Bored?! You and I both take to this era like the manor born. But then, every generation has had people who had no appreciation for those that came before, so . . .
I came to this thread specifically because we're in my favorite era of R&B. I was just going on 9 in Summer '73 & didn't get to experience it first-hand unfortunately ... but I've sure made up for it in my listening history down the road. Not that I don't love the music that came before, just that I'm not as well-versed enough to speak on it as I'd like to be. I laid out on the main thread for that reason.
Sure you are. You didn't have to be alive at the time to appreciate a song, even love it and wax eloquent about it. I was in diapers when Nat King Cole's Stardust was a hit , have no memory of it when it was at peak popularity but it remains one of my favorite songs ever. There are dozens, if not more , that I feel the same way about. Fresh perspectives are always welcome.
I was nine years old going on ten in 1973. I lived all this music, and the pop music world first-hand. It's also the year I really became obsessed with what top 40 radio was playing and listened to it every day and night. But, as this thread enters the latter part of the year, my interest shifted back to pop. That isn't to say that I abandoned R&B, but, my watching Soul Train diminished somewhat. Whatever R&B/soul/Black/urban (whatever you call it) I heard during the rest of the year, and the next, was stuff that made the top 40 of the pop chart too. And, with that, I now announce: This is one of my favorite James Brown tunes. Sure, it bills Fred Wesley & The JB's, his backing band, but it's really all him. WE haven't heard a lot from JB lately, but I consider this to be one of the best stuff that came from his empire in quite a while.
Very smart, that JB. Putting out a record under his backing band's name - B.T.W., this was on the People label (PE 621), while Brown himself was on Polydor. It also shows that he put himself front, center, sideways and diagonal on every record by every other artist he'd produced (one of the most famous portions of his oeuvre were howls he shouted in, of all places, a Lyn Collins record from the prior year, "Think (About It)"). It is one of his more famous tunes, for sure. (The flip, "Everybody Got Soul," is the last five or so minutes of the full number.) This heralded, ostensibly, the return to the fold of guitarist Jimmy "Chank" Nolen (who remained with Brown to his death in 1983) and saxophonist Maceo Parker (his first since returning) - both of whom had been among those fired in the 1970 mutiny before a concert, leading to the birth of the original JB's with Bootsy and Catfish Collins (who wound up in a certain George Clinton's burgeoning P-Funk empire). Up to the last year, Brown's stuff had frequently managed to make the lower rungs of the Top 20, but with the recent change in calculation methodology for the Hot 100, this could only muster #22 there. Is it only me, or are the sounds Wesley emanated from his trombone more reminiscent of someone making a sound pressing their lips together in a certain way? Speaking more as someone who has an ear for sound quality for certain instruments. As for Soul Train, no NYC station carried it at all in 1974.
And, that was becoming a big complaint back in those days. Either a large city would broadcast it sporadically at 2:AM, or not at all. Something with a word that starts with an "r" was blamed for it.
Absolutely love "Soul Makossa". It's one of the few songs on my disco compilations I haven't heard 1000 times, and I crank it when I hear it in my car. Another song like that, which I heard a lot at the time (1976), and then didn't hear again for 30 years, is Andrea True Connection's "More More More". Love that song to death. I conveniently forget Andrea True's backstory when I hear that song. As far as Soul Train, I can't remember exact dates, but I do remember Channel 3 in Philadelphia (KYW-TV) carrying it during the '70s -- it was on during the day, possibly Saturday afternoons. (KYW Channel 3 was an NBC affiliate then; it is now (as of about 1994) a CBS affiliate). It must have been on that station during 1974, during the time of a certain pop #1 (and R/B #1?) that mentions Philadelphia in the title and was the Soul Train theme for a while.
I should look and see if my Rolling Stone Rock and Roll Almanac book (which covers the years 1955-1982) lists the #1 R/B hits. If it does, I'll be able to contribute more to this thread. Like some others, I also have many years to catch up on here....
It isn't an illusion. I was around back then. I followed this stuff in the Black "community" and in the trades.
Not much to say about yet another James Brown record. I'm good with a couple of his better songs but after that... I'm not hating, just not that into him. Still lots of great stuff coming.
WNEW, though, did resume broadcasting it in '75 until the early '80's when it stopped off at WPIX Channel 11.
Fred! FRED! Is that Maceo? This has been one of my top James cuts ever since I laid ears on it. It's a party on a platter, and I just about flipped when the unedited version came out on the J.B.s anthology. It could go on for a half hour and I wouldn't mind.
This is what I mean -- it seems a little hypocritical to have rules about what can or can't be talked about, and then have people allude to things without being able to talk about them (and perhaps the right word is "allusion" as opposed to "illusion"). All I will say is that when I made that last post, I was "really" seeing red and obviously chose the wrong word. I still don't know what you are referring to, and frankly at this point I don't care. ========================== Leaving that behind, I do have a list of R&B #1s from 1955-1982, and can therefore contribute to this thread. A cursory look at the 1973 #1s around this time reveals that there are more R&B #1s I don't know, than do know, and therefore participation on my part will be somewhat limited for that reason. (my parent's preferred stations at that time didn't play much R&B) It would help me if there had been some sort of R&B #1 "time sweep" to help fill in many of the holes for the songs I don't know. The pop #1 "time sweep" from the History of Rock and Roll radio show helped me immensely in this regard (from the pop perspective).
Hot button issues tend to get flagged, especially when things get heated in the discussion. Not saying this would be the case here but it has happened, most recently when religion was brought up in the pop thread and it got shut down for a day. It would be good to be able to have an open forum where anything goes but unfortunately, some folks don't know how to play nice so the forum has rules we must abide by.
I agree. Having to talk around something and hinting without getting specific is worse than being able to just come out and say what you mean. I know why they don't let us do that here, but it is frustrating. I don't know why it would make you angry. It really happened. There actually was a lot of controversy about it back then. That is a fact, so why get upset about how things were? And, why do people get angry when it's acknowledged? Then, why were you seeing red? ========================== I am finding it interesting how many of you younger guys were restricted by what radio stations your parents listened to. I guess I was fortunate that my family never controlled what stations we kids favored. I'm not criticizing, just observing how family cultures are different from one another. Even when I was three years old, I had my own little radio and could pick whatever station I wanted. I even slept with it under my pillow or wore my earphone. What is a time-sweep? Do you mean like a montage where only three or five seconds of a song is sampled? If I had the time, I could certainly put one together, but how could you hear it?. I admit ignorance for knowing how to create YouTube videos.
My only restriction was geographical - up until '77 we lived in the rural Mountain West (mostly near the Utah border, but a few years in the Colorado Rockies). As you can imagine, radio was non-existent during the day. At night, the strongest AM stations came out of Salt Lake, so there wasn't a lot of R&B or album rock coming my way. I do vaguely recall the Denver stations I picked up in '73, so I probably did hear quite a few R&B songs. We left the Rockies in early '74, so pretty much back to whatever the SLC jocks were allowed to play.
Well, I know some station in SLC played AT40 with Casey Kasem at some point in the mid-70s. I remember him announcing it after a station break. I hear ya about radio. While the local radio stations played the R&B in the Hot 100 top 20, that's about it. There was Soul Train. But, we made a couple of trips to Texas in the 70s, and it was in the Dallas-Ft.Worth area that I heard KNOK, a soul station, and I heard a lot there. By 1975, it seemed that the airwaves, radio and TV, were flooded with soul, funk, and disco music. The music was also on the rise on top 40 stations. This is the time where a lot of rock fans were disenfranchised by radio, but they shouldn't have been. Plenty of rock music got to the top, as we will see on the other thread. It's just that there were equal amounts of all music types (well, maybe not country just yet).
Probably KCPX - that was the Top 40 station IIRC. AT40 was generally Saturday mornings, so that would've been dead air time in the boonies.
Gotta mention that my main men The Isley Brothers are just kicking off their 3+3 era in Summer '73. They're probably the R&B act that has the most songs I feel should've been #1 but weren't ... like "That Lady", peaking at #7 right about now.
Well, to keep this thread from sinking into the abyss, let me announce the next #1 single since no one has much to say about JB right now. I Believe In You (You Believe In Me) - Johnnie Taylor With this single, on July 14, 1973, Billboard again changed the name of the chart to "Hot Soul Singles". In 1969, it was changed to "Soul Singles". I'm guessing that the "Hot" designation was meant to reflect the rising popularity of the music in the mainstream, and the increased activity of the chart. Now, I have no memory of this song from 1973. As I said before, my following of soul music fell off here, as my focus was on pop top 40. If I know about any soul music from this time, it was on the pop top 40 radio. I can say that this song has been covered by several artists, including some recent ones, and Johnnie Taylor's may not be the original. Nice little song, but I just don't remember it.
