Category Archives: African American culture

The bawdy origins of rock and roll

“You probably don’t doubt that the origins of rock and roll are bawdy in nature. You’ve read Gershon Legman and his fellow travelers to take note. You know why Scheherazade was not killed by the king.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlALQf3fahM]

Yet you don’t know American record label Federal Records and their 1951 “Sixty Minute Man“[1], on which a male singer boasts of being able to satisfy his girls with fifteen minutes each of “kissin'” “teasin'” and “squeezin'”, before “blowin'” his “top.” The single reached #1[2] on the R&B chart in May 1951 and stayed there for a 14 weeks. “Sixty Minute” defined what was to become rock and roll which has always been about wine, women and song. —The bawdy origins of rock and roll, Sholem Stein, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1998, in a Pleasantville review.”

Note by the editor: “Big Long Slidin’ Thing” is another example in the category “dirty blues,” an often-overlooked category in rock and roll historiography.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTyMuxTyfiI]

“Sixty Minute Man,” “Big Long Slidin’ Thing“[3] and “Number One” (the Patrice Rushen song, which I managed to sneak in by footnote) are WMC #72, 73 and 74.

Jerry Wexler (1917 – 2008)

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kkgQHcdlZU]

“Respect“, a feminist anthem

Aged 91, American music journalist turned music producer Jerry Wexler died last Friday. While at Billboard magazine in 1947 Wexler coined the term “Rhythm and Blues” to replace the tainted term “race music.” He is one of the major record industry players to have marketed 1960s soul music to a white audience.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJM5K51peVw]

“Son of a Preacher Man“

He produced such hits as “Respect“[1] and “Son of a Preacher Man“[2], which are WMC #65 and 66.

Vertere and WMC #59, 60 and 61

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qutX_w-QLZM

“Don’t Turn Around” (1970) by Black Ivory.

The other day, while I was explaining my interest in etymology (recently rekindled by buying and reading Giambattista Vico‘s The New Science) and the way I bring it to my students, I took the word vertere as an example. From vertere is derived transverse, diverse, perverse, universe, subversion, etc…

I studied Latin for four years in high school, but the above example is the way I would have liked to have studied Latin, with relevancy to current living languages. Start with the prefixes and suffixes and then the verbs.

Prompted by the word “turn” (as in vertere) I make Black Ivory‘s (one of Patrick Adams‘s earliest productions with vocals by Leroy Burgess) “Don’t Turn Around” World Music Classic # 59. All good things come in three, so I give you two more tracks (WMC #60 and 61) from the same period by Skull Snaps, “My Hangup Is You“[1] and the super-breaky “It’s a New Day“[2].

More Jahsonic YouTube faves are here[3].

Also, while researching these tunes, I found Wanda Robinson‘s [4], a WMC in the making?.

Bill Coday (1942 – 2008)

Photo unidentified of Bill Coday

Bill Coday (May 10, 1942 in Coldwater, Mississippi – June 8, 2008) was a blues and soul musician popular on the British Northern soul scene. As a young man he began singing in juke joints in and around Blytheville, Arkansas. Later, Coday travelled to Chicago, Illinois, and there one night he was “discovered” by Denise LaSalle. LaSalle signed Coday to her Crajon label, and introduced Coday to Willie Mitchell of Memphis, Tennessee. Mitchell’s reputation in the soul and soul blues music industry includes producing such artists as Al Green and Ann Peebles. Mitchell agreed to work with Coday, and a result of this relationship, the team of Mitchell and Coday produced songs that included “Sixty Minute Teaser,” “I Get High on Your Love,” “You’re Gonna Want Me,” and “Get you Lies Straight.”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCle3p43m3I]

“Sixty Minute Teaser”

World music classic #43 and 44

 

“Make it Last Forever”

Donna McGhee is an American singer who released one album on Red Greg Records, produced and arranged by Greg Carmichael and Patrick Adams. The track from that album, “Make It Last Forever,” was covered by Loleatta Holloway.

Greg Carmichael (“Barely Breaking Even”) and Patrick Adams (“In the Bush” and “Keep on Jumpin’) produced at least 50 tracks which transcend disco as genre. They are in many ways the auteurs of disco, more so than Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons or Tom Moulton, who were primarily involved in post-production. The only one to rival Adams and Carmichael was Arthur Russell, but his story is altogether different.

One more by Patrick Adams (“My Baby’s Got E.S.P.” notice the similarity of Patrick Adams’s trademark: the string arrangements and slow beats).

“My Baby’s Got E.S.P.”

Introducing August Darnell


[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

August Darnell aka Kid Creole (Montreal, Canada, 12 August, 1950) is a Canadian musician who has been involved in several dance-oriented projects in New York in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s. Projects include Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band[0] (led by Darnell’s brother Stony), Don Armando’s Second Avenue Rhumba Band[1], Gichy Dan’s Beechwood #9, the “mutant disco” of Aural Exciters and, of course, Kid Creole and the Coconuts[2], as well as “solo” projects involving Andy “Coati Mundi” Hernandez[2,5], Taana Gardner[3], Fonda Rae[4]. and Lizzy Mercier Descloux[5]. Some of the more (and less)obscure offerings of Darnell have been released on an music compilation in 2008 by Strut Records as Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1976-1983.

Click the number to listen to the tracks, not all tracks are Darnell projects, but also just of the artists mentioned.

Fonda Rae in Machine’s “There but for the Grace of God Go I”[4] is world music classic 38, and has an interesting bit of music censorship history behind it, perhaps more on that later.

World music classic 37

“I’m looking for the party people, to get down”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMEEYPc87OQ]

“Wicki Wacky‘” (1974) by Fatback Band

“Wicki Wacky‘” (1974) is a single released on Event Records by the Fatback Band. It was featured on their album “Keep On Steppin’“. The proto-disco song is noted for its driving hi-hats and was a blueprint for subsequent four-on-the-floor dance records. Other notable songs from Fatback include the 80s groove “Is this the Future,” currently unavailable on Youtube. Enjoy and let me know how you like it.

Adam Kotsko’s blog on the newest The Roots album, and, on Kotsko

The Roots:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcz2E4Rs2OU&]

Rising Down “Get Busy” by The Roots: “one of the better large-label releases of 2008.[1]” –Brad via Adam Kotsko

On Kotsko

Blogging about blogging: “To some extent, I agree with Adam Kotsko that “Meta-blogging is the greatest vice yet developed by humankind.” –Adam Kotsko quoted in the The Reading Experience.
“Over the past three years, I’ve become a habitué of The Weblog, a “virtual neighborhood” created by Adam Kotsko, a graduate student in theology, and de facto in continental philosophy, who lives in Chicago.” —Scott McLemee

http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/

Do you want to control me?

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixKSHqMFKj0&]

“Soul Control” by Theo Parrish

Along Moodymann and Terrence Parker, Theo Parrish (Washington, DC, 1972) represents the third wave of Detroit techno. Theo Parrish juxtaposes elements of soul, jazz, disco, funk and techno with simple but hypnotic funky 4/4 house rhythms.

It’s hard in the internet era to recreate that excitement of the unknown when you encounter a dusty, entirely mysterious artifact in a record shop. There’s no such thing as a rare record these days [cfr. Death of the underground], with the advent of eBay, and music available in digital forms is so extensively propagated around the internet that it’s rare to encounter something you don’t know at least something about … .

However, Detroit producer Theo Parrish (whose Sound Sculptures Volume 1 was reviewed recently in The Wire 291) makes a fair stab at preserving that sensation in a manner that’s neither drearily nostalgic nor hermetically self-referential. — Derek Walmsley (The Mire, The Wire’s blog) on Theo Parrish .