5 Songs Aug. 23, 2024

Three of these songs are by singers you'd know if I only mentioned their first names

Lowell Fulson – “Parachute Woman” 1984 from Think Twice Before You Speak. West coast blues performers don’t live on in cultural memory the way Chicago and Missisiippi players do. But Lowell Fulson was a heck of a singer and guitar player He also wrote some great songs, though I’m not sure if he wrote this one or not – online credits are incomplete. By the 1980s, his recordings were more or less adjuncts to his live performances, something to give people a reason to book him. Which doesn’t mean they weren’t really good. This song is a solid tough blues, with Fulson decrying the way his woman is barrelling through life experiences – sex, alcohol, drugs, or some combination – and wanting to slow her down to his own speed. The guitar solo is short but intense. His vocals are hard and expressive. A record doesn’t have to be a classic to be really enjoyable.

Aretha Franklin – “Where Are You” 1963 from Laughing On the Outside. Aretha Franklin didn’t sell all that many records when she was recording pop music with full orchestral backing back in the early 1960s. We all know her breakthrough came when she moved to Atlantic Records and recorded with a small sympathetic band and featured her own piano playing. But, my goodness, she could knock the ball out of the park with a lot of the stuff she did before she became a diva. This song, famously recorded by Frank Sinatra and written by Harold Adamson & Jimmy McHugh, has a lovely melody and forlorn lyrics concerning a person who can’t figure out how to deal with life now that the lover has gone away. Aretha starts off singing this with a heavy dose of Dinah Washington phrasing, but she keeps dropping her own signature style into it. At about the 1:55 point of the record, she lets forth a gigantic wail of slow melisma on the word “All”that is simply jaw-dropping. But she’s not through yet. She keeps on using dynamics, pulling herself away from and back towards the microphone to add to the control in her voice. She invests this pop song with both a blues and a gospel feeling at the same time. It’s damned thrilling, I tell ya.

Dolly Parton – “The Company You Keep” 1967 from Hello, I’m Dolly. It just now occurred to me for the first time that the album title was playing a little bit on the omnipresence of Hello Dolly back in the mid-sixties. Of course, it’s a perfectly appropriate title for the debut album of a singer who would go on to become one of the most beloved musicians in the entire United States of America. This song was co-written by Parton and her uncle Bill Owens. It’s a catchy traditional sounding honky tonk song sung by a woman concerned that her little sister is moving with the wrong crowd. Right from the beginning, Parton’s vigorous vibrato was able to hook the listener in, convince us that she really cared for and trusted her sister, and make us feel the pain being felt by their parents. It’s not a major track, but it works beautifully in a simple, direct manner.

Elvis Presley – “Steamroller Blues” 1973 from Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite. Imagine the hoopla back in 1973 when Elvis Presley broadcast a live concert all around the world at the same time. Well, except in the United States, because it was the same time as the Super Bowl, which wasn’t yet what it is now, but was still bigger than Elvis, apparently. Well, anyway, it was a big deal, and it was a pretty good example of how Elvis was still a viable musical force even at a time when a lot of people tend to write him off. There’s a gigantic Wikipedia article on the concert, but it doesn’t mention the one thing I really wanted to know – band personnel. Presumably that’s the TCB band, with James Burton on guitar, Jerry Scheff on bass, and Ron Tutt on drums. The song itself is a James Taylor number intended to parody bad white blues bands. Presley sings it with a hint of irony, but he also injects it with a serious blues feeling, which makes this performance a little unsettling, in a good way. You can definitely hear how great a singer he still was at this point in his life.

Los Bravos – “You Got Until the Morning” 1968 from Bring A Little Lovin’. Spain was never famous for its rock’n’roll, but Los Bravos broke big across the world with “Black Is Black” a couple years before this album came out. “You Got Until the Morning” shares all the punchy joys of the bigger hit. Singer Mike Kogel, who actually moved to Spain from Germany, has a roar of a voice, and he was clearly influenced by contemporary soul music. The band cooks along, propelled by horns and a choogling bass line, whirling organ and gigantic-sounding drums. There’s also a nice call and response thing between Kogel and women backing singers. The song itself is asking a love interest to choose – is it him or me? But the decision has to be made overnight – this question must be answered soon, as you can tell by the urgency of this wonderful record.