Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye - Diana and Marvin

I was inspired to dig out the following LP after hearing a cover version of one of the songs on it while walking around the romantic setting of discount shop “Wilkinson” looking for green tea towels.  It reminded me what a great “lovers album” this LP is and how it’s been a long time since I listened to it.

What more appropriate way to start discussing what for me was the 20^th century’s best example of a body of music made for lovers than talking about……..

Cardboard.

My copy of this LP comes with a cover that opens in the centre of the LP cover, it has a nasty crease in it that I did when putting the LP away once, but the cover has never been in great nick all the time I’ve owned it.  A previous owner left an ominous stain to the left of Diana’s nose.

Once the card is “spread opened” we are met with a big 12” picture of Marvin and Diana sitting closely together.  A bearded Marvin has put on a few pounds from how he looked on the “What’s Going On” and “Let’s Get It On” covers (that were later to be so inspirational to David James for a few games).  Diana is leaning on Marvin’s shoulders and looking, well, like Diana Ross.

I like the fact that now and again labels would make an effort to do something different with the 12” cover format, who wouldn’t enjoy folding out “Black Moses” in all its grandeur?  But they didn’t do it very often, and often not on all the issues (mine is a German Tamla release), so it brought back some nice feelings of nostalgia when I dug out this LP from my dusty utility room and placed it on the ones and twos.

The Stylistics had crossed over successfully in the 70s with the songs of Thom Bell and Linda Creed.  My Source?  I don’t need Billboard charts or old Guinness books of hit records to inform me, I know it because I grew up hearing my dad singing their songs while decorating, you know you’ve made it when painters sing your songs, it may have been this success that influenced the choice to cover a couple of Bell/Creed songs on his LP, in fact it is a Stylistics cover that opens up “Diana and Marvin.”

The production of “You Are Everything” replaces the soft but spacey Philly sound of the Stylistics version with something altogether sexier.  The rhythm section are joined by lush strings and Marvin is just this side of embarrassing cliché in his talky opening, if he’d moved a Rizla thickness more in the direction of “sexy” I’d have had to listen with a cringe that I normally reserve for watching Alan Partridge.  As it stands, it’s a marvellous opening, and one that he follows up with the soulful yearning that he injected into so much of his work.  The boy sounds hurt, RIP MPG.

Before discussing track two, I want to get my feelings for Diana Ross out in the open.  I don’t like her.  Much.  It’s not that I hate her, and it is too easy to quote stories and rumours about being a diva from before I was born, or go digging on google for facts about special treatment by Berry Gordy.  It is not a political reason I don’t much like her, it is just that her voice has never excited me.  On this LP though she sounds like a well chosen foil to Marvin’s soulful range, a range used brilliantly on my favourite track, “Love Twins.”  After another great intro, the band settle down into a funky little groove with Marvin reaching almost Eddie Kendricks heights of falsetto before the heart warming “I love you baby, I love you too Marvin” interplay that again sits dangerously close to corny but they pull off charmingly.

It’s a great LP, that the above two tracks sum up well, a mixture of romanticism and lustful desire, but I don’t want to write too much about each individual track, it is a near perfect example of the LP as it should be, a collection of songs carefully picked and ordered with the listener in mind (what you’d expect from the Motown machine I suppose, left to his own devices Marvin may have done things differently, but that shouldn’t detract from this LP).  I would like to make a few hounarble mentions however.

“Don’t Knock My Love” is an upbeat cover of “Wicked” Pickett’s funk opus, and makes the listening experience a more dynamic one, placed where it is at track three.  “Just Say, Just Say” is a wonderfully touching breakup/come together song at the beginning of side two, by the end of that and the start of “Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)” I’m almost weeping into the keyboard!  Their version is by far the best in my opinion and has been sampled and remade in that style a few times.

Sadly worth a mention is the lack of any musician credits on the LP, the writers get credits (including one Gloria Jones, of “Tainted Love” fame and widow of Marc Bolan), producers get a mention, but the poor old “Funk Bros”, presuming it is them, remain anonymous.  I know Bob Babbit and Denis Coffey played on Wilson Pickett’s track, so they may be on here.  But who knows?

SPOILER ALERT If you want to listen to the LP in its entirety and marvel at how close and charming the two singers sound then proceed with care, or don’t read at all….

According to a Marvin Gaye biography I read, Diana and Marvin where thousands of miles apart when they recorded this LP.  When I read this I was shocked, I regarded it as the pinnacle of “duet” recordings, above Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, above Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, above any other duet I’ve ever heard.  It spoiled it a bit for me, I loved the charming little asides between the singers, so I felt cheated by the fact.  A decade later however and a  chance hearing of a dodgy remake in “Wilkos” and the fact that youtube has films of the singers singing together made me want to dig the LP out and give it another go.

I’m glad I did.

A1 You Are Everything  3:10

A2 Love Twins  3:28

A3 Don't Knock My Love  2:20

A4 You're A Special Part Of Me  3:35

A5 Pledging My Love  3:34

B1 Just Say, Just Say  4:10

B2 Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)  2:53

B3 I'm Falling In Love With You  2:42

B4 My Mistake (Was To Love You)  2:55

B5 Include Me In Your Life  3:04

Stevie Wonder - Innervisions

It is actually quite exciting sitting down and re-appraising "Innervisions" from beginning to end.  All of Stevie’s most acclaimed output was made before I was 10 years old, so I, like many others, came to the LPs late.  In my formative teenage years I was aware of the much maligned but then contemporary stuff like “I Just Called” and “Ebony and Ivory”, songs which I won’t slate here, they were of their time and the time was pretty tacky.  The saddest thing about those songs is what I call the “High Fidelity” effect, and though I’d normally argue against snobbishness generally, I still feel the need to go all evangelical on Stevie’s other work when discussing him with people who are not fans, but this turns you into a bit of a bore!


Luckily, as well as the tacky 80's stuff and courtesy of some old Motown greatest hits records and tapes belonging to my family, I was aware of Stevie’s 60s work too, but the period I knew nothing about was the period that I later found to be Stevie’s most successful in terms of creativity, the 1970s.

“Songs In The Key Of Life” was my way in, and I still have great affection for it, I then bought “Music of My Mind” and then “Innervisons”  before collecting all of Stevie's LPs.  It is "Innervisions" though that thanks to Greg Wilson’s “Living To Music” project I listened to on Sunday night.

Now let’s get right on down to the skit…..Stevie is a genius, even people who are not fans may have heard the old “Little Stevie played every instrument in the Motown studio aged 11” story, and must admit, that is pretty special for a blind kid who must have had limited educational opportunities.  He is an amazing songwriter, musician and important political figure.  But what of Innervisions?

It is a great LP, and one which demands to be listened to as a whole, sure the singles are good, but the whole LP just “makes sense”.  “Too High” is as jazzy as some of the crossover stuff that came out of Blue Note at the same time, in fact I’d dare say that it is as close to jazz in it’s changes and delivery as the tracks from those great Mizell bros LPs from Donald Byrd et al.  The harmonica solo is wonderful and the way it skips around the chord changes adds a very funky jazzy edge to the whole thing.

“Visions” continue this jazz theme and the vocal is delivered in a beautiful reflective style.  Stevie must have spent all his time thinking, writing playing.  Thinking, writing playing.  Again and again until he had knocked out all those 70s LP.  Genius?  Hard worker too.

I’m less keen on the more funky numbers like “Living For The City” (there, I said it), it is not that it isn’t great, the whole decade of Stevie is superb, it is just that I like my funk served up a little different.  Still a great song though, and rounds things up nicely before my favourite track, “Golden Lady”.  Listening to it for the first time in years gets me reaching for the player credits on the sleeve.  That bassline is 100% James Jamerson, but….. hang on….. it’s a moog isn’t it?  Damn straight it is, and Stevie is playing it.  And Fender Rhodes, and drums. And no doubt the other synth parts and goodness knows what else.  Did I mention he was a genius.  It’s a great song all the way to the key changes on the fade out.  Takes me right away.

This would normally be the point where the vinyl is flipped except for the fact that Innervisions is a cursed album for me.  I have two dodgy UK vinyl copies, one with a nasty scratch on side a, one with a jump on side b.  So I bought a CD (two for a tenner at Asda), that skips on the last two tracks having spent some time under the passenger seat of my car, so I’m listening to a CD copy up to the last two tracks, then getting on the youtube express to save dusting off the dodgy vinyl.

Back to (ahem) Side b.  I’ll take back what I said earlier about Stevie’s funky stuff.  The way that clav kicks in on “Higher Ground” is funky like grandma’s bloomers, and Stevie is playing all the instruments on here.  Not the most clever lyrics Stevie has ever produced, but the bit where he goes “I’m so darn glad he let me try it again” is a very catchy relief from the kind of call/response lyric form of the rest of the song.

The great synth work continues on “Jesus Children Of America” Stevie must have been doing as much as anyone to promote synth music, and this LP sold shedloads, bringing Avant Garde to the masses, with a little preaching and questioning thrown in, and a nod to the Beatles if I’m not mistaking.  Round about 3min 40secs the song goes into very funky shuffle before fading out and into All In Love Is Fair”, a sad and contemplative love song that shows Stevie’s songwriting maturity.  Don’t know how old he was in 1973 (I avoid googling when writing these), but he’s bloody convincing as a man who’s lived a long eventful life.  It builds like the kind of ballad you might expect someone like Barbra Streisand to have used as a big showstopper, and in some ways it signals a change of mood on this LP too.

“Paris Peru, Iraq Iran,”  I’ve listened to the start of “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” loads of times and I’m still not sure exactly what relevance it has to the rest of the song, perhaps someone can explain.  Lovely percussion work and shuffling Latin jazz piano work underpin the soulful vocals and lift the mood perfectly from the previous track ready for the LP closer, “He’s Misstra Know-It –All.”

Nixon?  Berry Gordy?  Someone better read than me can elucidate I’m sure.  And why “Misstra?”  I’ve never heared the word “Misstra” in any other context?  Perhaps that is just my limited travel experience, I doubt they call people “moosh” in Detroit like we do here in Pompey.  What I do know is that this is a great way to close an LP.  It’s an uplifting mid-tempo soul song with some classic Stevie scatting.

So there it is, “Songs In The Key Of Life” is still my personal favourite for reasons more to do with nostalgia and packaging than musical content (yeah, that’s shallow!), but this is without doubt a more rounded “package,” in equal parts challenging, reassuring and soothing.  The way that Stevie uses synths and plays so many of the other instruments himself is astounding, the writing is great, even the artwork seems to fit the mood of the LP perfectly.  Thanks Greg for organising the event, please check out the responses !! HERE !!

“Songs In The Key” same time next year perhaps?

A1 Too High                                4:37    

A2 Visions                                   5:17    

A3 Living For The City                 7:26    

A4 Golden Lady                           5:00    

B1 Higher Ground                        3:54    

B2 Jesus Children Of America       4:04    

B3 All In Love Is Fair                    3:45    

B4 Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing  4:55    

B5 He's Misstra Know It All            6:06

Living To Music: Innervisions

Please check out the links to Greg Wilson's web page and the facebook page for the "Living To Music" event.

Greg has organised a mass listening event for Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions" LP.  Some people may gather together to listen, there is a pub hosting a listening event, others will listen alone at home.  All of us are invited to join in the discussion after the event.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in with this blog and I'd encourage you to get involved.

Gregs Blog (Innervisions page).

The facebook event page

I hope you get a chance to enjoy the event and, of course, the album.

Pharoah Sanders - Karma

First, a bit of a backstory.

In January 1991 while the world was on the verge of seeing America go to war with Iraq, I was living alone in a bedsit in Herne Hill in London while (supposedly at least) studying at University.  It was very cold, very damp, and if I dare admit it, probably a bit lonely and boring - I didn't have a lot to do.  What I did have was a decent hi-fi system which the previous week I had added to with a “tuner” (that’s right kids, if you wanted radio on a proper hi-fi, you had to go and shell out for a tuner).  So there I was skipping around the South London pirate stations when I stumbled across something intriguing.

I heard music that was in turn simple but challenging.  Earthy but somehow spacey.  It had serious (and I mean “furrowed jazz brow” serious) sax on it alongside yodelling.  Yes really, yodelling.  The lyrics to the track playing spoke of peace, and the music itself I found sublimely peaceful on a miserable January Saturday morning.

I inserted a cassette into my tape recorder and hit record (a That’s MGX90 if anyone’s interested), the mysterious jazz was recorded for prosperity but faded out after a few minutes to be replaced by the LP version of The Isley’s “Harvest For The World” with the slow intro, between the intro and the main song the DJ uttered a sentence that I have no problem remembering to this day, “The message to George Bush and Saddam Hussein is, take a chill pill, you are listening to Gilles Peterson’s Vibrazone on Jazz FM.”

The Isleys did their thing, then we were treated to A Tribe Called Quest, some Organized Konfusion, Ernest Ranglin’s “Surfin” and many more delights.  The show blew my mind, but I never heard Gilles on Jazz FM again, his contract was terminated, or as Time Out magazine put it the next week “DJ Sacked For Playing Peace Music.”

It turned out that despite Gilles' calls for peace, from that weekend Iraq had a war on it’s hands, but on the home front I had developed a love of Pharoah Sanders, for it was him with the serious sax and peace yodelling, and I delighted at having my ears opened to so much more.

Here’s what I know about Pharoah without googling.  He used to be called “Little Rock” and was a contemporary of Coltrane.  He has accompanied many of the important Strata East and Impulse label players of the late 60s early 70s including playing with Alice Coltrane but also with jazz funkers like Norman Connors.  Pharoah has never stopped gigging, I was lucky enough to see him at Bristol Temple Meads church circa 1995, the closest I have ever come to a godly spiritual experience.  Bizarrely, Grace Jones once claimed that she was found, “Moses style” floating down the Mississippi in a basket by Pharoah Sanders.  I don’t know how mainstream music critics pigeon hole the great man, Free Jazz? Avant Garde?  I don’t care.  I care about what I hear, and right now I’m listening to the LP “Karma” by Pharoah Sanders.

The LP only has two songs, though one song is split in two if you have the vinyl original.  “The Creator Has A Masterplan” opens the album with a cacophony of free jazz blowing.  Pharoah has a very distinctive style, close to Coltrane or Ornette Colman but more melodic than both if not as technical.  The horn sometimes screams and grumbles like it is at the point of being broken but always remains soulful.  This opening salvo only lasts a couple of minutes before dying down and letting the bass take over with a very simple repetitive riff that remains a feature for the next half an hour. Also a feature (and recurring theme across Pharoah’s work to this day) is the sound of African shaker percussion and the sound of someone playing a piano by strumming the strings “harp like” behind flute (James Spalding) and piano (Lonnie Liston Smith).  This track credits both Reggie Workman and Richard Davis on bass, it sounds to me like a classic Ron Carter line, buy his credit is saved for the second track on the LP “Colours.”

It says something about the music that I lose my sense of time in it.  Terrible cliché “losing yourself” in music, but I really do.  For the sake of this blog, I’ve checked the clock, and it is around about 7 minutes 30 seconds that we hear the first vocals, Leon Thomas repeating his little poem, chanting and yodelling.  Don’t like yodelling?  Get over it you big snob, it’s great to sing along to too, altogether now…….

The track takes another couple of turns before it ends, first to return to the opening theme and later to go a bit “free” with the whole band (including Thomas) playing very hard indeed.  It is here the music is at it’s most challenging and likely to send non-jazz lovers running to the hills clutching their ears, but stick with it for “out of the strong came forth sweetness” as Grace Jones might have said, because when the vocal and bass riff return to finish the song, it all makes perfect sense.

The Second and final track on the LP is “Colours” again featuring Lonnie Liston Smith on keys and Leon Thomas taking the vocal responsibilities.  It is a very contemplative track, the childlike joyful lyrics juxtaposed against the rather sad vocal delivery and very melancholic playing.  Jazz experts could probably immediately identify what it is that allows this song (and so many others by Sanders) to set such a unique mood, they’d probably speak of minor chord changes, or modes or scales.  Others might suggest that Bob Thiele’s production or the way the studio was set up for these Impulse cuts was influencial.  I don’t know, all I know it that hearing Pharoah in a lonely attic bedsit as the world was about to go to war was very influencial on me.

20 years later and you may know already that Gilles did alright for himself.  He went from Jazz FM to Kiss and then onto his current gig on Radio 1, he is currently regarded as one of the worlds “tastemakers”.  Lucky devil.  My That’s MRX90 cassette however, does not have such a happy history.  I left it around my parents house and lost it for over a decade.  Imagine my excitement when I found it a few years ago.  Now imagine how I felt when I rewinded it expecting to hear Pharoah, only to find my dad had recorded country music over the top.  He doesn’t even really like country music.

Still, I’ve got my memories, and a whole load of Pharoah releases that every now and again, when I need that “spiritual” experience, I dig out and play “end to end.”

King Canute, January 2011.


Tracklisting (from discogs, CD version)


1 The Creator Has A Master Plan 32:45
2 Colors 5:37

Curtis Mayfield - Curtis/Live!

“Now ladies and gentlemen, the Bitter End is proud to announce, Curtis Mayfield.”

(gentle applause)

And so begins what I regard as both the most intimate live LP, and the most perfect document of where an artist (who is already midway through a long career), and his band “are at” at the precise time it was recorded.

I love “Curtis/Live!”  It is not the most accessible record ever pressed, it is not so much a “grower” as a flawed machine that requires an experienced operator to get the best out of.  That is the reason I’m starting the blog with this LP, “dipping in” will only frustrate, but live with this creation and you will be glad you invested the time.

Back to that intro, as the applause subsides, the band start with “Mighty Mighty (Spade and Whitey)” which I now know is (like many others on the LP) an old Impressions song, but was new to me when I discovered this LP in 1989.  Curtis raps his way through the socio-conscious lyrics but the crowd are hardly appreciative, even to the superb Conga solo by “Master” Henry Gibson.  I know little of the history of the LP and deliberate avoided googling before writing this, but I like to think Curtis is experimenting with an audience, seeing how the concepts are received as much as putting on a performance for the paying punter.

It is the aforementioned little solos, bass runs, bits of guitar feedback (great screech after “I Plan To Stay A Believer”), asides to the audience about politics (how many other live LPs name check Spiro Agnew?), the mixing of extracts of verses from other Curtis songs into the performed song and other treats that make this LP so rewarding on repeated listens.  I’m not afraid to admit that I actually mime Curtis’ “talky bits” like some Python nerd quoting “Life of Brian.”  These nuances have become part of language between me and my fellow “Live!” admirer and friend Nic.  Can you imagine such a thing?

“What congregation, with better relations, would demand more respect from society?”  The next song, "I Plan To Stay A Believer" allows Curtis to demonstrate a skill I think he shares with Smoky Robinson and Bob Dylan, the ability to create great rhymes, something he is rarely credited for.  He mixes into this song a bit of “Keep On Pushing” and “We’re A Winner” but the LP sleeve make no mention of this on my copy, but does on others?  What the sleeve does reveal is the unplastered brickwork of “The Bitter End” nightclub.  It has also convinced me that if I had the money to spend on an original US Fender guitar, I’d eschew the ubiquitous Strat for a Telecaster.  If it is good enough for Curtis…..

By the start of “We’ve Only Just Begun” the band have built up a bit of a momentum, but judging by the applause, the Bitter End audience are not yet ready for a mix of Black Power and Carpenters covers.  Their loss, it’s a superb earthy version of a great song and in 2011 sounds like a choice of ironic genius.  Bet Curtis chose it for the sentiment, the rhymes and the chords.  A man without prejudice.  Curtis quickly moves on to “People Get Ready” even then he probably would have known that the Impressions track would become a staple for his live performances for years to come, but it is when this ends that the LP (and performance) starts to get more serious.

“Stare And Stare” is moody and dark and speaks of prejudice borne out on bus rides.  Importantly it is the perfect mood changer for the next offering “Check Out Your Mind” (another Impressions song) takes on a hard, funky and psychedelic tone that the studio group version never had.  Joseph “Lucky” Scott’s bass bubbles away in the background before taking a run behind Curtis’ guitar solo, while Tyrone McCullen hammers the beat down hard.  I love this band.  The funked up Impressions material continues with “Gypsy Woman.”  It is the rest of the LP that outlines Curtis Mayfield’s artistic integrity and musical talent.  He must have been capable of knocking out crossover soul hits in his sleep and if employed at Stax or Motown he would have done.  Instead he remained independent (at least through the Curtom label) and in his solo material ploughed a less fertile furrow of playing at places like “The Bitter End” with a musical edge that challenged rather than pacified.  “The Makings Of You” is a tender love song that many writers would envy but could be overlooked here, falling as it does, between the drug critical “Check Out Your Mind” (Superfly was coming soon) and “We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue,” the latter being another chance for Curtis to show off some superb rhyming couplets and talk frankly about “grown up shiftless jiggers”  I’ve bought a few records over the years and I haven’t found any other (pre hip-hop) that comments so concisely on race related cival rights, I’ve heard plenty of “Black Power” type posturing, and of course a whole folk movement, but nothing as candid as Curtis.  The track takes a very funky turn and winds the crowd up perfectly for “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go”.

The crowd took a bit of warming up, but by now they are in Mr Mayfield’s pocket.  The “Don’t Worry” bassline driving forward as “Lucky’s” congas must drip with palm sweat.  Curtis teases the crowd in this and the final track, another little quirk that makes this LP irresistible to me.  The final track is my least favourite but has some genuinely funny moments and clearly winds the crowd into a frenzy, again Mayfield’s charm allows him to joke with the audience on sensitive subjects, comparing women using the contraceptive pill to “ease the pains” with heroin addicts, despite keeping his tongue firmly in cheek, is a risky business, but after the “whoo” from the crowd he wins them over again.

So there it is.  By no means perfect.  Not perfectly recorded, received by the audience or even performed, but an idiosyncratic masterpiece.  There is so much to love, so much to reward the listener who perseveres with repeated listens.  Mayfield’s introduction of the band members alone is great, as is every other “talky bit” or shout from the crowd, the musicians are marvellous and Curtis’ choice of material I find intriguing.  There is little from his first solo LP (what, no “Move On Up?”), and his reworks of Impressions songs have become to me the definitive versions.

Get it.

Play it.

All the way through!

King Canute, January 2011.

Published tracklisting (from discogs, differently tracked versions of the same recording exist):

A1 Mighty Mighty (Spade And Whitey) 6:46

A2 Rap 0:2

A3 I Plan To Stay A Believer 3:00

A4 We're A Winner 4:35

B1 Rap 0:42

B2 We've Only Just Begun 3:43

B3 People Get Ready 3:35

B4 Rap 0:35

B5 Stare And Stare 6:19

C1 Check Out Your Mind 3:50

C2 Gypsy Woman 3:48

C3 The Makings Of You 3:03

C4 Rap 2:00

C5 We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue 6:38

D1 (Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below, We're All Gonna Go 9:08

D2 Stone Junkie 7:48