Here was where Mr. Brown was beginning to reach the end of his rope - to say nothing of this being his last #1 on these charts, ever. (The end of an era in more ways than one.) Apparently this was recorded after the death of his son Teddy from which, it is said, he never really recovered, and not long afterward the drugs began to kick in for him (this from someone who apparently fired Bootsy and Catfish in part - but only part - over their drug use). It seemed thematically like a little lethargic riff on his 1968 hit "Licking Stick - Licking Stick," if you get right down to it. It was also among the last of his tracks (as well as "The Payback (Part 1)") to be spotlighted in Allan "Dr. Licks" Slutsky and Chuck Silverman's book The Great James Brown Rhythm Sections - 1960-1973, and noted he leaned (almost like a crutch) on his "regulars" more than ever on that occasion, so enmeshed was he in his grief. It did seem to take a long time, on the long version, for him to come in after the band started playing.
I think virtually all of his material is quite distinct from Quiet Storm, which wasn't as close to R&B or funk as what Hayes had been doing, and was closer to jazz...but extremely mellow and urban and upmarket jazz. Hayes had played with jazz too, as on the Shaft soundtrack, but to me it sounds nothing like Quiet Storm. Hayes has much more of a blend Stax soul and funk in his mix, and his jazz is California jazz, closer to Tom Scott. The soul in Quiet Storm is more Motown derived, and its jazz sounds very Manhattan and urbane to my ear - a trait that it would retain thru the '80s and acts like Anita Baker and Sade. Smokey said his inspiration was What's Going On, and I think Quiet Storm actually bears more resemblance to some of what Marvin Gaye had been doing on that record ("Flyin' High (In the Friendly Sky), "Wholy Holy") and with some subsequent cuts ("After The Dance") than classic Isaac Hayes. (Quiet Storm actually gets mentioned on the Wikipedia page for "After The Dance", a song which I liked but didn't love until recently.)
What you say is absolutely true, but he didn't stop recording or releasing records. He continued to have R&B hit singles throughout the rest of the 70s. By "hit", I don't mean top 10, but they were popular. One significant single was in 1976. Then he went disco. Like Isaac Hayes, and a lot of 60s vets, they felt like they had nowhere else to go, or they were coerced by their record label to record disco.
That's what quiet storm was. It wasn't some narrowly-defined genre. It was quite inclusive. And, Smokey Robinson's 70s solo material was too often on the mellow side. The only single from him I can think of that really pushed his harder side (?) was the single "Open".
Yeah, Mr. Brown was still charting in or around the Top 10 for the next few years, that's for sure. The first JB LP I remember being exposed to was Reality, the one track I remember being played from it being his cover of "The Twist." As for that 1976 single, a veteran of his band from the '60's - Melvin Parker (Maceo's brother) - returned to the fold, if briefly. Within that period and afterwards, for him it was sure a case of gerbils running on wheels in terms of how his career was going. It was also around this time, I.I.N.M., that relations between him and Polydor began to be strained big-time. I remember his autobio where he complained about how they messed with his sound so much that, as he saw it, they finally "destroyed" it. When I mentioned "the end of his rope," I meant more in his personal life, as on top of everything else he was also beginning to have tax problems that would force him to sell the radio stations he had acquired while he was at his apex. As for that last sentence of yours, I think in some ways it was a combination of both scenarii you laid out.
PDTNM is one of my all-time favorite JB cuts. I didn't get deep into his music until the mid-'80s in my early 20s, and since I came at it piecemeal had no idea it was the end of an era. For years I took it at face value - just a tune about a bad-ass padre. But then you hear it in context, in terms of his music and his personal life, and it becomes very clear that here's a man at the end of his rope, barely into his 40s with everything he worked for, gave 200% of his energy for since the late '50s, crashing down. His own relationship with his father was more like the one in the Temptations song, and as a child he was sent off to live in his aunt's brothel. That makes this song bittersweet to me - was he singing about the papa he wished he'd had? A father figure? Or himself? But enough amateur psychoanalysis. It's a hell of a jam, and though he still had some good records in him, this was truly his final classic.
Next: Do It ('Till You're Satisfied) - B.T. Express Another sign that the second wave of funk had arrived. This slab of funk was hot! It came from the debut album of the band B.T. Express, which stands for "Brooklyn Transit Express". One notable member of the band was a teenage Kashif Saleem, future 80s record producer, solo artist, record executive, and book writer. The record is a "Tom Moulton Mix", and he mixed a lot of bass into it. Tom Moulton is responsible for mixing a lot of 70s R&B and disco #1 singles we will be discussing in upcoming entries. Tom is still active in the industry and a go-to remix engineer, and I think is/was a member of this forum. "Do It...)"...was a huge single in my neck of the woods. I didn't buy the 45 for some reason, and didn't own it until I got it on the Rhino CD series "didn't it blow your mind: Soul Hits of the 70s".
The 45 had two different label designs to it. First-pressings used that associated with post-1967 Dionne Warwick singles on Scepter (which, after 1972, applied to the rest of the label's roster), then later ones used a whole new design with a dark blue background where some pressing plants used black ink for the label copy and others used silver ink. From what I could gauge, this was the last real big hit (#2 on the Hot 100) on Scepter Records which some time after this was acquired by Springboard International. (Their next hit was on a label that Scepter distributed.) I.I.N.M., Mr. Moulton's mix was on the long (5:52) version (which indeed stated "Disco Remix" on the label viz his credit); most radio stations (including WABC Musicradio 77, home to the late "Big" Dan Ingram who died on June 24 at age 83) played the short (3:09) version. Trade Martin, a veteran of the music biz from the '60's, arranged the strings here. Having heard both, I more lean towards the 3:09. As for what the "B.T." in the group name stood for, I've heard in some areas that it was "Brothers Trucking" - irrespective of "the facts, ma'am," to quote Joe Friday on Dragnet.
After this initial single, their singles and albums until 1976 were on Roadshow, still distributed by Scepter. But, in 1976, Roadshow Records switched distribution to Columbia, where the band would remain on until 1980. That it stood for "Brooklyn Transit" makes more sense because of the band's original, and the fact that their first album and second single has a train theme.
Lucky for me some jams managed to filter into my rural bubble, and "Do It" was one of those records. The groove is still irresistible to this day. There's a distinct Isaac Hayes influence going on, and those organ fills are bad! And the best is yet to come from these guys, IMO. Their next #1 is my jam. Glad you brought up Kashif, Grant. He's one guy I feel never really got his due. Didn't score a #1, (although he did get a #2 with Meli'sa Morgan) but he really was a huge influence on that '80s keyboard sound.
Great slice of Funk indeed. They had a brief hot streak going on the Pop charts. I'm guessing the encroaching disco boom derailed a lot of Funk, at least at the top.
What's interesting is that we both grew up rural, but I was exposed to more of the music than you were. Perhaps that is because of me being a military brat. Cha!...Cha!...Cha! Cha! Cha! Uuuuhhh! I never liked his music, though.
Regarding Do It (‘Til You’re Satisfied) by B.T. Express . . . some radio stations did play Tom Moulton’s remix on the B-side of the Scepter Records 45 instead of the single edit on the A-side. The group was not originally pleased with the remix because Tom cut off the vocal, replacing it with an extended organ chord, during the break. When Don Cornelius asked the group on Soul Train how it felt to hear the remix, at almost 6 minutes long, getting played on stations that usually didn’t play any song over 3 to 4 minutes in length, the group claimed that’s the way they recorded the song! Tom Moulton discusses this in the video below (from about 29:15 to 34:15): Although Tom has discussed many of these topics (the Sandpiper mixtapes [the mixtape from 7/27/74 features Do It (‘Til You’re Satisfied)], the birth of the disco break to overcome modulation in a song [Dream World – Don Downing], the first full sidelong continuous disco medley [Honey Bee/Never Can Say Goodbye/Reach Out, I’ll Be There – Gloria Gaynor], the circumstances that led to the creation of the 12-inch single when cutting an extended version of I’ll Be Holding On by Al Downing for Chess Records, how Tom tricked Leon Huff into recording a piano overdub for the remix of MFSB’s Love Is The Message for the Philadelphia Classics LP) in various forums, the video provides a summary for those who are interested (and have a few hours to spare!).
I'm gonna copy this and watch it later. This is great stuff! Truth be told, i'm not much of a fan of his remixes or extended jams. But, they are still good! Now, I know he harps quite a bit on the Black/White thing, but it goes back to the reality of how things were in the 70s.
I do remember hearing the long version quite a bit on WBLS 107.5 "back then." The Top 40 stations (besides WABC, there was 99X, WPIX-FM 102 and WNBC-FM's "Rockpile") generally did the shortie.
Now @I Love Music mentioned "Honey Bee" by Gloria Gaynor. Before MGM snapped her up, this single (in a different edit and mix) was issued on Columbia single #4-45909, with a different B side ("All It Took Boy Was Losing You"). I actually have this record in this form. Despite this appearing on two labels, and edited/mixed differently on each (and Columbia showing the title as one word, "Honeybee"), it is the exact same recording.
Another 45 I remember hearing "at the time" on WNBC-FM "The RockPile" was this number by the Trammps, "Where Do We Go From Here" (#44 R&B, did not chart on the "pops"):
The first mix on Columbia has louder guitars and had a longer intro. The MGM hit single is about a minute shorter, and sounds compressed. I like the engineer's voice and the countdown on the album version. If I remember the credits correctly, the album was engineered by Tony Bongiovi at The Power Station. Yeah, that's Jon's brother. As discussed in the video W.B. posted, Tom Moulton was the one who created that three-song suite. He said he did it for the D.J.s so they could take a break and eat. Gloria Gaynor didn't like it because she doesn't sing half the time.
Funny, I hadn't posted that original Columbia mix, just the label . . . but since you mentioned it . . . That fuzz guitar did seem to show that Dennis Coffey influence, dinnit?
