We're not quite there yet in terms of full throttle Disco takeover but I will say GG's medley opened my heart up to the genre. Then it closed right back up for a year or two.
Next #1: Higher Plane - Kool & The Gang The 45 runs about 3:17 (I have it), but I can't find that correct length on YouTube or CD. So, here's the album version. What's more, there seems to be an even shorter edit that is on YouTube. I do remember this funk jam quite well. I only heard it on Soul Train, though. It too often seems in the mid-late 70/early 80-s that, unless a soul song hit the upper reaches of the pop chart, or if you didn't live in a place with a sizable Black population, Soul Train may have been your only source of hearing soul music, unless you just bought the albums and singles blind. Fortunately, besides Soul Train, I lived next to a major army installation, and soldiers would, of course, bring their music with them when they transferred. The PX was also fairly good at stocking the music because of the military personnel.
Here's another one that got past me. Can't say I ever heard this but we didn't have a R&B-centric station so a tune like this which barely grazed the Pop Top 40 could easily get ignored. The group had many mid-level singles that I need to check out. At least the ones before Ladie's Night gave them a second successful run.
These guys became pop chart stars in '73 and '74 with "Jungle Boogie" and "Hollywood Swinging", then pretty much vanished until around the end of the decade and the start of the '80s, when they roared back with a string of Top 10 singles, including a massive #1 and two #2 singles, making them one of the biggest pop acts of the first half of the decade. Not bad for a band that had started in '64! They'd been much more consistently successful on the R&B charts during the '70s, although even there they'd dropped off quite a bit after '77. I think the loose jam-oriented sound of this trackvwas still fresh in '74, although decades on I find it a bit stale and this particular tune meandering - there are better examples of the genre. To their credit they rebounded with a much tighter sound at the end of the decade, without losing that incredible funk underpinning. Very few acts had the talent to do that.
Sampling their early work and they were certainly more than just a Funk band. Quite a bit of smooth jazz, quiet storm, whatever you want to call it sprinkled amongst the various LPs. They share more with EW&F than I ever imagined based on just their Funk hits.
"Higher Plane" is aight, a decent jam to get down to, but the real deal on that album was "Summer Madness". The live version of "Summer Madness" on Love & Understanding is a-MA-zing ... especially at this time of year.
Next #1 single for November 2-16 Let's Straighten It Out - Latimore I barely remember this one from 1974, but I know I saw him sing it on Soul Train. For this song, we return to down-home southern soul music with a strong male voice.
Is that single badly warped or is this cut supposed to sound that wobbly? No memory of this one either. Unremarkable.
I think you're hearing a combination of the keyboard, possibly a slightly off-center pressing, and the data compression effects. I have the song on two Rhino CDs and the keyboard is the same.
These last two Number Ones, I have no memory that I know of, of either. And this despite my listening for a time "back then" to 107.5 WBLS - "The Total Black Experience in Sound." I do, however, remember a few other things played on that station: - The Gloria Gaynor medley spoken of elsewhere - The long version of "Do It ('Til You're Satisfied)" - Ben Vereen's cover of "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)" - Bobbi Humphrey's rendition of "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" But then, as they say, memory is a strange thing.
"Let's Straighten It Out" is supposed to sound like that, far as I know. I've never heard it "unwobbly". It's on a Henry Stone label, so it's got that special sauce. I didn't know this song until the '90s, when I picked up Rhino's Latimore best of, and it knocked me the freak out. The man was so so good at establishing a mood - the slow swampy groove here puts the vibe straight across: something is wrong with his baby and he wants to fix it. Latimore more or less became a straight bluesman in the '80s and was last year inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
I don't remember this either although it looks to have been played on AT40 at least for a few weeks as it got to #31. I guess if something didn't make an impression I would just tune it out.
Next #1 for November 16, 1974 Woman To Woman - Shirley Brown Here's another old-skool classic soul ballad that I have little-to-no memory of, and, frankly, don't much care for. Listening to it (I have it on a CD or two), I hear the singer having such low self-esteem that she will fight for her cheating man. It's her cheating man she should be calling up, telling him that he's history.
She's feeding and housing him, buying his clothes and paying the note on his car - might as well let Barbara have him. But love is strange. The tune's long been a favorite of mine. Shirley's a decent enough singer, and has a pretty distinct Aretha influence. The instrumentation is where it really shines - just a great slow groove with a top-notch bass line. Seeing it follow "Let's Straighten It Out" at #1 gave me the thought that they could go together as a story - he came home and found her crying because she found Barbara's number in his pocket, and the next day she calls her up.
I remember this one, it almost cracked the Pop Top 20. Seems like a song out of '72 with that slow groove which is nice but the song, structurally speaking, really goes nowhere. I'm betting the women's movement would hate this because it places the focus on the other woman instead of the cheating man who, if you're to believe the lyrics, sounds like a real catch. IIRC, there was an answer song to this but I can't recall what it is. W.B.?
These people sound like they all need an intervention. Where's the man's take in all of this? Barry White should have recorded an answer song chock full of sexy, low, low murmurings of "Baby, oh baby, you need love and I got love...all for you."
There was another answer song besides Ms. Mason's: This number, by Lonnie Youngblood, "Man To Woman": Issued on Truth (a subsidiary of Stax), cat. # TRA-3206, Ms. Brown's number - considered an epitome of "deep soul" - was the last big hit for Stax itself. In a little over a year, it was no more.
Well knock me over with a feather! There was the man's take on all this. Any kids or In-laws wanting to weigh in, too?
