Etta James‘ recent passing (and her birthday today) started me thinking about Sly again.  I have to set The Beatles aside as an insurmountable high point in sixties pop music, but other than them, I’d say Sly and the Family Stone is the top contender for my favorite sixties band.  How do they qualify as the quintessential ’60s band? 

They were racially diverse, with five black members and two white members.
They were gender-diverse, with five males and two females, one a horn player.
Sly was an outstanding songwriter, with many catchy-but-not-treacly hooks.
Sly’s songwriting and the Family Stone’s playing helped James Brown pioneer the whole funk thang.
I’m particularly interested in vocal arrangements, and this group not only had fabulous harmonies, but they effectively used trade-offs, call-and-response, and a cappella breaks.

They sounded tight and hip and still managed to sound like they were having a really great time.  There were only three top-shelf albums in Sly’s output–Stand, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, and Fresh, plus the best Greatest Hits album ever–but these records were masterpieces, and the records before and after contained some gems.

So here are my top ten Sly and the Family Stone songs:

1. “Hot Fun in the Summertime“–I think this is the best pop single ever recorded.  I don’t really know why but I don’t need to know why.  It still gives me chills, after listening to it for four decades.
2. “Everyday People”–Sometimes I think this is actually the best pop single ever recorded. 
3. “Family Affair”–The big hit from There’s a Riot Goin’ On, only slightly less loopy than the rest of that excellent album. 
4. “Everybody Is a Star”–This was a gorgeous song, and The Roots deconstructed it wonderfully years later for the Sly tribute album Different Strokes by Different Folks.
5. “Stand!”–An anthem that rocked and was funky–that’s gotta be a unique accomplishment!
6. “If You Want Me to Stay”–Laid-back but at the same time driving funk.  See the video versions below.
7. “(You Caught Me) Smilin’”–This was another eccentric and intriguing cut from Riot.
8. “Dance to the Music”–My neighborhood buddies and I used to sing the a cappella vocal break from this song on the street corner when we were in high school.
9. “Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be)”–This great cover featured Rose and Sly and sparked a goofy rumor that Sly and Doris Day had hooked up.
10. “Thank You (Falettin’ Me Be Mice Elf Agin)”–There are times I think that this is the best pop single ever recorded.  Definitely groundbreakin’ and earth-shakin’.

I’m an ol’ Sly fan from near the Rio Grande.  He only burned bright for a few years either side of 1970, but he left his mark.

So how about a little Etta cover of Sly?

Well okay then.

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So, a little interlude between music-related posts: some covers of Graham Greene editions I own, along with some Greene quotes from the books (with thanks to Goodreads for collecting them).

 “I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.”  The Quiet American, 1955

Viking first edition, 1948

“We’d forgive most things if we knew the facts.”  The Heart of the Matter, 1948

 

Viking first edition, 1958

 

“They haven’t left us much to believe in, have they?–even disbelief. I can’t believe in anything bigger than a home or vaguer than a human being.”   Our Man in Havana, 1958

 

Folio Society edition, 1997 Compass edition, 1966

“A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldnt conceive what it hasn’t experienced.”  Brighton Rock, 1938

 

Viking first edition, 1951

“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”  The End of the Affair, 1951

 

Viking first edition, 1961

“I think I have always liked my fellow men. Liking is a great deal safer than love. It doesn’t demand victims.”  A Burnt-Out Case, 1961 

I didn’t want to missthe chance to see Ladysmith Black Mambazo, whose leader Joseph Shabalala is getting up there and about to pass the torch to a junior Shabalala.  And when I saw that Dan Hicks was bringing his Hot Licks to a great venue in my neighborhood, I knew I couldn’t pass it up.  And, although Mr. Hicks looks and acts younger than his years, he turns seventy this year, and has been at the Hot Licks game for more than four decades.  His music is probably closest to the kind of music I write and cover: swingy harmony with acoustic instruments.  As the All Music review notes, Dan Hicks has always been ”a marketing person’s nightmare. Is he Western swing, country-rock, folk, or rock & roll?”  I just read that Hicks, in an interview, said, “We all like jazz, so we like to play in a jazzy way, with a swing sound you know, so I call it “folk swing.”  Folk swing–that’s how I’ve categorized my music, when I’ve had to come up with a quick descriptor.  Funny to see he used the same term. 

Categories–who needs ‘em?  Dan Hicks has a niche all his own, and his show last night at the Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff was one of the best shows I’ve seen.

The bandleader and his latest Hot Licks line-up performed classic Hicks originals from his seventies gems Where’s the Money“, Strikin’ It Rich, and Last Train to Hicksville, plus a few from more recent albums.  (Check out the video from latest album Tangled Tales on the Dan Hicks website.)  A cover of Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” from Tangled Tales, was an enjoyable change of pace.

 Crowd-pleasers included “I Scare Myself,” featuring outstanding violin work from Benito Cortez (who was excellent throughout), and the vocal interplay on “‘Long Come a Viper.” Roberta Donnay and Daria, the current “Lickettes,” were splendid backup singers, in the tradition of ’70s Lickettes Maryann Price and Naomi Eisenberg.  In fact, the whole band sounded like a nicely-aged version of the Where’s the Money? group.

I’ve gotten my Dan Hicks LPs out and put them on the record player, and I’m on a quest to track down the later albums.  And, my wife became a fan!

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And what a treat it was. The nine-man group led by Joseph Shabalala for over forty years (fifty-two years if you count the group he started in 1960 that morphed into Ladysmith Black Mambazo) includes four Shabalala sons, one destined to take Joseph’s place if the old man ever retires. He’s still pretty spry, and joins in the African-style choreography, and even in the occasional interludes of trade-off showdown moves each member gyrates through. Here’s a video of the current group, performing a song from their latest album, Songs from a Zulu Farm:

The visual show is impressive, with synchronized moves that would seem military if they weren’t so fluid. But the vocals are ethereal, and they filled the big hall (The Viola Winspear Opera House) with reverberating sound. The eight back-up singers kept up their repeated vocal riffs as the soloist (usually but not always Joseph Shabalala) trilled and swooped and crooned.  My wife’s not a fan, but she accompanied me, and we sat in the ultra-cheap seats, way up in the stratosphere. She was entertained; I was enthralled. And, feeling guilty about buying a $65 sweatshirt at a Steely Dan concert we went to recently (no, she didn’t get “a Steely Dan t-shirt”), she urged me to buy a Ladysmith Black Mambazo t-shirt.

What a great story that this group of South African singers got the chance to collaborate with Paul Simon in the eighties, after decades of singing regionally, to help make one of the best albums in pop music history, Graceland.  I’m glad I got to hear them live.

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I just read a New York Times review of a recently-published collection of rock writings by the late critic Paul Nelson. David Hajdu wrote the review, and he is a fine music and popular culture writer, whose books include favorites Lush Life, about Billy Strayhorn, and Postively 4th Street, about Dylan and Baez’s early days. Hajdu, in his review, writes that Paul Nelson “didn’t like black music.” What? How could such a good writer as Hajdu make that statement and not elaborate? What does it mean? Saying “I don’t like black music” is kind of like saying “I don’t like sandwiches.” There are too many kinds of sandwiches. You must like some sandwiches. A rock critic who says he doesn’t like black music can’t be a reliable resource for insight into any rock music, whatever its sub-genre.  I don’t recall ever reading Paul Nelson, but I guess now I don’t feel any need to do so. 

So, what is black music? Music by black people? Then this is black music:

Brook Benton‘s black. But his albums generally go in the Easy Listening section. I guess this is black music:

Prince’s music is generally pretty funky, with elements of soul, but it rocks even more, and this song comes from his homage to psychedelia, Around the World in a Daze. 

Black people are involved in every genre of music, and most of the splinters.  How can you separate rock music from “black music”?  Music being made by black artists directly created rock, when late-forties R&B started morphing from a swing beat into a straighter beat.  The music of black people not only led to rock, but to folk (Paul Nelson’s other preferred genre), jazz, country & western, theatre music, many styles of Latin music, and pretty much everything else.  Not to mention soul, funk, blues, and rhythm and blues.

One of the best “rock” songs of all time was made in the early forties by a lone bluesman, Bukka White:

That’s black music, and it’s rock, too.  To hell with Paul Nelson.

So these days I’m always on the lookout for a good run playlist, something to shake it up a little. I recently scored a bag o’ magazines at Half Price Books, six issues of Jazz Improv magazine ($14.95 cover price on each) for a total of seven bucks. Lots of interviews to read, but a bonus: each issue came with a CD of jazz recordings, some made by performers featured in the issue. Seven CDs! (One magazine contained a bonus CD.) I spent an evening picking out a handful of cuts from each CD and creating a playlist. I eagerly made it the background music for my next day’s run.

As it turned out, the selections all seemed to blend together. I finished the run without any distinct impression of the music I’d heard. Which would be okay, I guess, if that meant that I’d entered “the zone” and become oblivious to my surroundings, including the music. But that wasn’t it. The songs just coalesced into a mush somehow. Maybe my selection process was flawed, too hasty.

That evening, I grabbed two CDs I’d received for Christmas and made a new playlist, “Fellini-Rota.” The CDs were The Ultimate Best of Fellini-Rota Originals (“Ultimate Best,” huh? Maybe there’s a “Super Ultimate Best” I should have ordered, or a “Semi-Ultimate Best” that would’ve been cheaper) and a CD that featured the soundtracks of both La Strada and La Notti di Cabiria. I posted not too long ago about the Nino Rota music I cherished. These two round out my collection nicely.

The Ultimate Best features a very nicely done medley of the themes of each Fellini movie whose soundtrack was done by Rota, including I Vitelloni, Il Bidone, and even Boccaccio ’70. I included most of them, and mixed in several selections from the other CD. I used the Fellini-Rota playlist for my next run and it was perfect! A little bit of distraction and a little bit of energy to make the run a nice experience.

I think Nino Rota’s Fellini music is ideal for running. But maybe that’s just me. What do you like to run to? Motown? Black Sabbath? Silence?

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On the CD were several jazz classics: The Duke Ellington-John Coltrane recording of Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” a Kenny Burrell rendition of Billy Strayhorn‘s “Lotus Blossom,” the Mingus tribute to Lester Young, “Goodbye, Porkpie Hat,” a Cannonball Adderley version of Gordon Jenkins’ “Goodbye,” a Walter Davis solo recording of Monk’s “Pannonica.”

Here’s an excellent rendition of “Goodbye” performed by a recent incarnation of The Four Freshmen (whose members look like they could be freshmen). I didn’t have an audio recording to put on the CD.

I didn’t put a few of my classical favorites on the CD due to length (Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Vaughan-Williams’ A Lark Ascending). But I included a Joshua Bell recording of Dvorak’s “Rusalka” and a recording of the 5th “Gnossiene” by Erik Satie. (A version played on clarinet is possibly my favorite beautiful recording ever, but I only have it on a scratchy old LP and it’s evidently out-of-print.) 

From the pop world, I included Rufus Wainwright‘s “Poses,” just one example of the exquisite songs this guy has written and sung. I also put in “Reflecting Light” by Sam Phillips, “De Cara a la Pared” by Lhasa de Sela, and the theme from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Jon Brion. And to round it out, I inserted the great Caetano Veloso’s live tribute to Fellini, “Gelsomina,” and a recent Boz Scaggs recording of the Landesman-Wolf classic, “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men.”

Not much at all in the way of vocal harmonies, but perhaps the next CD will be a collection of beautiful harmony music. One that I especially love is The Roches’ version of “On the Road to Fairfax County”–not as dynamic as “The Hammond Song,” but it gets the edge on sheer beauty. Here’s an irritatingly-filmed live clip, the camera panning back and forth, trying (and failing) to catch each sister as they trade off:

And, to close, a video by the “Mysterious Bulgarian Voices.” I will definitely include an example of their eerily beautiful harmonies next round.

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My 2011 woes involved my health, which, for several years up till January of this year, had been better than ever.  I’ve been trying to solve the problem all year, and have failed. I remain pitifully optimistic. But enough about that.

I have dived into another recording project in the last couple months, and it has definitely restored my mental health to have my mind on harmonies again. 

I got to discover and rediscover a lot of good music this year. In the vocal harmony category, I listened a lot to The Ravens and The Deep River Boys and, especially to The Delta Rhythm Boys. 

I’ll be seeing Dan Hicks later this month, and I’m looking forward to hearing his eccentric harmonies and swing tunes.

I listened to music I’d not previously heard by some of my favorite non-Americans, including Paolo Conte, having finally located a copy of his hard-to-find 2004 recording Elegia, and Tinariwen, who put out a new album, Tassili + 10:1, that maintains their high standards. I discovered, belatedly, the Eastern European group Besh o Drom and have thoroughly enjoyed their album Can’t Make Me! (2002).

I went through a Charles Mingus rediscovery that lasted several weeks, to the exclusion of almost everything else. I feel another round of Mingus coming on this year.

Lots of music to listen to, and to write, arrange, record, and perform this year!  Let’s have it!

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The set-up for each song is simple: a choir composed of outstanding singers from various disciplines–classical, jazz, R&B (Manhattan Transfer‘s Janis Siegel is one of them)–repeats a harmonized riff or set of counterpointed riffs, with minor changes over the five to eight minutes of each song. Bobby McFerrin riffs vocally over the choir, singing sounds, not lyrics. Here’s an example, “Circlesong 6″ (I haven’t been able to find any performance videos of the album’s songs):

Hard to categorize, huh? Just one of the things I love about it. Several sound similar to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but with different vocal textures. A couple, including #3 (video below), sound like Singers Unlimited-with-rhythm. There are Eastern overtones, Middle Eastern overtones, African overtones, and odd time signatures. And the effect over the eight-song album is akin to a Steve Reich ambience. Here’s another example, “Circlesong 3″:

It’s best taken as a whole. Buy it and put it on when you’re driving or painting or observing life outside your window.

McFerrin is a vocal master non-pareil.  Further evidence of his genius may be found on his other albums, especially Medicine Music from 1990 and Vocabularies from 2010, both of which have songs similar to the “Circlesongs,” but range far away from that format.

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