teabowl

One Night Stand! Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963

Sam Cooke. RCA 2005, Audio CD, $9.19

Sam Cooke is commonly thought of as one of the originators of soul music and also gets frequent mention as a role model for black entrepreneurs in the entertainment industry. A very gifted singer, he ‘broke free’ from singing gospel with the Soul Stirrers and had a short but important secular solo career which ended abruptly when he was murdered in 1964 at age 33.

One Night Stand! is incredible in many ways: as a document of an actual live performance, it removes the manicured studio sheen and presents Cooke at the peak of his vocal power - raw, a little rough around the edges, but spot-on and beautifully contoured throughout. He sings perfectly pitched - and, as an early soul singer, has a knack for presenting the ‘true meaning’ of saccharine pop songs with his voice alone. Many of the tunes here were written with a (white) radio audience in mind, and Cooke did have some crossover success. This nascent musical style, finding its way at the edge of R&B and ‘white’ crooner pop, establishes one of the core tenets of rock ‘n roll and soul music: the song’s not really about what the song claims to be about. Where the lyrics can’t express ’sex’ and hard living, the tone of the voice can. And Sam Cooke is brilliant at this, preserving the song’s radio potential while everyone at the live show knows - wink wink - what we’re really talking about.

I think that everyone from Aretha Franklin to Marvin Gaye, Van Morrison to Rob Stewart has tried to channel Sam Cooke. His few available recordings belie his importance as inspiration for much of rock ‘n soul. Artful rough edges, vocalizations without lyrics, just the right amount of audience involvement… it’s all here for the first time. (Well, it’s also in James Brown live albums of roughly the same time, to be fair, and in Ray Charles.)

One Night Stand! is certainly not a perfect record. The band - though powerful and (in the remastered version here) great-sounding - feels a little lost at times. Cooke will start off a tune, and you can hear the rhythm guitarist trying to find his way for a bar or two. I’m not sure if this was the Harlem Square Club’s house band, but they sound a little ‘under-rehearsed’ here. It’s testament to Sam Cooke’s powerful singing that this doesn’t distract at all from the music.

Candi Staton

Candi Staton. Emd Int’l 2004, Audio CD, $16.55

Candi Staton is a “southern soul” singer who recorded several albums for Fame Records in famous Muscle Shoals, Alabama (where many others, like Aretha Franklin, recorded with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section). Candi Staton came from a gospel background and only turned herself into a secular singer relatively late in life (in her 30s).

This compilation contains 26 incredible pieces of music that clearly and definitively affirm her (to me, at least) as the equal of Aretha Franklin. Every performance is heartfelt and comes from a place of knowledge: she’s lived the stories in these songs. As a result, she’s not so much ‘interpreting’ them than simply asserting their truth through her performance.

After these 60/70s records, Candi Staton changed record labels (to Warner), turned disco (presumably to stay relevant) and recorded “Young Hearts Run Free,” a sort of perennial retro disco favourite and not at all a good indication of who she is as a singer. In the 80s, it appears that some tough personal relationships (and the resulting alcohol or drug abuse) eventually made her quit secular music and return to gospel. She founded her own ministry, recorded some very successful albums and was nominated for a few Grammys.

His Hands

Candi Staton. Astralwerks 2006, Audio CD, $4.99

In 1996, she returned to secular music with His Hands, a quiet return to southern soul produced by Lambchop’s Mark Nevers. It received mixed, but mostly positive reviews. It’s worth listening to, if only because it’s an interesting example of ‘aging gracefully’ in the music industry, like Loretta Lynn’s co-operation with Jack White, or Dolly Parton’s lovely bluegrass albums of the early 2000s.

Found this quote from Beverley Knight, while I’m on the topic of Beverley Knight. I’ve often thought that I don’t understand people who don’t like music.

She’s talking about singing in front of the G8 leaders in 2006:

“Wow! Now, I’ve been in front of some pretty disparate audiences, but singing for the leaders of the free world was quite extraordinary. The only one who wasn’t there - and he was conspicuous by his absence - was Dubya.” She puts on a manly Texas accent: “Cause he don’t like music, apparently, he prefers sporrrrt.” And then back to her Wolverhampton voice: “Alright mate! I’m suspicious of people who don’t like music. How the hell does that work? Tell me you don’t like some kinds of music. Don’t tell me you don’t like music, because that’s kind of weird. Tony Blair and Cherie were there giving me the thumbs up, totally into it. Putin was there - now, when I say that man’s face didn’t crack, I mean, it was scary.”

Interview from the Guardian.

Voice

Beverley Knight. EMI Int’l 2006, Audio CD, $6.45

Who I Am

Beverley Knight (Performer). 2002, Audio CD, $10.16

Affirmation

Beverley Knight. EMI Int’l 2006, Audio CD, $13.99

Beverley Knight is an immensely talented R&B singer from the UK who is completely unknown in North America. This is a great shame because she’s incredibly gifted, accomplished and, frankly, as good as or better than Beyoncé and Mary J. Blige. Beverley Knight should be more widely known and definitely belongs in the same class of divas.

Even though you’ll have to buy them as imports if you’re in Canada or the US, there are several Beverley Knight records I’d wholeheartedly recommend. The best starting point is probably Voice: The Best of Beverley Knight. According to Amazon.com, this contains 11 UK top 40 singles, and I don’t doubt that for a minute given the quality of the music on this disc. It’s a must-have career-to-date overview, spanning earlier material that’s heavily R&B/dancefloor oriented and later tunes that are more ‘retro’ in orientation (and remind me a little of golden-age Tina Turner).

Through it all, there’s Beverley’s magnificent voice: her singing is less runs-oriented than other contemporary female singers, and her vocal embellishments are more strongly typed and intelligently targeted at causing specific expressive effects. Speculating for a minute, this could be because Ms. Knight learned to sing in church. Wikipedia says,

Knight was born of Jamaican parents, and she grew up in a strict Pentecostal household where church attendance was commonplace. It is here where she began her singing career: “the first time I heard music would have been in church. My mum was often called upon: ‘Come on sister Dolores. Lead us in song!’ Singing was the most natural thing in the world. I thought, doesn’t everybody’s mum lead the congregation at church in song?” Knight continued singing in her local church throughout her childhood, and her musical education was continued at home where she was often exposed to gospel music.

For those wishing to dive deeper into Beverley Knight’s music, I would recommend Who I Am and Affirmation. Both present a very palatable mix of R&B and chart-oriented pop - so they work for ears looking for big hooks, not just those deeply immersed in the R&B paradigm.

Music City Soul

Beverley Knight. Parlophone Int’l 2007, Audio CD, $8.87

On her latest offering, Music City Soul, Knight ventures even further into classic soul territory. Recorded in Nashville with a band of veteran R&B players, this record sounds more ‘acoustic’ and showcases her gospel voice beautifully. In a BBC interview referenced on Wikipedia, Knight says,

My mother played Sam Cooke and he was the first voice I ever heard on record. His was the first voice that directly had a big impact on me, vocally. He still makes me cry. He’d take the very simple Bible stories that I grew up with and just make them into a two-and-a-half-minute song and yet with an intensity and a passion that the world had never heard before. He really was a major influence on my life.

Beverley Knight’s increasingly classicist R&B is fantastic music that begs to be heard. Too ’straight’ and perhaps a little too old-fashioned to become successful in a North American market where ‘R&B’ is a category that (puzzlingly) also contains the Pussycat Dolls and Nelly Furtado’s terrible Loose, Knight’s records make a strong case for proper singing.