Reviews – Page 59 – Rock Salted

When Gospel Was Gospel

Various Artists – When Gospel Was Gospel Shanachie SH 6064 (2005)

A nice collection of gospel from 1946-1969 produced by Anthony Heilbut, the author of The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times. Eight of the selections are previously unreleased live recordings, which may make this interesting to those already well familiar with the artists represented here but also less interesting to those looking for just a general introduction to gospel music. There are plenty of great female gospel singers and groups on display here. If this set does have a theme, it is a focus on the kinds of acts that emphasized very disciplined singing and very traditional lyrics with generally biblical tones. That is to say, this collection steers clear of more modern gospel with more emotional, unhinged vocals. So the title “When Gospel Was Gospel” seems to reflect a context of a lecture by an old timer to a younger “kid” about days gone by when things were good, serious, dependable, meaningful, and, from the point of view of the “kid” being lectured, entirely boring and out of date. Well, I’m being harsh. All the music here is really good, even the obscure live recordings. The thing is, this set has a tendency toward the kind of dour, serious material that threatens to take all the fun out of listening to the whole thing front to back. It would have gone a long way if different artists, or even different songs by the artists already represented here, were selected to place a few more up tempo, lively numbers here and there. Fans of gospel music won’t be bothered by the dour seriousness, of course. There are so many great performances, from Mahalia Jackson‘s soaring “Power of the Holy Ghost” to Marion Williams‘ “Traveling Shoes”, that there is bound to be at least something for everyone to love. But, this set might be a little too disciplined and straight to win over many new fans of the genre. I hesitate to add this, but felt like I should: the sound quality of this disc is a bit muffled, so you don’t hear all the great voices as clearly and crisply as you might like.

Lee Morgan – Infinity

Lee Morgan – Infinity Blue Note LT-1091 (1981)

It’s pretty amazing that Lee Morgan’s Infinity album sat in the vaults for so long before seeing release. In an effort to duplicate the success of The Sidewinder, Lee Morgan was making a lot of recordings in the mid-1960s. His reputation is that he was something of a hard bop reactionary. And I suppose that the 60s were a unique time in that there was never again to be such a large number of musical giants performing jazz at the peak of their careers combined with a comparable level of commercial interest in the music. The commercial decline of jazz music had a profound impact on how many young musicians chose to play jazz (rather than rock or something else) and what labels and venues were willing to support. So, for a brief moment in the 1960s, Infinity many have seemed like “just another hard bop album” and therefore not commercially viable enough for release. And to a certain extent that might have been true. This might have been lost in the shuffle around the time it was recorded. But it’s also another pretty good hard bop album. The songwriting is above average, there are some top players here, and it all comes together in some commendable performances. While I don’t want to make it seems like this is some groundbreaking lost classic, this album does certainly hold its own with the better hard bop albums of its day. Particularly thanks to Jackie McLean, I think this is even a bit more rewarding than some of the better-known, though overrated, hard bop albums of the period.

KISS – KISS

KISS – KISS Casablanca NBLP 7001 (1974)

The poor man’s glam rock band.

Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis – Two Men With the Blues

Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis – Two Men With the Blues Blue Note 50999 5 04454 2 4 (2008)

Two Men With the Blues pairs Willie Nelson with Wynton Marsalis at two live appearances at The Allen Room, Lincoln Center, New York City, where Marsalis is musical director. Willie has always demonstrated a fondness for jazz, and he has recorded in that setting before, so an outing backed by a jazz combo for some bluesy vocal jazz-pop is well within his range. He doesn’t have to reach for any of this. Although Willie just does his usual thing, it happens to suit the music fine. The only thing Marsalis and his band bring to the table is endless showboating. But the problem is the showboating isn’t very impressive (perhaps only appearing so to the jazz novice). It’s actually Willie Nelson on guitar who brings more adventurousness to bear, with much more affinity for dissonant chords than Marsalis’ hard-bop puritanism permits. Perhaps more time playing together would have allowed a better rapport amongst the musicians. As it stands, this is adequate, but falls well short on creativity. A pairing of Nelson with someone like saxophonist James Carter might be more interesting.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band – New Orleans’ Sweet Emma and Her Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Preservation Hall Jazz Band – New Orleans’ Sweet Emma and Her Preservation Hall Jazz Band Preservation Hall Records VPH/VPS-2 (1964)

They call Dixieland jazz made after its time “moldy fig” music. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band played their first touring gigs in Minneapolis, and Sweet Emma is a recording of one of them. The band was started to provide jobs for aging musicians who played a style of jazz that had long since fallen out of commercial favor. A venue named Preservation Hall was opened as a kind of museum and tourist attraction to showcase Dixieland jazz. The band has featured a rotating cast of local New Orleans musicians through the years. If you’ve listened to old, first-generation Dixieland records, this will probably not impress you much. But it’s all still good fun. This is unpretentious music that is exactly what it claims to be, no more, no less.

Paul Robeson – Paul Robeson [Pearl]

Paul Robeson – Paul Robeson Pearl GEMM CD 9356 (1993)

An excellent collection of early Robeson recordings for His Master’s Voice. There are a large and confusing number of Robeson compilations available. This one focuses exclusively on recordings from the 1920s and 1930s (and then mostly from the 30s). The bulk of this consists of showtunes/pop, but there are some spirituals as well. Though these recordings are so old as to have nowhere near the fidelity of Robeson’s 1940s recordings for Columbia Records, they, along with associated stage and screen appearances, are what helped first make him famous. The songs included here are well selected. It’s important to note that at this early stage Robeson was forced to record racist, condescending material in order to make a living in Jim Crow America. So the version of “Ol’ Man River” from the musical “Show Boat” that is so closely associated with Robeson opens with the lyrics “Niggers all work on the Mississippi / Niggers all work while the white folks play.” It is crucial that these bigoted lyrics not be excised from history and forgotten, as if it all never happened, but remembered for what burdens an artist like Robeson had to deal with. Yet, this compilation does a huge service by sequencing “Ol’ Man River” (possibly the reason some might pick up this album) as the last song. It’s worth noting that in later years when Robeson’s stature was assured, he changed the words of “Ol’ Man River” to be more dignified when he performed and recorded it.

Bobby Womack – The Soul of Bobby Womack: Stop on By

Bobby Womack – The Soul of Bobby Womack: Stop on By (The Heart of Soul Series) EMI 7243 8 53965 2 6 (1996)

Bobby Womack had something no other soul musician of his time had. His songs were often complex and layered, with strings, horns, backing singers, and studio effects mixed in with guitars and bass. In spite of all that, his recordings sound intimate, as if Bobby was sitting across the room from you singing and playing. Unlike so many other performers, Bobby Womack never lost the basic simplicity of his messages in all the layers of sound piled on top. The ways he accomplished that aren’t readily apparent, though interestingly drums were usually simple and unobtrusive in his music. He took all the assets of a singer-songwriter into the realm of soul and R&B while still retaining the essential richness of the latter. Lots of this material sounds like a product of its time yet still holds interest. His “Across 110th Street” movie theme song has been reused in subsequent films (like American Gangster) to create a 1970s street life ambiance. This particular compilation is notable for being the first release of a demo version of “Across 110th Street”, which strangely enough might be Womack’s single finest recording. It’s just him on guitar and vocals. Without the density of the final studio version, his guitar sounds direct, and his vocals are actually more searching and powerful. Another of Bobby Womack’s qualities was his use of grown-up themes and lyrics. Like Isaac Hayes perhaps, and aside from their best-known movie theme songs, they both dealt mainly with small, nuanced subjects about relationships, lifestyle, getting by. I’m not sure Bobby Womack is the place to start if you’ve never listened to soul music before. But if you’ve spent time with the music of earlier soul legends, consider giving Womack a try. He was genuinely an heir to the great ones, and he took soul/R&B in a new direction. It probably takes a bit more effort to appreciate his stuff, but it’s definitely worth it.

Willie Nelson – Angel Eyes

Willie Nelson – Angel Eyes Columbia FC-39363 (1984)

In the 1980s, Willie Nelson released a lot of albums. So many that most are forgotten. Angel Eyes from 1984 was recorded at his own Pedernales studio and pairs him with a jazz combo led by guitarist Jackie King (who receives special billing on the album jacket). Ray Charles does a guest vocal. King and his band play a rather straightforward post-bop music. King had connections to a lot of country artists. His style is akin to Barney Kessel, Kenny Burrell, or even Jim Hall, with a very clean tone and little inclination to play chords. Willie sticks almost exclusively to vocals. He is a competent jazz vocalist (and guitarist, as collaborations with Wynton Marsalis attest, though you wouldn’t know from this recording). He would go on to record many jazz albums. Here, his performances are nice but not particularly compelling. This is less of a snooze-fest than Willie’s easy listening and light pop albums of the era (Stardust, City of New Orleans) but it is also not ambitious enough to garner much attention. Yet Nelson fans should perhaps give this a bit more credit than it has tended to receive, because it has a much more authentic and intimate improvisational feel than certain others of Nelson’s forays into jazz. This belongs in the top half of the large batch of curious but insignificant genre exercises that Nelson has recorded in his long career.

Scott Walker – Scott 2

Scott Walker – Scott 2 Philips BL 7840 (1968)

Scott Walker’s records were never exactly subtle. They always had an unmistakably direct quality to them, but they could also have a stunning depth and complexity that wasn’t as immediately apparent. His second solo effort Scott 2 is the most direct and straightforward of his 1960s output. It does, however, come up a bit short on depth at times. That isn’t to say it isn’t commendable. His grandiose rendition of Tim Hardin‘s “Black Sheep Boy” is a triumph. He was writing more originals, which, although often too blunt in execution here, primed those talents for the smashing artistic success of his next two efforts. I know that many consider this their favorite Scott Walker album. For me, it’s just a bit too brash and overconfident. The novelty of his left-field crooner shtick had worn a bit. He started to coast a little merely on what passes for edgy subject matter, without always offering a unique vision of it. Scott 2 was a popular album no doubt, his highest charting solo album (#1 in the UK). But F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Beautiful and Damned wrote how “the type of man who attains commercial success seldom knows how or why, and,…when he ascribes reasons, the reasons are generally inaccurate and absurd.” Fortunately, perhaps, Walker didn’t seem to understand his commercial success, for he betrayed those elements many times in his career to produce something more than commercial. Did anyone really think it was his hauntingly personal musical vision moving albums off the shelves anyway?

The Temptations – In a Mellow Mood

The Temptations – In a Mellow Mood Gordy GLPS-924 (1967)

Instead of soul music, as expected, The Temptations in a Mellow Mood finds the group delivering an orchestrated pop/showtunes album. Although it is clearly a crass attempt to find new audiences, and occasionally it achieves little more than marketing bluster, this does succeed in its aims. Basically, this is a Sammy Davis, Jr. album, or a Robert Goulet one. If that’s not the kind of album you’ll accept from The Temptations, then this one is best skipped over. There are an assortment of arrangers on board (Oliver Nelson among them), which leads to an uneven feel. More lead vocals from David Ruffin, as he delivers on “What Now My Love?,” would have helped the album further.