5 Songs Friday. May 2, 2025

Some guitar, some piano and wind instruments, and some singing

Albert King – “Cold Sweat” 1970 b-side available on Funky London. If you’ve been looking for a five-minute plus instrumental on which Albert King wails away on guitar the entire time, this is the place to find it. It is built on James Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” especially the bass line and the drums, and the horn breakdown that comes up every once in a while. King starts off in the pocket of the groove but by the third chorus, he’s just taking over, riding high over the beat and showing off how many licks can fit on that single chord James Brown set up. The horns vie with him at times, but he doesn’t care – King intends to burn down the recording studio with his guitar, and I think it probably happened. The last minute of this record is among the hottest I’ve ever heard. I wonder what James Brown thought of this one?

Bombino – “Illilagh Ténéré” 2010 from Agamgam 2004. Here’s another song with extensive guitar soloing over one chord, though this one also has vocal verses with chord changes. I don’t remember exactly when I discovered Bombino or the desert blues of the Tuareg community in general. I don’t think it was as far back as this record, though. This music is hard to critique because a) I don’t speak the language at all, and b) I pretty much like all of it to varying extent. This track is all acoustic guitars, conga drums (of some sort), and hand claps. One of the guitars thrums bass notes, while Bombino glides his elegant phrases across the fretboard. He sings lead with other men shadowing him. When they get to the guitar breaks, Bombino soars in the upper register, without losing focus, a neat trick that I’ve heard him do many times. To my Western ears, it’s all magic; in Niger, it’s life itself.

Fats Waller – “Lila Luo” sometime in the early 1930s I reckon, available on Ain’t Misbehavin’ compilation released 2021. I honestly can’t find any information about this track, but it’s a delightful, if acoustically suspect example of Fats Waller leading his band through several choruses of a fantastically catchy old-time jazz number. Waller was a great composer, singer, and pianist, but he was also one heck of a band leader. I don’t know who the sidemen are here – there are tenor sax, trumpet, clarinet runs through the tune and then a chorus with an actual polyphonic spree. This isn’t essential Waller, but it is awfully fun to hear.

Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis – “Lost My Best” 2019 from Beatufiul Lie. We had a song a few weeks ago by a married couple who got divorced shortly after recording it. Here we are again, though I still can’t get over the fact that these two were together for thirty years before ending things back in 2022. This song, sung as a duet though Willis takes the lead throughout, is about regrets at the end of a relationship. It was written by David Ball – yeah, the guy who had the hit with “Thinking Problem” back around the time Robison & Willis met. It’s a lovely little tune – it’s actually very similar to a famous song that is running around in my head without any words to remind me of its name or its singer – and Willis especially sells the feelings inherent in the lyrics. She’s always been one of my faves, and on ballads like this one, the little cracks she puts in her voice can choke me up. Robison harmonizes beautifully, and the steel guitar parts on this record are perfectly plaintive.

Gaye – “You Are That Special One” 1973 recording available on You’re the Man. In the first few years of the 1970s, Marvin Gaye was at such a high point in his creativity that he could record an irresistible performance like this one and have it sit in the vaults until the inevitable box set came out nearly two decades later. Willie Hutch had written it for the b-side of a single he produced for G.C. Cameron – and no, I don’t know anything about G.C. Cameron. Gaye must have liked it, because he recorded it as a perfect mélange of the 60s Motown style he had come up with and the 70s looser, more percussive soul he was making at the time. It’s got a fantastic upbeat groove, and Gaye sings it in his light falsetto while cooing background singers respond to his many calls throughout the record. I can see that it’s not sexy enough to have fit on Let’s Get It On, but I can’t believe it wasn’t catchy and fun enough to have been released as a single sometime later.