Five Songs Friday July 19

2 Soul Classics, 2 Old Blues Cuts, and a Beatles Cover

James Brown – “Get Up.I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine Pts. 1 & 2” 1970 single available on Funk Power 1970: A Brand New Thang. The year 1970 found Brown leading a new bunch of young whipper-snappers of funk. The core riff of this masterpiece is played by Catfish Collins on guitar and matched on bass by his brother Bootsy. The future star of his own Rubber Band was only 19 when he and his older brother joined Brown. Jabo Starks holds down the drum chair on this one. The horn section of two trumpets and a sax is impeccable.The vocals are shared by co-writers Brown and his Hammond organ player Bobby Byrd. Brown himself plays the deathless piano bit in Pt. 2. There are those who say nothing ever happens in a record like this but come on. With the exception of Bootsy Collins gliding on bass, every other sound on this record is percussive, most definitely including the call and response vocals. The rhythmic power and propulsion here is off the charts. I especially like the ending, when Brown asks his band, “Can we hit like we did one more time, from the top?” They urge him on and then, bam, they play that opening lick again and stop on a dime as a unit.

Casey Bill Weldon – “Sold My Soul to the Devil” 1937 available on Casey Bill Weldon Vol. 3: 1937-38. Robert Johnson is more famous, with good reason, but he wasn’t the only one to dance with Satan in the acoustic blues era. Casey Bill Weldon went straight on gangsta here as he sings of the downside of a deal with the devil, who “won’t let me alone.” He sings: “I walk down the street with my razor and my gatling gun / I’ll cut you if you stand / I’ll shoot you if you run.” That’s a bad man in this song, which makes sense for a guy heavily influenced by Peetie Wheatstraw, the Devil’s Own Son-in-Law. Beyond just the fierceness of the song itself, and his strong vocal performance, this record, like all of Weldon’s, features him playing the blues on a steel guitar. Hawaiian performers had introduced the steel guitar to the continental States, and while it went bigger in Western Swing, it was heard in all kinds of music. Weldon was perhaps the most famous player of the instrument in the blues world.

Ray Charles – “Let’s Go Get Stoned” 1966 single available on The Definitive Ray Charles. Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson were married and writing songs together by 1965. They came up with this little ditty, got it recorded by the Coasters and Ronnie Milsap, then hit the big time when Ray Charles took it to the top of the Billboard R&B charts in 1966. Charles gives this song a fantastic arrangement, with his band including organ, guitar, his own piano, and female backing vocalists finding any number of ways to make a tight groove loose. Charles takes to church this celebration of drinking to numb the pain. “Ain’t no harm to take a little nip / But don’t you fall down and bust your lip.” Great advice, to be sure. The varied rhythmic approaches within this record – punctuating syllables, elastic vowels, and lenthy wails – are all strong proofs as to why Ray Charles was one of the greatest vocalists of the 20^th Century.

Colvin & Earle – “Baby’s in Black” 2016 from Colvin & Earle deluxe edition. If you’d asked me yesterday whether Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle ever made an album together, I could have wracked my memory banks for an hour without imagining that such a thing actually happened. But, now that I’ve found it again, it turns out to be a sweet collaboration between two singer/songwriters whose talents complemented each other. There are several classic songs written by others here, too, but my fave has to be this delightful version of the Beatles classic from Beatles For Sale back in 1964, one year before Colvin was born. As with Lennon and McCartney’s close harmony on the original, Colvin and Earle sing this together as if they were joined at the hip, with each melodic part seamlessly intertwined with the other. Earle was raspy as ever, and Colvin as lithe and light as could be, and yet somehow they merged into a genuinely touching performance of this sadly beautiful song.

Josh White – “Evil Hearted Man” 1946 available on The Remaining Titles 1941-1947. Josh White was probably the most popular blues performer of the 1940s, with the possible exception of Leadbelly. At a time when almost all blues records were relegated to the segregated “Race” category, White appealed to both black and well, white audiences. While I would never argue he was a major artist, his spirited performances make his broad appeal understandable. This particular song finds him detailing all his evil ways – he sings the word “hell” on a recording in 1946, which probably convinced many listeners he was ready for damnation. He throws a cup of coffee at his woman, he says he has plenty of replacements available if his woman leaves him, he doesn’t care if it rains all day or if his woman leaves him. It’s not exactly the existential pain we heard in the Casey Bill Weldon song earlier. Still, I like the way he sings this, trying to capture evil but still remaining lovable. Honestly, he sounds like a precursor to Elvis Presley here. And, there’s a rare acoustic blues guitar solo in it – it’s not mind-blowing, but it’s still nice to hear.