A list (in no particular order) of my 500 favorite songs (singles, deep cuts, hits, and more) of all time. Includes a wide array of selections from rock, punk, funk, R&B, soul, classical, jazz, folk, and world music.
If "I'm So Excited" or "Neutron Dance" come to mind when you think of The Pointer Sisters, you're missing out on their far superior early 70s output. In particular, their 1973 self-titled debut album and Steppin' (1975), which contains the sisters' own composition "How Long (Betcha' Got a Chick on the Side)," are well worth a listen. Granted, the albums are a bit uneven and can veer into overblown camp at times, but they also showcase their incomparable vocal harmonies and their ability to tackle any style--from raw Chicago blues and throwback Big Band numbers to sincere Country & Western tunes and blistering New Orleans-style funk. (Skeptical? Get a taste of one of their live shows from 1975.) "How Long" falls into the funk category with its growling wah-wah guitars, insistent beat, and insane thumping bass.* The song features Anita Pointer on lead vocal, singing about a man she knows is two-timing her but still can't bring herself to leave, along with some sultry, syncopated backing vocals from her three sisters, Ruth, Bonnie, and June (yeah, kids--there were four Pointers when the band began): betcha' got a chick on the side / sure you got a chick / I know you got a chick on siiiiiiide. After you hear this groove, you'll never think "Jump (For My Love)" again.
(*PS: If anyone knows who the session player was on this track, please post a comment; the overall style and those triple stops every few measures make me think Chuck Rainey, but I haven't been able to verify it anywhere.)
The Staple Singers started out in the late 1940s as a gospel group consisting of siblings Mavis, Cleotha, Pervis, and Yvonne Staples, led by their guitarist father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples. Through the years, their repertoire expanded from gospel standards to organic R&B with a social conscience. A key example is the sublimely funky "Respect Yourself" from their 1972 Stax album Be Altitude: Respect Yourself. The message of the song is reason enough to love it: getting respect means earning respect, and that starts with self respect. But the cherry on this sundae is that the track was recorded in Muscle Shoals, AL, with the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Who was the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, you ask? They're only some of the best session musicians (next to The Funk Brothers and The Wrecking Crew) to ever put sound on tape. They basically were a bunch of white dudes from rural Alabama with amazing chops and a love of early rock and soul music. They ended up backing the likes of Aretha Franklin ("I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You"), Wilson Pickett ("Land of 1000 Dances"), and Etta James ("Tell Mama") at a tiny recording studio in the middle of nowhere. So think about this: not only did a family gospel band (whose leader was pushing 60 at the time of the recording) score a Top 5 hit with this chunk of funk, they did it recording in the middle of Alabama in 1972. With a band of white country boys. It gives me chills thinking about how, in the middle of a state that was a powder keg of racial tension at a time when younger and older generations were finding little middle ground when it came to culture or ideologies, you not only had black and white musicians making soul-stirring music together, but you also had multiple generations working together. I think that's pretty noteworthy.
So, there are essentially two Kool & The Gangs: the gritty, socially-conscious one from the late 60s/early 70s that played a unique brand of funk-jazz, and the slick one from the late 70s that played ready-for-radio R&B. As much as "Get Down On It" or "Celebration" can get any dance floor of squares gyrating arrhythmically like Tipper Gore at the 1992 inaugural ball, I prefer the earlier incarnation of the band. Particularly the 1973 album Wild and Peaceful, which contains the track "Jungle Boogie." Anyone old enough to remember will recall that Quentin Tarantino used the song to great effect in Pulp Fiction (1994). Although "Jungle Boogie" was one of those songs that always lingered in my consciousness, it wasn't until "Jules" and "Vincent" tuned their Chevy Nova's radio to the song and started discussing the subtle differences between European and American McDonald's food that I realized: this is a badass song. The song is built from the bottom up. The kick drum on the track hits with such thunderous ferocity that it still makes me wonder how they hell they mic'd up the thing to get that pure, live feel. Then the bass and clavinet (played through a wah-wah pedal) share the duties of jamming on that indelible, syncopated riff against the straight 4, with the chicken-scratch guitar and horn section joining the party to put the funk on ya. Not counting their roadie Don Boyce's growling ad-libs, the lyrics are sparse: Jungle boogie! and Get down, get down! But I believe there's a lot of meaning behind that call to "get down." Yes, it's a call to boogie. But it's also a commentary about living in 1970s America's urban "concrete jungles." In other words, America's inner cities were like war zones where you had to "get down" and take cover if you wanted to survive. I sort of see Parliament's "Aqua Boogie" from 1978 as a companion piece, where George Clinton uses the motif of "dancing under water without getting wet" as a commentary on the double standards and challenges being faced by urban black communities at that time. It's not easy to pick up on the commentary in "Jungle Boogie," unless you take it in context with the rest of Wild and Peaceful, which features themes of unity, peace, truth, and equality, flowing throughout. In fact, a lot of funk music only appears to be simple dance music on the surface. There's usually real, insightful political or social commentary bubbling under the booty-shakin' beats and party vibe lyrics. Which is why I love it.
Earth, Wind & Fire occasionally caught flak for being funk pretenders. (Check the lyrics of Funkadelic's "Let's Take It to the Stage," where George Clinton refers to the band as "Earth, Hot Air, and No Fire.") But I never viewed Maurice White and his crew that way. In their prime, EW&F had an almost "Duke Ellington Orchestra of R&B" vibe about them; they could play intricate, jazz-infused ballads with an unmatched class and virtuosity and then turn right around and tear the roof off the sucka and get downright stanky. "Shining Star" from the 1975 soundtrack album for the less-than-great Harvey Keitel film about the music biz, That's the Way of the World, is a perfect example of the latter. Everything on this relatively brief track is in its right place: the drums and bass play just a hint behind the beat to give the song a little swing, the twin guitars riff and strum in a stratosphere somewhere between rock and R&B, the Fender rhodes and horns punctuate at just the right moments, and the vocals perfectly combine the all-for-one feel of late 60s Sly & The Family Stone with jazzy, gospel-tinged harmonies. (There's nothing else in all of pop music quite like the vocal blend of Maurice and Verdine White with the incomparable Philip Bailey.) I only wish I could hear this song now without immediately thinking of Elaine Benes doing her "full body dry heave."
I more or less came to The Bar-Kay's song "Holy Ghost" (1978) by way of MARRS' unlikely hit song "Pump Up the Volume" (1987).
As I've mentioned before, I'm always one for playing "spot the sample." Before Google and iTunes came along, though--and before sampling artists felt compelled to list the sampled artists in song credits, I often had to rely on fellow hip-hop heads or my parents ("You do know that's the GAP Band they're rapping over, right?") to serve as my musical Rosetta Stone.
For years, I'd tried to figure out some of the core samples in "Pump Up the Volume" to no avail. In particular, this drum break.
So, I was attending a freshman orientation party at Hinton James Dorm on UNC-Chapel Hill's South Campus in 19yadda-yadda. The RA broke out his 70s funk mix, which included the loooooong version of "Holy Ghost," and when that drum break with the timbales, congas, cowbell, and Moog came on, it was like a religious experience.
I say this without a hint of irony.
It really was like someone had unlocked a secret of the universe. I had this Liz Lemon-esque "I want to go to there" moment, and it must have shown on my face because my RA started cracking up.
A little history about the band known as The Bar-Kays: the group was one of Stax/Volt Records' house bands along with Booker T. & The MGs and The Mar-Keys (which consisted of various members of Booker T. & The MGs and The Bar-Kays). More or less, The Bar-Kays existed as a second-string backing band (with first-rate players) for Stax artists like Johnny Taylor and Sam & Dave when Booker T. & The MGs weren't available to play on their songs.
Even so,The Bar-Kays had their own Top 20 hit with the instrumental "Soul Finger" in 1967, just months before many of the original band members died in a plane crash with Stax artist Otis Redding outside Madison, WI, on their way to a gig. Two of the surviving band members soldiered on and rebuilt the band, forging a heavier funk sound that was indebted to Sly & The Family Stone with tinges of psychedelia, too. Ultimately, the new incarnation of the band would back Isaac Hayes on his 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul, and unwittingly help Hayes set the course of R&B music for the next decade.
Listening to "Sexual Healing" and Marvin Gaye's absolutely ecstatic, silky smooth delivery, it's almost hard to believe that he was climbing his way out of one of the lowest points in his life during that period. In the years before he recorded the song for his "comeback" album Midnight Love (1982), Gaye had endured his second divorce, struggled with debt and problems with the IRS, and had wrestled with an addiction to cocaine. On top of all that, he hadn't had a hit since "Blurred Lines" "Got To Give It Up" and was deeply depressed. But he felt things were turning around by 1982. He'd moved to Belgium at the urging of a friend and gradually began to kick his drug habit. He'd landed a new recording contract with Columbia Records, cutting his decades-long ties with Motown and Berry Gordy. He also was getting inspired by some of the new music he was hearing in Europe--particularly synth pop and reggae. It's easy to hear both musical influences in "Sexual Healing's" syncopated electronic beat and synths. It's also easy to hear the sound of an innovative artist and man, reawakened in his prime. While he'd made euphemistic references to sex before (ex: "Let's Get It On"), he no longer minced words. I found out only recently that there's a reason why 99.9% of radio DJs fade the song out quickly after the line Please don't procrastinate. (Listen to the last few seconds of the song with the volume turned up, and you'll hear that Marvin apparently was borrowing a few moves out of the Rick James and Prince playbook, too.) Nevertheless, there's still a tenderness in the delivery that makes this song less about panty-droppin' and more about intimacy. (Unfortunately, a lot of the slow jam purveyors that followed--particularly in the 90s--failed to get that subtle difference.)
Super Fly (the film) originally was released in mid-1972. For better or worse, it set the stage for what came to be known as the "blaxploitation" genre. I've seen the film maybe twice over the years on late-night TV. It's a story about "Youngblood Priest" (played by Ron O'Neal), a street-smart, young coke dealer who decides he wants out of the game, and all of the shady characters and crooked cops who try (by persuasion and/or violence) to keep him from making one last $1M score. It's an okay film with decent performances. But it's not really a movie you watch for the plot or the acting; you watch it to gawk at the crazy ass clothes and Priest's pimped-out, custom Cadillac (which, incidentally, belonged to an actual pimp named K.C., as the liner notes of the re-issued soundtrack album point out). Speaking of the soundtrack, it's the most compelling reason to watch the film. What makes it so good is that it's not two or three Mayfield songs, surrounded by a lot of cheesy instrumental filler; it's a complete Curtis Mayfield album. He set out to create a work that would stand on its own while expressly tying each song to a scene or character in the film. (Unfortunately, the editors of the film didn't always use the songs in the appropriate spots or to the greatest effect. Key example: there's Mayfield's anti-drug song, "No Thing on Me," playing during a scene where Priest is convincing his old mentor to front him 30 kg of cocaine.) In all cases, Mayfield never tried to glorify any of the situations depicted in the film; he simply was a omniscient narrator, chronicling what he observed, delving into the characters' thoughts, while constantly reminding the listener that these were human characters with human foibles. Such is the case on the track "Superfly." Mayfield more or less summarizes the entire plot of the film in the lyrics, characterizing Priest as a resourceful, complicated man who is the product of his environment. As the song goes on, Mayfield comments that Priest realizes there's no future in dealing drugs, and although he has no clear idea of what the future holds or what challenges he's going to have to overcome to get there, he's still tryin' ta get over. You can't beat Mayfield's singular voice on this tune. But the stars of the show are the fat bass (played by Joseph "Lucky" Scott) and the pitch-sliding roto-toms and congas (by "Master" Henry Gibson) that punctuate the track. It's no wonder why everyone from The Beasties to Sean Combs have sampled the intro hundreds of times.
