Organist Lyman Woodard passed away last week. He was a major presence on the Detroit jazz scene for decades, holding down numerous residencies and schooling a lot of younger players.
I first discovered his music via his sublime Saturday Night Special LP, which is one of my favorite jazz LPs. It's a subtle record-- intimate, lo-fi, lightly funky, kind of wistful-- but one that I don't tire of. The songs, all by Woodard or members of his band, are brooding, gorgeous, groovy and a little eerie-- often all at once-- and the arrangements are perfect.
The original album is pretty rare-- it was released on John Sinclair's Strata Records, which didn't have much in the way of distribution. In December I ripped the whole LP and was bugging off the fact that in the reissue glut of the past decade, Saturday Night Special had somehow slipped through the cracks. However before I got around to posting any of the songs here, I learned that Wax Poetics has a reissue in the works with new liner notes and the original, even more gangster cover. It's currently available only in digital form but they're also taking pre-orders on limited edition double vinyl.
Because a legit reissue is available, I've held off on posting anything from Saturday Night Special, but here is an earlier version of a song that appears on that LP:
Lyman Woodard was briefly a member of the 8th Day and on their second album they recorded this song. There's something a little sinister in the bassline but the song has such a groovy pulse that I still reach for it every time I'm DJing on a balmy night.
Bonus random fact I learned while preparing this post that kinda blew me away: the saxophonist on Saturday Night Special is also the singer of this mid-90s house classic.
Joe Cuba, the conguero and bandleader who more or less invented the boogaloo, passed away this week.
Most of my favorites by him-- "El Pito", "Bang Bang" and, especially, "Do You Feel It?"-- are in print one way or another, but here's another that isn't:
Since receiving a nice plug over on O-Dub's soul-sides blog the other day I've noticed my downloads have tripled, so I presume there are a lot of folks who wandered over here from there.
Welcome.
Come on in, take off your coats. Set a spell.
Looking around, you may have noticed it's a little shabby. The design is blogger.com off-the-rack and there are no homey touches like nifty album art montages or clever photoshopped jpegs that fit a theme.
The content is seamier, too. There's a lot more rap music, much of it new, some of it unapologetically wrong, plus the occasional bad word. I'm aging less gracefully and more fitfully than Oliver.
Finally, there generally isn't much context, biographical, personal or otherwise. I post songs or mixes because I like them, trusting that if you like them you'll follow through by supporting artists, looking for more information on them, etc. I'll point your way but I won't hold your hand.
Now I'm not generally one to pander but I'm enjoying the attention and figure, hey, why not throw new readers a bone?
As a casual soul-sides reader, I'm attuned to O-Dub's three obsessions: cover versions, boogaloo & songstresses. I've been casting about for a song that would hit a trifecta, but couldn't think of anything beyond La Lupe's "Fever", which is great but a little too commercially available (regular AND remixed for those who need everything to be 130 bpm!).
So instead, let me salve the obsessions individually:
Los Johnny Jets were from Mexico. There are exactly two versions of "Tighten Up" with funnier ad-libs, Homer Simpson's and the sound-alike version by the Classmates, both of which repeat the "Hi everybody we're Archie Bell & the Drells" part verbatim.
Vivian Reed was a Broadway singer and her first LP is mostly showtunes, but this track has a soul pedigree. It was co-written by Barbara Acklin & the Chi-Lites' Eugene Record; Philly sweet soul kings Thom Bell & Bobby Martin arranged it.
I was watching a documentary from last year, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, and there was a shot of a flier for a gig where Strummer's pre-Clash pub-rock band, the 101ers, opened for these guys:
Gonzalez was an English soul band who had a minor disco hit with "I Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet". A few of their records got released in the U.S., but not their debut, which this was taken from. I first heard this in the early 90s and it took me years to find a copy, although that probably says less about this record's rarity than about how much the record game has been changed by the internet.
In the last minute-and-a-half it goes into a "Hot Pants Road" rip-off and then borrows from "Giving Up Food for Funk". The first 7 minutes are a cover of this:
He wrote a ton of great soul music, from the Marvelettes' "Too Many Fish in the Sea" to Rose Royce's "I Wanna Get Next to You" and was a phenomenal producer. Taking over from Smokey Robinson in the late 1960s, he reshaped the sound of the Temptations and pioneered a crazily lush, psychedelic brand of soul.
The new Bronx River Parkway/Candela All Stars album is another record I would've expected to set off my retro-bullshit detector, but it somehow sneaks through.
Currently there are a lot of acts churning out records that recreate the sound of 60s and 70s soul. Many are good and a few of them are outstanding (e.g., the Dap Kings), but by and large it's hard for me to get excited about their music. I'd rather hear someone trying to create something fresh than imitating something that's been done before, however good the original.
If San Sebastian 152 gets a pass it's because they've made something that didn't exist before. While the music is clearly inspired by 60s/70s latin soul by artists like Ray Barretto, Joe Bataan and others, it mostly doesn't really sound like them. The original stuff is is usually tinny and often shrill, this has mid-range and even bass; the original is usually in english with stupid lyrics, this is in spanish with lyrics that might be stupid, but I can't speak spanish so I'm free from knowing. It's what I wish old latin soul records sounded like.
This is their rip-off of Larry Harlow's "Freak Off":
He acts like he doesn't believe it when I say it to him, so I'll put it in print for the world to read: Sake 1 is the best DJ in San Francisco. My man is so good on so many levels-- taste, skills, versatility, flavor-- that it floors me.
Sake's not one of those DJs you always read about online or see in magazines, but in San Francisco he is loved. His signature party, Pacific Standard Time, packs the Levende Lounge each Thursday and he uses the platform in really cool ways, bringing in legendary DJs (Danny Krivit, Kool Herc), giving up-and-comers a chance to shine (the Honor Roll) and giving back with frequent benefits for community groups. If I grow up to be a little more like him, I won't be even a tiny bit mad.
Anyhow, I bring it up because the boy has a new mix-- an actual, legitimate, commissioned-by-the-label mix entitled Fania Live 03 from the Fresh Coast-- and it's great. The story goes like this: a couple of years ago, Emusica bought the catalog of the great salsa label, Fania Records, and began reissuing tons of amazing music from the '60s and '70s. To promote this stuff to the niños, they commissioned compilations from Gilles Peterson and DJ Muro, and mixes from several DJs, including Sake.
Sake has done a number of mix CDs that I've really enjoyed over the years (this one especially!), but this may be the best example of what he's about as a DJ and a person. The selections, from the likes of Willie Colon & Hector Lavoe, Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barretto, are great on a musical level, but deliver lyrically, too. You don't have to speak much Spanish to catch the themes of community and social justice in songs like "Mi Gente", "La Revolucion", "Justicia" and "Paz", particularly when coupled with Sake's gentle use of dialog. The mixing is really smooth and tasteful, too. Man, it's just good.
The CD came out last Tuesday and should be available in stores, online, etc. Sake is having two release parties for the CD-- one in SF at PST on March 20th with Bobbito and one in Los Angeles on March 22 with Bobbito, Francisco Aguabella and Chuchito Valdes (!). The entire album is currently streaming here.
