5 Songs Friday, Apr. 11

The day before Record Store Day and I've got some oldies but goodies for you to seek out

Bobby Womack – “How I Miss You Baby” 1970 from My Prescription. Bobby Womack hadn’t had a hit in a while before this one did pretty well on the soul charts. It would be a couple more years before he became a much bigger force. For this album, Womack wrote a bunch of songs with Darryl Carter, another of those songwriters who turn up briefly in music history and then disappear completely. The pairing was complementary, though – this song is remarkably strong. It's another example of the ways soul music and country music were running on tracks not just parallel but occasionally congruent – drop the horns and change the beat slightly, and this could easily have been sung at the Grand Ol’ Opry. Womack and the backing singer, however, inject a gospel-derived harmony on the hook that places it firmly in the soul camp. Womack bemoans the loss of his woman only a week before the song is set. He’s not used to it yet, but he’s coherent enough to understand the mistakes he’s made, and to realize how being sorry is not enough to express his regret. The song grooves along nicely, and shows once again that Womack deserves much higher accolades than he’s gotten over the years.

Blondie – “Dreaming” 1979 from Eat to the Beat. “Blondie is a group!” That’s what the advertisements said to emphasize the fact that Debbie Harry was just one member of a band. Lots of people have been in and out of this group over the many decades since it started playing at CBGB’s in the days of the Ramones and Talking Heads. Only two are, as a friend pointed out to me, indispensable. Harry, of course. And drummer Clem Burke. Burke passed away from cancer on Monday, and we have lost one of the greatest of all practitioners of the skin-bashing trade. It may be obvious to choose this song as evidence, because it features such flashy drums. But Burke is not just showing off with all those fancy rolls across the tom toms, cymbal crashes, and triumphant snare interjections. He’s doing what he always did, playing the song, contributing a part which cannot be separated from the music of the rest of the band without completely changing the performance. “Dreaming” happens to be one of my very favorite songs by Blondie, and Burke is as much the reason as all the rest of the parts of the record.

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson – “Til Death Do Us Part” 2012 from Wreck and Ruin. On last year’s Kasey Chambers album Backbone, she and her ex-husband Shane Nicholson gave us a delightful duet called “The Divorce Song” in which they sang “We couldn’t survive as the marrying king / But we do divorce pretty good.” That song also starts with the lyric “We said ‘til death do us part” and if you want proof, well here’s incontrovertible evidence. This short little gospel inflected number came out one year before they divorced. There’s a harmonium wheezing chords, and Nicholson holding down the tenor part while Chambers jumps up higher with feeling as each vows to walk here beside the other forever, to climb up that mountain, and to sing hallelujah. It may have been a desperate attempt to rekindle their romance, but the record comes off as hopeful and full of desire. Yeah, they do duets pretty good.

The Searchers – “Love’s Gonna Be Strong” 1979 from The Searchers. The drum chair had changed a couple times, but the three guys up front in the Searchers – Mike Pender on lead vocals and guitar, John McNally on guitar, and Frank Allen on bass, had never stopped playing together (and wouldn’t until 1985, when Pender split to form his own version of the Searchers, leading to confusion on oldies tours, I imagine). So, 1979 comes along, and between New Wave, power pop, Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen, it seemed like the time was right to make an album that sounded contemporary. The Searchers fit right in – I’d rank this record right up there with albums by the Records (who contributed a song to this album). I don’t know Ronnie Thomas was, but he wrote this fine little power pop number. It’s a heart-on-your-sleeve romantic song filled with ringing and chiming guitars, chugging rhythms, and a soaring memorable hook line – “You know that love’s gonna make you strong” – sung in Searchers-style harmony. Sadly, this never sold at all, but I think it deserves to be remembered.

Mulatu Astatke – “Chifara” 1972 fromMulatu of EthipioaI know I always love Ethiopian jazz-influenced music, but I didn’t realize how much of it was shaped by this man who lived for a few years in the late 60s and early 70s in the United States. There, he mixed musical influences from his home in Ethiopia with the Latin and jazz which excited him. Put together the emphasis on the groove from Latin with improvisation from jazz and middle eastern scales from his background, and you get something which sounds entirely unique and devastatingly effective. This cut is the longest on this album, which was recorded in New York and included mostly American musicians he taught to play this way. And it fades out at the end feeling as if the music could go on and on forever.The drums hold down a steady rock/soul groove, and I keep searching for the Latin clave to appear, but these rhythms aren’t the same. The bass line is funky and consistent, and distinctive from anything I’ve heard elsewhere.Astatke, I think, is playing organ on this track, and that eerie sound combines with a wah-wah effect on electric piano and the melodic figure played on twin saxophones to set the stage for an intoxicating performance. The tenor and alto saxes play off and around each other when they aren’t harmonizing, and then the tenor player dominates the bulk of the recording. Did I forget to mention there’s also a flute playing counterpoint with the other instruments?