is just now being or about to be recorded, but right from the beginning, the writers and their DJ and dancing colleagues/interviewees are zooming in on album tracks re length, flow and sonic depth, with 12" singles still several years away. And yeah, Philadelphia International, Eddie Kendricks, Barry White are def seized on right away.
From the Aretha Franklin in the 1970s thread:
Let Me In Your Life was really striking, w variety unified by dynamics, detail, atmosphere: title track by Bill Withers, incl. the suddenly quiet, dead-on bridge before the resurge---will she scare him away? "Every Natural Thing" by Eddie Hinton, couple originals, with "If You Don't Think" especially appealing, rhythmically suave and flirtatious (confident!) xpost "Til You Come Back To Me" by Stevie (and others), country soul "With Pen In Hand," rocking 60s Aretha "Eight Days On The Road," rippling, hovering "A Song For You"(prob. overrecorded, but her version is the keeper)---smoking the 70s with Cornell Dupree, Pretty Purdie, Deodato, Donnie Hathaway, Joe Farrell, many others,

― dow, Sunday, 20 May 2018 19:53 (one year ago) link

xgau's take, from Rock Records of the 70s or whatever:

Aretha Franklin: Let Me in Your Life [Atlantic, 1974]
Welcome Tom and Jerry (Dowd and Wexler) back--this isn't great Aretha, but it rocks steady even on the ballads. If she doesn't get away with "The Masquerade Is Over," she does renew "A Song for You" with a fresh electric piano part and a good helping of indiscreet interpretation. Guided indiscretion, that's the key--her great gift is her voice, but her genius is her bad taste. B+ ****Fuck the grade, but he's not entirely wrong, like she does justify "What A Fool Believes" and a number of other kitschy choices over the years.

― dow, Sunday, 20 May 2018 19:58 (one year ago) link

Young, Gifted & Black is an astonishing album. Daydreaming! All The Kings Horses!

― Lou Grant, the Iranian cinema of late '70s TV (stevie), Sunday, 20 May 2018 19:59 (one year ago) link

oooh I haven't heard "If You Don't Think" in ages

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 20 May 2018 20:14 (one year ago) link

Young, Gifted & Black, Spirit In The Dark and Sparkle are the only 70s albums I have of hers. They're all fantastic. I need to check out some of the others.

― kitchen person, Sunday, 20 May 2018 20:21 (one year ago) link

Let Me In Your Life has the same appeal to me as Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes when Teddy Pendergrass was in there: the rowdy voice driving through/grooving with the lush layers

Austin, those are some of my favorite Smokey tracks

dow, have you seen James Hamilton's Disco Page? It's maintained by ILXor Mike-t-Diva, and it's the perfect companion to the books you're reading when you get to 1975.

This is lush. One of the lost Hot Wax releases that are currently getting re-released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3pRF-sdaEc

minnie ripperton w/ rotary connection -- silent night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wjBbn5BjE0