"Dusty" Liverpool Soul: Chanting A Lover's Story

This week, I'm featuring another single from Liverpool soulsters The Chants. I'm glad to be making a bit of a fuss about these guys, and I've noticed a little bit of interest in their music growing on both the Soul Source and Soulful Detroit forums. It seems that some of their RCA singles were a popular dancefloor hit on the Northern Soul scene back in the 70s. I'm brushing off a dusty, and slightly crackly 45 (yes, I believed an ebay vendor when they said VG++) But as it happens, dusty is exactly how it was supposed to sound...

This time, it's a single from 1967. The Chants' relationship with Pye had broken down very quickly, and they had moved on to Fontana Records and then to Decca. The producer here is Ivor Raymonde, who was a well-known arranger and former BBC musical director who had devised the arrangement for Dusty Springfield's 1963 hit I Only Want To Be With You, with its Phil Spector-like overloud orchestration giving it the impetus it needed, and had been guiding Dusty's career since then.

All the auspices might appear good, with a proven, experienced hit-maker producing Eddie Amoo's composition A Lover's Story, and providing one of his own, Wearing A Smile, for the b-side. Eddie Amoo has written a wonderful love song, with what may well be the first soul reference to a 'science-fiction book', though no George Clinton funk workouts here! The resulting single does sound lush and polished, and Raymonde gave the Chants the space on A Lover's Story to develop some interesting backing vocal lines on A Lover's Story to show off their harmony skills. However, the guys have to sometimes fight with the violins and flutes of Raymonde's powerful orchestral arrangement. Wearing a Smile is a more conventional pop tune, clearly in a Dusty style, that they perform magnificently, bringing it roaring to life, adding power and versatility to the singing that allows Raymonde to do away with some of the brasher orchestral musak. Sadly, once again, none of this made a difference when it came to getting a hit. Perhaps the Chants should have taken a leaf out of Dusty's book and moved on from Raymonde to try their luck in Memphis...

Instead it was time to move on, to Page One Records, home of numerous British psyche bands such as The Paramounts (soon to become Procul Harem) and The Troggs. However, once again, this move turned sour when Page One's first album release failed to sell, and seriously dented their available cashflow to release other records. The Chants were again not a priority, and moved on to RCA...

The Chants - A Lover's Story (A-side Decca 40923) 1967
The Chants - Wearing A Smile (B-side Decca 40925) 1967

Moving back to the present, Eddie Amoo has been recording with various local 'grime' and hip-hop artists from Toxteth, Rawface from Souls Rest, Laura Leigh, Chan, and The Grime Family to produce a CD of his Liverpool musical named after his Real Thing smash hit "Children Of The Ghetto", which I notice was dramatically less downloaded in my last Chants post (always scroll to the end!!!) Go to this MySpace site "Liverpool's Own" to keep up to date with news about this and other current Liverpool r&b trends (warning for us old folks, these youngsters do seem to enjoy their 'booty') ... Photos courtesy of Bill Harry and Spectropop.

Soul Britannia: Stoned!

The early recordings of the Stones are going to be somewhat humourous to American soul afficionados. But they have their charms. And each song gives some indication of the influences of early British r&b and how a British r&b enthusiast perceived themselves in the early years.

With Come On, the guys attempt to do Chuck Berry for the first time. Clearly terrified of this strange music, the Decca producers constrict the band into a sanitised and clean arrangement that still resembles other tunes by British rock and roll stars of the time. Interestingly, it was not a hit with the r&b crowd, who were disappointed that it did not sound 'authentic', and it only reached No.29. What it does show is that rock and roll was a much bigger element in the influences of British r&b. The b-side, I Want To Be Loved, the Willie Dixon hit popularised by Muddy Waters, is a better track, kept tight by the professional drumming of the jazz musician Charlie Watts, who used to play in Blues Incorporated before joining the younger band. It's blues rather than rhythm and blues, and it's little wonder that early on, British r&b developed a heavy reliance on noisy guitar riffing, and on the power of the harmonica, due to the cheapness of the instrument in comparison with trying to organise a horn section, and the reverence in which blues artists were held by Chris Barber and Alexis Korner and other leaders of the scene.

Next, the Stones turned to songwriters that they idolised, Lennon and McCartney, who gave them I Wanna Be Your Man. Clearly unnerved by the poor response to their first single, both band and Decca Records looked for a sure-fire Beatleesque hit, the only r&b British record companies understood was saleable. The completely unexpected way in which the Beatles had suddenly reached No.1 on the US charts in January 1964 (not 1963 as I previously wrote in a hurry...) stunned everybody, not least themselves, and it had radically changed the way in which young r&b enthusiasts, starting up their own bands, saw their potential. Perhaps they could write their own songs as well as play their favourites.

On the b-side, Stoned shows that there was more to the Rolling Stones than so far meets the eye. It bears the unmistakeable influence of the 1962 hit Last Night by the Mar-Keys, although harmonica takes the place of horns. The British r&b fan was not just a classicist, trying to imitate a revered 'folk' music, however over-earnest some of its proponents sometimes acted (stand up Slowhand...). They were young people excited by an up to the minute sound. This is also a song with a lyric that hardly needs commenting was rather different for British music. The next year, of course, the Rolling Stones would return to the Stax stable to record Rufus Thomas' Walking The Dog for their first album.

The Rolling Stones first self-titled EP, recorded in late 1963, and their second recorded in Chicago in 1964, begin to reveal their true appreciation for some of the masters of r&b, and more closely resemble how they played live...

The Rolling Stones - Come On (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - I Want To Be Loved (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - I Wanna Be Your Man (Decca 1963)

The Rolling Stones - Stoned (Decca 1963)