Document clip from Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton etc. by BBC4
“Rod Temperton’s hardly a household name – in fact, many Jackson fans will have been unaware of him until recent events led to a few mentions in dispatches – but the veteran Englishman wrote many of Jackson’s most famous songs, including Rock With You, Off the Wall and Thriller. And his contribution to pop doesn’t stop there. In fact, it’s Herculean.” Dave Simpson, Guardian
Aretha Franklin: I Say A Little Prayer (Live, 1970)
Junior Wells: Hoodoo Man Blues (Live)
“Delmark’s most famous blues release is Mr. Wells’s “Hoodoo Man Blues,” which Mr. Koester produced. Two generations of blues bands have covered nearly every song on that recording, which the All Music Guide describes as “one of the truly classic blues albums of the 1960s” and “absolutely mesmerizing” in its ability to transfer onto tape the feeling of a live performance by a working Chicago blues band.” Larry Rother, New York Times
Levon Helm & John Hiatt: the Weight (Live)
“Today, in conversation, Helm can sound worrisomely hoarse at times, but he says that his voice is now more than halfway back to what it was. And he sounds great on Dirt Farmer, which mixes up comparatively new songs, such as Steve Earle’s 1999 ”The Mountain,” with a clutch of tunes he was taught by his parents. Helm is also enjoying a Tinseltown renaissance. He made a cameo in this year’s Mark Wahlberg actioner Shooter, stealing the movie clean away from the onetime Funky Bunch overlord. Meanwhile, Helm’s old pal Tommy Lee Jones cast him in his 2005 big-screen directorial debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and the pair will also appear together in next spring’s thriller In the Electric Mist. ”He plays the ghost of General John Bell Hood, Texas cavalry,” says Jones. ”He brings an air of authenticity to whatever he does.”” Clark Collis, EW
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“The opening track, a cover of the Grateful Dead’s little gem “Tennessee Jed” is a fun number that features acoustic guitars, horns and, of course, Helm’s wonderful backwoods vocals. Larry Campbell’s production works well here — as it does throughout the album — giving the song a feel that’s a little bit “Dixie Chicken”-era Little Feat, but without the L.A. gloss that somewhat distracted from Feat’s studio work.
And with “Tennessee Jed” setting the scene, we’re off on a trip through an America that might be hard to find in these days of corporate homogenization — or might not even exist at all anymore — but we’ve all known it or can feel it if we listen down into ourselves.
Helm’s take on Happy Traum’s “Golden Bird” is beautiful, stark, elegiac … and a treat for those whose only exposure to Traum has been through folk-guitar instruction books.
Lightening the mood after “Golden Bird,” is a delightful cover of Muddy Waters’ “Stuff You Gotta Watch,” that tosses away all the conventions of Chicago blues and reworks the song as a back porch sing-along complete with accordion breaks. Helm does the same thing with the album’s other Waters cover, “You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had,” that showcases Helm’s always tasty mandolin work alongside some really first-rate, understated acoustic slide guitar.
Also nice is Helm’s take on Randy Newman’s tip of the hat to New Orleans, “Kingfish.” With a horn arrangement by New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint and Helm’s crack band driving the song along, this thing is pure chicken grease … the tasty kind.
Adding a little flavor to the mix is producer Campbell’s “When I Go Away” which features some fine white gospel vocals. A simple song, but there’s a lot going on with those vocals. Catchy. One of those songs that invite you to join in on vocals … even if you can’t sing a lick.
Helm seems to spin all this out effortlessly. The songs picked for the album are all smart choices and the arrangements are masterful. The acoustic instruments never get lost in the mix, the horns are punchy and tight, and the drums are always in the pocket.
Credit has to be given to Campbell’s production. While he did an amazing job, it never screams out, “Look at me!” and remains an unobtrusive constant on which Helm can showcase what he does best.” Michael Louis Albo. Sonic Boomer
Rod Stewart: The First Cut is The Deepest
“Here, then, are 10 of my favourite records to have come out of Muscle Shoals – from soul to rock’n'roll.” Jason Isbell, The Guardian
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section members Roger Hawkins and David Hoo.
When it got to Paul Simon, that’s when it really developed. That was the first time we cut a true pop act. Of course the reason he came down was to get a black sound. He liked what we got on the Staples’ ‘I’ll Take You There’. We cut ‘Mardi Gras’ in thirty minutes, so he pulls out six more songs and asks which ones we wanna cut. We said, ‘This is it, if we don’t jump on this one, we’re losing our chance.’” Barney Hoskyns, Sonic Boomers
Originally Published: 06/15/2009, Rock’s Backpages
Bettye LaVette & Bon Jovi: A Change is Gonna Come (Live, 2009)
“Vanity Fair Daily: So the new EP is named after “A Change is Gonna Come.” When did you first sing that song?
Bettye LaVette: Maybe a week after Sam [Cooke] did. I mean, it’s a song that everybody sung. I’m very happy about the resurgence of it and the recognition of it, but it wasn’t that big, you know, when it came out. It became much more significant after Sam died [in 1964, at the age of 33], but only because Sam had died. It was many years later that somebody, probably somebody white, associated it with the Civil Rights struggle. And now it’s turned into something else. But I’m very glad that it did, because it’s Sam’s song.
…
But on the new EP, you sing jazz and soul classics, which might seem more expected.
Well, all this while, that y’all weren’t hearing about me, these are the songs I was doing for $50 a night. I was working in places where maybe it was just me and my keyboard player. So these are songs that I’ve always done, other than “A Change is Gonna Come.”
My manager, Jim Lewis, who has now passed away but who got me around 1967, agreed that my waistline was small and my booty was big, but he told me I couldn’t sing. And I’m like, “But I’ve got a record in the chart,” and he said, “That’s cause everybody doesn’t know you can’t sing. But if these records don’t sell, you’re gonna have to know how to sing.” And I was of course resentful, and hostile. I had a record selling, that was in the charts, and he took me to see Billy Eckstine, and Billy Eckstine hadn’t had a damn record in 20 years. And Jim took me to the dressing room and said, “Billy, I want you to meet a young lady who wants to be a singer.” Oh, it broke my heart. And I couldn’t say anything.
But Jim showed me how I could always sing. He said, “Just keep learning songs. Any song you like. Any song. Don’t make no difference which song it is.” I had records with people the whole while I was with him, but he didn’t think very much of them. And as it turns out, he was right.”” Michael Hogan, Vanity Fail
Billy Paul: Me & Mrs. Jones (1972)
“As usual with city-wide movements, it was a case of the right people coming together in the right place at the right time. The right people: classically trained songwriter-arranger-producer Thom Bell and producers-songwriters-label heads Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff; ambitious vocal groups willing to take some chances; and a wealth of talented musicians who formed a house band known as MFSB, which could stand head and shoulders with Motown’s Funk Brothers or Stax’s Booker T. & The MGs. (The abbreviation is short for “Mother Father Sister Brother,” by the way.) Bell, Gamble, and Huff had all been kicking around successfully for a while. Gamble and Huff helped craft late-’60s hits for The Intruders, Archie Bell & The Drells, and others; those songs now sound like the missing link between the ’60s and the ’70s. After cutting his teeth on the Cameo label, Bell was already on to the next thing with string-and-harmony-drenched hits for The Delfonics like “La-La Means I Love You” and “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time).” Sometimes working together and other times apart, they helped steer soul toward the intricately orchestrated, carefully arranged but tangibly organic, irresistibly catchy sounds that became known as Philadelphia Soul. (Or Philly Soul, or the Philadelphia Sound, or to borrow the title from MFSB’s hit theme song for Soul Train, The Sound Of Philadelphia.)” A.V. Club
