ODDS ‘N’ BODS
MICHAEL JACKSON has just cut another duet with Paul McCartney, mixed by Jellybean Benitez, but first we’ll finally get ‘Thriller’ on 12in in a month, while Alan Coulthard’s Disco Mix Club Jackson megamix has evidently been closely copied on a remade Belgian bootleg (please do not ask how to find it!) . . . Tom Browne has been produced by the Jonzun Crew in ‘Rockit’ style — and Herbie Hancock is now top US Dance/Disco hit . . . Bensons of Henley at Remenham Hill hold a music business barbeque next Sunday (11) at 7pm, £3 a head, all DJs and record company people welcome — if they can bear WEA’s Fred Dove as guest jock! . . . Randy Crawford will sing and talk to you all this month on 01-388 5188 . . . Lillo Thomas’s LP is already out here (Capitol EST 7122901), and Ryan Paris last week should have been 120½bpm . . . Brass Construction ‘We Can Work It Out’ is now on import 12in as a negligible remix . . . Philip Bailey’s import ‘Continuation’ LP doesn’t exactly scream “dance to me!” . . . Canada’s Power label soon reissues Antonia Rodriguez ‘La Bamba‘ and Dee Dee Jackson ‘SOS (Remix)‘, and in fact Power’s Vince Degiorgio is looking for new “high energy” masters at 190 Colin Ave, Apt 108, Toronto, Ontario M5P 2C6, Canada . . . Paul Travis has just started a free admission/pub bar prices boys town night at Wigan’s old Tiffany’s, now renamed Maxine’s, every Thursday . . . Norman Scott (Haringey Bolts — current big oldie, Connie Francis ‘Where The Boys Are‘!) passes on from regular Bolter Steve Jolley that Imagination’s next album will include some strong disco tracks . . . Pete Haigh (Standish Cassinellis) observes that boys town music seems to be crossing over to pop audiences who dislike electro-funk’s rigidity . . . Carl Richardson (Hull 0482-711874) is after the old “Josephine Baker tribute” LP by Phyliscia (Felicia?) Allen & The Village People . . . Paul Gough (Hartlepool 0429-70036) will pay big bucks for the old Prince Philip Mitchell ‘Top Of The Line’ LP . . . ‘New Blackbeat’ is a fax ‘n’ info crammed deep soul fanzine 34 closely printed pages long, £3.75 for 6 issues bi-monthly, from 101 Sevenacres, Orton Brimbles, Peterborough, Cambs PE1 OXJ — October’s will include the complete 1962-83 Frankie Beverly discography . . . Main Ingredient’s ‘Happiness Is Just Around The Bend’ has been remade by ex-lead singer Cuba Gooding for Streetwise . . . Sundays at Basildon New Yorker, Cosmic revives the likes of Mighty Fire ‘Love Fantasy‘ . . . Darren Fogel, now doing Saturdays at Tottenham Valentinos, is compiling the Top 100 Soul Singles for Christmas broadcast on Radio Invicta 92.4 FM (his ‘Soul Searchin’ spot’s 4-6pm Sunday), so send your nominations to Invicta at 8 Southampton Row, London WC1 . . . Alan Reid, ex-Bacchus/Julianas jock (he had to learn to mix in Canada, as if he talked the club emptied!) and ex-Birmingham Powerhouse lighting operator, has opened his own Gingers in Pontypridd with a full lightshow (Wed-Sun) even though it’s only small . . . Jon Alsop’s high energy bias is bowing to the ‘Rockit’ influence with increased electro-funk on Mondays at Edgbaston Faces French ‘Kilohertz’ night, while at Faces this Thursday (1) Steve Dennis has a visit from Kenny Lynch — who’s then on Friday (2) with Peter Lee at Bolton’s Dance Factory . . . Jeff Young guests Thurs (1) at Hemel Hempstead’s Whip & Collar, Dave Rawlings has a St Trinians Friday (fancydressers in for free) at Basingstoke Martines . . . Steve Walsh starts funking Mondays at Bermondsey Old Kent Road’s Dun Cow next week (5), Lyndon T electro-funks Tuesdays at Soho Jean Pierres (first drink free) . . . Frenchie’s Sunday Funk Club has moved to the later licensing hours of Wednesdays at Charnock Richard’s Bowling Green Inn (£1 before 10.30, half price drinks) . . . Rickmansworth’s very American style restaurant the Long Island Exchange (by the station roundabout) does alcoholic milk shakes — um yum, schlurp schlurp! . . . Colin Hudd has gone megamix crazy at Dartford Flicks on Saturday nights, and now that Thames Valley DJ Assn big boy Frank Smith has started editing the Disco Mix Club mag, all the TVDJA members are being told how to mix! . . . Steve ‘Dover’ Day (Sheerness Woodys) recommends mixing Hazell Dean ‘Searchin’ into Change ‘Searching’ in a synch from “where the drums sweep down and back up again” . . . Tom Edgar, jocking as Tom Mator (in a cockney accent?), is busy enough but could handle more club/pub gigs on 01-855 2064 (night)/855 7777 (day) . . . Rob Harknett (Roydon 027-979 2329), booked solid on Saturdays until 1985, needs more MoR jocks to cover some venues, small rigs OK but music must be “tame” for fees around £35/45 . . . Chris Cole (Bramley) recorded himself at a 21st gig to make a demo for a club where he wanted a residency, and was told he was “too confident, cocky and frantic” — presumably a nervous, shy and quiet jock got the job, but Chris’s own approach does at least bring in lots of mobile work! . . . Steve ‘Walthamstow’ Day similarly applied for a gig, only to be told he was “behind the times and much too old”! . . . Gary Oldis, now back at Aycliffe Bee Jays after fracturing his skull in a road accident, recuperated in Jersey where he reckons Chris Tandy at the Madison is the Island’s best night . . . Richard ‘Lofty’ Lofthouse (Tyneside) reckons the name LaFleur sounds like the Peter Sellers French pronounciation of what you dance on! . . . WIKKI WIKKI!
These are the breaks…
NOW SEEMS the moment to put recent developments into their historical perspective. Black American music began outside when Southern slaves relieved the tedium of picking cotton with rhythmic call-and-answer “field hollers” derived from dimly remembered tribal chants, vocal music being the cheapest to make — and maximum effect/minimum outlay still holds good today.
Christian church music, military bands, the patronising “plantation songs” of touring nigger minstrel shows, and the attention grabbing antics of street corner medicine sellers (whose increasingly eccentric dance steps were the basis of most we know now) all combined in the late 19th century to produce the different strains of a new and specifically American black tradition.
The banjo, an approximation of certain African stringed instruments, gave way to the Spanish guitar as the go-anywhere accompaniment for an emergent type of solitary “blues” singer, the blues being a simple secular adaptation of the mixture of call-and-answer with church music which at the opposite extreme resulted in gospel (the eventual inspiration of vocal harmony groups and ultimately soul).
The other solitary black musicians were the pianists in brothels, who experimenting amidst their exotic surroundings came up with sexy, sleazy, syncopated rhythms of “ragtime”, which when played with jaunty abandon on military band instruments became a dance craze lasting nearly thirty years with increasing acceptance (and white copyists) until the soloing fervour of its more adventurous musicians became known to the world as “jazz” in the early ’20s.
The urban jazz bands had no problem making a loud enough noise for dancers, but the rural blues guitarists had to play open-tuned chords with a broken bottleneck on their finger to make a shrill sound, or use metal bodied guitars fitted with resonators.
Following the spread of radio in the early ’20s came electrical recording in 1925, enabling “whispering” crooners to be heard where previously only the bellowers cut through, microphones replacing megaphones for the featured vocalists on ballroom bandstands.
With the big bands of the ’30s came an acrobatic black dance style known as “jitterbug”, which had been germinating in Harlem since 1923 and really erupted in ’28 when marathon dancer ‘Shorty’ George Snowden amazed onlookers by doing a “breakaway” flinging out his partner and improvising some solo steps. Shorty and other inventive dancers, egged on by money throwing celebrity socialites, became a big attraction as they tried to out-dance each other in the “Cats Corner” at the Savoy Ballroom, where two battling bands would drive the dancers so hard the music became called “swing”.
It was Benny Goodman who gave swing the white face of respectability in 1936, the same year young black teenager Charlie Christian (following the lead of Count Basie’s guitarist Eddie Durham) began experimenting playing jazz on a guitar plugged into a rudimentary electric amplifier. The Jimi Hendrix of his day, Charlie Christian went on to play with Benny Goodman, but more importantly his improvisational style influenced saxist Charlie Parker and the whole ’40s be-bop movement.
Probably the first electric blues guitarist was flamboyant showman T-Bone Walker (some of whose moves were copied by Elvis Presley!), but during World War II many rural bluesmen moved north and west to the industrial cities where they too plugged in and formed raucous “rhythm & blues” groups, augmented at war’s end by “booting” saxists splintering away from the no longer viable big bands.
Black kids who couldn’t afford an instrument would hang out on street corners copying such gospel-derived tenor/bass/harmony groups as the Ink Spots and Ravens, singing silly phrases like “doo-wop” in a style which influenced the Temptations onwards. Other street corners often had blues players plugged into portable speakers, some maybe talking rather than singing their blues, while in the churches were preachers whose crescendoing rhythmic sermons moved the congregation to frenzy.
Rapping and ranting radio DJs spread rapidly as R&B became “rock ‘n’ roll” in the ’50s and men like Alan Freed copied the black style, which right through the ’60s often incorporated a carefully prepared rhyming rap lead out over an instrumental from the playlist.
Around 1970 such street poets as the Last Poets recorded their angry, staccato, musically flowing raps (the era when Gary Byrd started out), all of this sewing the seeds of rap as we know it today.
However, apart from the total commercialisation of black music and increasing sophistication in the making of it, things stayed pretty much the same out on the street corners, in the subways and stairwells (anywhere there’s an echo!) . . . until, that is, another advance in the use of electronics. The ghetto blaster. Now every kid can make a loud noise out on the street, even miking up to rap along to the beat. Cheap electronics and the boom in synthesizers like the rhythm box which can be programmed to any automatic beat pattern have revolutionized the creation of black music, cutting costs and replacing musicians.
Out of the portable discos of Brooklyn, base of New York’s big Jamaican population with their sound systems, came the use of rhythm boxes allied to DJs “scratching” records over the top of them — often out in the street, where of course the “break” dancers carry on their tradition.
It’s sad to think that in this revolution we’ve probably lost the vocal group tradition, but the current breed of young men out there today are in fact merely following in the footsteps of all that went before them — and every new development mentioned above was greeted in its day with the abuse of many and total horror of some. Think about it!
HOT VINYL
LADY M: ‘Please (Don’t Break My Heart)’ (Calibre CABL 116)
Sneakily catchy with an interest-holding good frisky arrangement, this soulfully wailed soaring jaunty 114bpm 12in wraggler weaves around a booming bass line (good out of Kenny Lynch) with so much zest that it’s really quite high energy too and could well get pop attention (inst flip). The lady’s vocal is outstanding.
BAISER: ‘Summer Breeze’ (Canadian Celsius 12CLS-7013)
Chording piano, sassy brass and tootling sax start this attractive chick-sung long ever developing unhurried sinuously pumping gently jiggly 109¼bpm 12in swayer, which eventually hits a cowbell percussion break (inst flip) and initially had boys town attention though should win wider favour. Incidentally, check the chart in case any more hot imports arrived after this week’s early deadline.
K-9 CORP (Featuring Pretty C): ‘Dog Talk’ (US Capitol 8562)
Coinciding perfectly with renewed interest in the original, this is a great rap version of ‘Atomic Dog’ using George Clinton’s 107bpm 12in backing track behind and between mentions of Pluto, Goofy, Scooby Doo, Snoopy and other canine cartoon faves — “watch me raise my leg” being the nicest line! — flipped by Clinton’s own 113bpm instrumental of ‘Man’s Best Friend‘. Woof . . . woof! Continue reading “September 3, 1983: “Now seems the moment to put recent developments into their historical perspective.””
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