99 1/2 Just Won't Do: Brown Eyed Has Got To 100!

I have let another milestone pass me by... my post about The Chants was in fact my 100th published post.! With all of the half-started posts strewn in my blogger dashboard, I never realised...

To help me celebrate it, here is the late, the great, the wicked Wilson Pickett, to sing that ode to perfection, 99 1/2 Won't Do. I just hope 102 is enough! Accompanying him, The Alabama Christian Movement For Human Rights Choir sing the hymn and freedom song from which Pickett, Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper took their inspiration.

In the summer of 1963, in the midst of the gruelling Birmingham, Alabama protests co-ordinated by Rev Fred Shuttlesworth of the ACMHR and Rev Martin Luther King of the SCLC, the Alabama Christian Movement Choir perfomed nightly at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in support of the protests. According to historian Wilson Fallin Jr: "In two organizations within the ACMHR, women made up the majority of the members. The ACMHR choir, formed in 1960, was intended to enhance the spirituality of the Monday night meetings. Twenty-three members formed the group. Most were Baptist women who sang in their church choirs and were accustomed to singing songs similar to those sung by the movement choir, including spirituals and gospel hymns. They sang "God Will Make a Way Some How," Walk with me Lord," and "Ninety-Nine and a Half Won't Do." One member of the choir remarked that "the choir sang with faith in God knowing that his power worked through their songs to give courage." In the mass meetings, female singers allowed their emotions to take over, and on many occasions, they had to be restrained by the ushers."

Choir conductor Carlton Reese adapted the lyrics to add new civil-rights phrases to a popular gospel song sung by Mother Katie Bell Nubin (mother of even more famous Sister Rosetta Tharpe). Reese is leading the singing, backed by a powerful thumping Hammond organ. This version was recorded by folk singer Guy Carawan. The recording served a dual purpose, giving nightly hope and strength to those taking part in the protest, but also as a conscious element of Project C, a strategy to confront the racialist system of segregation in the city head-on in a high-visibility strategy that would engage the entire nation. The singers themselves faced intimidation and arrest. Cleopatra Kennedy was 20 years old in 1963 when she sang solos for the choir. She recalls what it was like the first time she was sent to jail: "That first time, she was in jail for 14 days, but the group sang songs and stomped their feet on the iron beds to make their music. "Singing songs was our way of keeping our self-esteem up, of washing away fear," she says. The day after she was released, she went back on the picket line." When Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed in April of that year, local liberal white church leaders wrote to him urging him to tone down the movement's activities, calling them "unwise and untimely". His response was the famous Letter From A Birmingham Jail, with his powerful riposte: "For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." The situation would become even more ense later in that year, with the use of dogs and fire hoses against student and youth protestors, and the bombing of the 16th Street Church during a Sunday school session, with the tragic death of four children. It was in trying times like these that freedom songs could give hope and inspiration.

Jump forward in time two years, to May 1965. Wilson Pickett arrived in Memphis courtesy of Jerry Wexler, who was sure that The Little Label That Could had the spark he needed to secure Pickett, former member of The Falcons, an elusive r&b hit. Pickett sat down with Steve Cropper, and within a matter of half-an-hour, they had come up with In The Midnight Hour and Don't Fight It, both taking the behind-the-beat Stax sound in a new direction by incorporating a behind-the-beat 'Jerk' rhythm. Not a bad night's work! So pleased was he with the sessions, that he sent each of the MGs a $100 thank-you gift.

Wexler and Pickett were eager to return in October and again in December 1965. Eddie Floyd, Wilson's old partner from The Falcons, Steve Cropper, keen to earn some more songwriting money, and Donald Dunn, impressed with Pickett's vocal ability, were all pleased to see him again. Jim Stewart was less keen, perhaps fearful that Atlantic Records were borrowing too much of the Stax sound. The MGs were joined this time by Isaac Hayes, brought in to play piano while Booker T Jones was at college. The new sessions were more difficult, as the group felt the pressure to reproduce what they had achieved in May. Nervous about the prospect, Steve Cropper turned to the experienced Eddie Floyd for advice about songwriting. Cropper said in an interview with Gerry Hershey: "He had been on the stage, and he knew what was going on... He was real helpful to me. Eddie knew the pulse on the street, he knew the pulse of the ghettos of Chicago and Detroit, and I didn't know jack shit about that..."

Eddie Floyd and Cropper had been working on a new song for a whole week, 634-5789, before Wilson arrived back in Memphis on 19th December. After hearing a tape, a clearly tense and nervous Pickett let fly: "This is it? This is my hit tune? It's a piece of shit!" Eddie Floyd had to be prised off his old buddy! But apparently, it had been no different in the old days with The Falcons...

Later on that day, Wilson had calmed down, and so had Eddie, so they went over to Pickett's hotel to write something else. Eddie and Steve noticed a Coca-Cola billboard, with the slogan 'Ninety-Nine And A Half Won't Do.' Recalling the gospel tune and the freedom song, and with Eddie suggesting they add that stop-start behind-the-beat jerk feel, soon Pickett had another classic in the can, so to speak!

The songwriting and recording relationship was sometimes explosive but always professional, and could have produced even more hits, had not Jim Stewart become uncomfortable with the amount of studio time devoted to an Atlantic artist. Citing Pickett's 'drunkenness' (an assertion that Cropper and others hotly dispute, citing Pickett's sober dedication to every session), Stewart packed Pickett and Jerry Wexler back to New York. It was time for them to try to find similar magic at FAME Studios...

The Alabama Christian Movement Choir - 99 1/2 Won't Do

Wilson Pickett - Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won't Do)

Read A Letter From A Birmingham Jail here...

Information from Soulsville: USA by Rob Bowman, Nowhere To Run by Gerry Hershey, and liner notes of Voices Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966 by Bernice Johnson Reagon and Phyllis May. Wilson Fallin's article about the ACMHR and the role of women in the organisation can be found here. Visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to read more and to study eye-witness accounts of events from 1956-1963. Quote from Cleopatra Kennedy from an interview for Baylor University magazine.

Barbara George Remembered...

I read today in the obituary column of the Guardian newspaper that Barbara George, the New Orleans soul singer, died on the 10th August 2006. Born Barbara Smith in New Orleans on 16th August 1942, she married young but very unhappily. To exorcise some of the emotions she felt trapped in her violent relationship, she wrote the song I Know (You Don't Love Me No More), basing the melody on the gospel song Just a Closer Walk With Thee. She signed to the black co-operative label All-For-One, run by pianist Jessie Hill, who recognised her song-writing ability. The song reached No. 1 on the R&B charts, and No. 3 on the US Pop charts.

After a second single You Talk About Love, and an album of her songs titled I Know, both failed to break out on the national r&b chart, All-For-One let George move to Sue Records. Her later records did not duplicate the chart success of her first hit, and Barbara George increasingly turned to alcohol to cope with the life of a singer constantly touring on the soul music circuit. After making a recovery in the 1980s, she returned to gospel and to Chauvin, Louisiana.

I know we'll remember her.

Dan Phillips at Home of The Groove wrote a detailed obituary and biographical piece on Barbara George on 20th August, which has been used by the local press in Louisiana and by obituarists in the press as the basis of their reports. I recommend visiting to learn the full story of this remarkable woman.

POSTSCRIPT: Could the horn interlude in Otis Redding's version of Down In The Valley have been influenced by the horn section on Barbara George's I Know (You Don't Love Me No More)?

Otis Redding: Live At The Apollo November 1963

It's holidays again, so I can do an extra post this week!

You should all have everything ever committed to vinyl by the Big O. That is all. Sadly, my girlfriend informs me that I can't afford the Definitive Collection. Unless I am very, very good...

So, it is quite hard to do a posting about Otis Redding, which contributes anything new. However, I found recently a tape of a BBC radio show from some years back about the life of Otis, and amongst the interviews and tracks was a recording of Otis Redding at the Apollo Theater, on 16th November 1963, singing Pain In My Heart. On the stage that night werethe headliner Ben E King, The Coasters, The Falcons (including of course Wilson Pickett and Eddie Floyd), James Brown's protegé Doris Troy and Rufus Thomas. Otis was understandably nervous.
The recordings that evening were released as The Apollo On A Saturday Night on Atco. This had been a common event from 1944 up until 1962, overseen by engineers from nearby Apollo Records, but shows had been released ad hoc and never viewed as commercial until James Brown's Live At The Apollo. The November 16th 1963 recording was overseen by a crew from Atlantic Records, and considered a showcase of new talents from city and southern branches of soul music. It includes The Falcons singing I Found A Love and Alabama Bound, Doris Troy singing Misty and Say Yeah, Rufus Thomas with Rockin' Chair and Walking The Dog. The Coasters sing Ain't Nothin' To Me and Speedo's Back in Town, and Ben E. King does Groovin', Stand By Me, and its reverse Don't Play That Song.

Ben E. King, putative headliner that night, had nothing but r.e.s.p.e.c.t. for 'the big, bearlike man, sweating and trembling worrying about his suit, his voice, the band...' He recalled:

"Otis told me he was up from home and he was terrified... Otis said to me, 'You think they're gonna go for what I do, what we do down home?' But as long as I knew him, Otis never did get over that little bit of stage fright. He looked over at Rufus that night..."

There is an interview with Rufus Thomas about the evening, in which he reveals that Otis was so nervous and unsure of his stage presence, that Rufus, due to come on after Otis, and Apollo MC King Coleman trained him up in the moves, and showed Otis how to catch the eye of one girl, just one girl, and sing to her, so that her enthusiasm spread through the crowd. Coleman introduced him with the line, "He can sing baby, he can sing!..."

It certainly seemed to work. Backed by King Curtis' band, Otis raises the roof...

Some of the live Apollo tracks can be found on Otis! The Definitive Otis Redding (Rhino Records)

Rufus Thomas interviewed about Otis' debut at the Apollo
Otis Redding - Pain In My Heart (Apollo Theater Nov 1963)

I've got myself so intrigued I have sought out a copy of this LP!... I'll post something when it arrives...

Ben E. King quotes taken from Nowhere To Run by Gerri Hershey. Other facts from liner notes and from A Tribute to Otis by BBC Radio.

The Soul Clan: Where you going, Joe?...

The way that Don Covay asks, "Hey Joe's packing his bags, where you goin', Joe?" at the begininning of The Soul Clan's single "Soul Meeting" has never sounded like a good omen. The concept of the southern soul supergroup, founded by Covay in 1968, and comprising Don Covay, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Arthur Conley and Ben E. King, never fulfilled the hopes of its members, and perhaps some could already sense it while recording their first and only single.

The original plan had included Wilson Pickett, but reportedly, Pickett had backed out, concerned both for his solo career ambitions, and perhaps concerned that the group would not prosper amongst Solomon Burke's many other business ventures.

Otis Redding was the other mooted Clan member, and the beginning of recording had been delayed while Otis underwent throat surgery and recuperated. Sadly, by the time the situation had been finalised, Redding had met his tragic death. Arthur Conley, an artist whom Redding had cultivated and produced, was inducted in his stead. Joe Tex said during the 1981 reunion, "I would have given it a chance if Otis had lived. Man's head was on straight... the future of the Soul Clan died with Otis..."

Joe revealed also his take on the spirit he had hoped the Soul Clan would embody, as he describes Otis thus: "Talk to white, talk to black, don't piss nobody off, but don't Tom neither..."

Solomon Burke, who, after Covay himself, was possibly the most committed to the enterprise, said in an interview, “We wanted to interlock ourselves as a group, to express to the younger people how strong we should be and to help one another, work with one another and support one another...”

The sentiment was a noble one, therefore, but the business acumen of Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler was not buying into it. The Soul Meeting single failed to catch fire, reaching No.34 on the RnB Chart, and only No.91 on the Pop Chart. An LP was scheduled and duly appeared, but it seems Wexler cancelled funding for group recordings. The LP has the two sides of the single, plus a selection of solo recordings by the Soul Clan members. What was the motivation for this? Don Covay said in an interview with Gerri Hirshey, "Some funny stuff went down at Atlantic." Solomon Burke seemed to believe that Wexler in particular did not want to give his most successful black stars a greater control over their careers.

There is some cold logic in this. Wexler had groomed Ray Charles, only to see him leave at the moment Atlantic might have capitalised upon their investment by involving Charles in movie deals etc. He may have feared that to allow five of his greatest and most lucrative hitmakers to work and act in solidarity would give them the power to collectively renegotiate their contracts, and cut the company's profit margins. As I said, logical, but hardly honourable or far-sighted, in my view. In each case, the members of the Soul Clan were poorly served by a company which failed to invest in publicity and actively sabotaged their recording schedule. Times were changing, and none of the final line-up of the Soul Clan were experimenting with, nor being encouraged to try, the new sounds of funk that might have boosted and elongated their hit careers. Atlantic Records was happy to let them fade away, while sucking up the back-catalogues and talents of regional hit factories such as Stax. No Marvin Gayes or Stevie Wonders would be nurtured in New York City.

The B-Side to Soul Meeting is That's How It Feels, an apt summation of a bold but doomed venture to establish the Five Pillars of Southern Soul. It was written by Don Covay and Bobby Womack. The single was recorded in Nashville, in February 1968.

That's How It Feels - The Soul Clan (Atlantic LP 587127 1968)

This song has just been released on Atlantic Unearthed: Soul Brothers, a new compilation of allegedly never-released tracks, that have been mercifully set free from their state of limbo by Rhino Records. I am sure this is not the only example of a track that, rather than being unreleased, Atlantic simply willfully forgot... you can buy it here.

Joe Tex said at the press conference before the1981 reunion show: "I'm tellin you right now, it ain't gonna work." The concert was reportedly chaotic, with many technical problems and other setbacks. "...we been having to make it on our own so long it's hard to get in step. A soul man is that. Singular. Soul Clan is more a beautiful idea to me." A statement that undercuts the sugar-coated marketing of soul music that tries to reduce it to a Starbucks moment.

The quotes and some of the facts for this entry have been found in Gerri Hirshey's "Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music".

La La La... Who's Not Listening?

Recently, a woman from Ohio wrote to the British "Guardian" newspaper to criticise a music journalist who hadn't liked Jamie Foxx's new CD. The journalist had found it bland, derivative, modern rnb, and made disparaging comparisons with Ray Charles. The critic reposted: "I have long believed that caucasian people just cannot understand our music." Apparently melanin has a proven scientific link to a 'funky' gene, and activates key polyrhythmic receptors in the brain... and apparently I come from somewhere on the Russian steppes and eat borscht...

However, sometimes, I wonder myself. Here is a track from Segun Bucknor and The Assembly, soon to become The Revolution, a popular band in 60s Nigeria. They started out playing covers of all kinds of pop music, taking on British rnb and American soul. Bucknor particularly admired Wilson Pickett, amongst others, and had spent several years studying at Columbia University in NYC, and brought this experience back with him to Nigeria. "Back in those days," he recalls in an interview with the Nigeria 70 research team ,"everybody was trying to be more Elvis than Elvis!" The band moved towards incorporating more local highlife and juju rhythms into their music, but still liked to retain their other influences, to see what would happen. Great admirers of Fela Kuti, they too began to explore political themes, in their most famous song "Son of January 15th", being the date of the coup which set off the Biafran War. Segun began to shave his head and wear chains and other costumery in a nod to the African culture of ancient Egypt. However, it would be hard for anybody to maintain an outspoken political stance when confronted by an invasion of the stage by disgruntled army colonels who wanted to make some musical criticism.

Apparently, for some critics, though, Segun Bucknor just wasn't trying hard enough! This is what BBC journalist Bren O'Callaghan has to say in comparison to Fela Kuti: "Bucknor, on the other hand, was one of the rank and file, a journeyman who was trying to eke out a living in Nigeria as a popular musician, and who was beholden to local record labels and the demands of the marketplace ... Bucknor can't really be faulted for not having Kuti's unique combination of bravery and megalomania ... However, when Bucknor narrows his focus to personal relationships ("La La La," "That's the Time," "Love and Affection," "You Killing Me"), his music loses some of its conviction, and he sounds more like an American soul singer looking for a chart hit. "La La La" (which is inexplicably presented in three rather similar versions) is certainly funky enough, but it sounds like a manufactured cross between Otis Redding's "Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song)" and Toots Hibbert's "Funky Kingston." The band still cooks, and Bucknor is always in good voice, but these pieces lack the personal stamp of songs like "Sorrow, Sorrow, Sorrow" and "Son of January 15th."

Well, I am sure that Segun Bucknor is grateful for that! Sometimes, people just don't think. Segun Bucknor was living in a country just recovering from a ravaging war. Is it not just possible that he, and other people, would just sometimes like to hear some nice music and have some fun? So what if it doesn't sound like 'authentic' african music to a musicologist? Has it broken some kind of rule? Is musical fusion forbidden to Africans (at least those not called Fela Kuti)? SO what if it isn't earnest and political? Does Bob Marley get this kind of criticism for singing Three Little Birds? This is as real as it gets!

Segun Bucknor & The Assembly - La La La (Polydor 7" 2068037)

Buy it on the Strut Records Cd "Segun Bucknor: Poor Man Get No Brother" (you can even get a VINYL copy of it!), or find it on the compilation Nigera 70 also by Strut Records. I think this has been discontinued, so see if you can find a second-hand copy - it is a great intro to Nigerian music, and I have used its authoritative booklet to find most of the details in this report.