WIS starts its second year blinking into the early spring sunshine and picking six tunes that will make your week better for hearing them. Enjoy!

Oh La De Da – The Staple Singers (1972)

As I was publishing the first anniversary blog last week last Friday, it struck me that the last couple of weekly playlists had been dominated by quite downbeat, reflective songs. Not that there is anything wrong with that, you understand, but I did think that I should maybe strive to get a bit more energy into my choices as year two begins. So, when Saturday morning’s Radcliffe & Maconie show on 6Music finished and Huey Morgan’s show began with this stomping, joyous track, I thought it was the very dab to kick things off again. I have to admit that while Mavis Staple’s unmistakable voice told me it was The Staple Singers performing, it was not a track I was familiar with. And, despite that rather bland title, some research threw up some interesting back stories. The track was a top 40 US hit in 1972 (yes, that year again!) and was written by songwriter/producer Philip Mitchell who had many of his songs recorded by major artists, notably Hurt So Good by Susan Cadogan which I wrote about in WIS 22Sep23. The single came from a live album which was recorded at the Wattstax benefit concert held at the LA Memorial Coliseum commemorating the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles. The Staple Singers were on the bill with a host of other Stax recording artists like The Bar-Keys, Carla Thomas, Albert King, Rufus Thomas and Isaac Hayes. They opened the show and while their live set included Respect Yourself and an incendiary version of their 1972 US No 1 hit I’ll Take You There, they did not perform Oh La De Da. However, a studio recording of the song was used in the documentary movie of the concert as backing music to some of the behind-the-scenes shots. So, the producers dubbed their stage intro and some audience noise on to the track and included it on the live album. It sure sounds lively to me!

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Brother Brother – The Kane Gang (1983)

OK – here’s a tale of rabbit holes that needs some concentration to follow. As I was researching the background to The Staples Singers track above, the reference to their 1971 US top 20 hit Respect Yourself made me head off down a hole about that song. I discovered it was written for them by Stax Records house songwriter Mack Rice after singer Luther Ingram told him in heated discussion on the state of the world that “black folk need to learn to respect themselves”. Rice came up with the funky groove to add to Ingram’s self-empowerment message and the voices of Pops and Mavis Staples with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and the Memphis Horns – it couldn’t fail! I then came to a junction in the rabbit warren and took the sign marked “Kane Gang cover version” and moved seamlessly into the unlikely location of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1983 where a young Geordie called Keith Armstrong ran a club called the Soul Kitchen. Inspired by Postcard in Glasgow, he decided to launch his own record label called Kitchenware to bring burgeoning talent from the North East to the ears of the world. Armstrong’s first signings were the spiky pop of The Daintees and Hurrah! but third out the traps was Durham’s Kane Gang. They came with an unfashionable love of deep south gospel which they melded to a Sly Stone groove and then mixed it through their post-industrial north-east sensibilities. This probably explains their pumped up electro-funk cover of the Staples’ Respect Yourself which followed their big soulful hit Closest Thing To Heaven into the UK charts in 1984. Minor hits Gun Law and Small Town Creed were great records too, but in this humble scribe’s opinion, their lost debut single was their finest hour and so is playlisted here. I bought it on 12 inch when it was released, resplendent in its red cover with its MLK graphic. Driven by an irresistible bass riff over a delicious dragging handclap beat and peppered with funky guitar chops, Brother Brother‘s plea for a more equal world comes direct from the heart: “I don’t ever want to see another crown/I am the King/We are all Kings/ King! King!/Brother! Brother!” Yeah – it’s white-boy funk, but as white-boy funk goes, its one of the best.

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Texas Hold’Em – Beyoncé (2024)

WIS playlists its first 2024 track and, in the well-worn words of Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman, loudly proclaims: “Greetings Pop Pickers!”. In a week where I was looking for more energy in my playlist, came the news that the other High Priestess of Pop (sorry, Taylor) had achieved her first UK No 1 single in 14 years. And not only that, it is a ‘country’ song, the first UK No 1 for this genre since…. Old Town by Lil Nas X in 2019. That wasn’t how I expected that sentence to end when I started reading it I suppose it’s been a long time since Kenny Rogers took Lucille to the ‘top of the pile’ – 47 years, to be precise. The article described the tune as Beyoncé “line dancing through life’s problems with a whisky in her hand”. Having now seen the image on the single cover, I can only hope she is more fully dressed if she actually attempts that tricky manoeuvre. She certainly doesn’t line dance in the music video for the song which is just a montage of outtakes from what appears to be endless fashion photo shoots the poor girl seems obligated to do to feed her fanbase. I did see several online article headlines claiming that ‘Bey’s Texas Hold’Em has the internet line dancing’, but I didn’t go and look. What I didn’t expect is that the recording is actually remarkably roots country in its style with a banjo to the fore throughout and a fiddle solo in the bridge. It kicks along a good old pace and it’s unmistakably her voice at the front of it all – her vocal delivery is very Queen B, particularly in the half-spoken refrain: “It’s a real-life boogie and a real-life hoedown/Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now”. I’m not sure I can see Dolly carrying that off as well as Mrs Jay-Z does. She rhymes Texas with Lexus throughout and signs off enigmatically, if somewhat confusingly, with a cry of “furs, spurs, boots/solargenic, photogenic, shoot”. Some lyric sites had picked up the fourth word as sologenic and once again the internet exploded as this turns out to be “a derivatives protocol that tokenizes securities, stocks, commodities, and other non-blockchain assets”. Nope, me neither…

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Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) – Scritti Politti (1984)

I recall first being aware of Scritti Politti when they were part of that post-punk ‘DIY ethic’ squat scene with the likes of The Desperate Bicycles and Swell Maps. I wasn’t that taken by the avant-garde, atonal Marxist-intellectual tunes produced by these bands but listening back to Scritti’s 1979 Rough Trade single Skank Bloc Bologna now, it doesn’t sound too bad. However, when I got my copy of the NME C81 tape (yes, those tapes again!), I was taken aback when the hiss of the drum machine kicked in on The “Sweetest Girl” and Green Gartside’s echoey vocal began over that gentle piano skank beat – played by none other than Robert Wyatt. The dramatic change in sound had come about during a long convalescence period following Gartside collapsing on stage in early 1980. I bought the single when it came out in October 1981 and recall it becoming a big favourite among the friends that I spent the new year of 1982 with in Glencoe (hello, Carmela!). But it was the b-side Lions After Slumber, with its incredible funky bass line that really showed the direction Gartside was headed in. It sold enough to register in the lower reaches of the charts and was brought together with two other singles (the gospel-like Faithless and the reggae-infused Asylums In Jerusalem) on debut LP Songs To Remember, which reached No 12 by the end of 1982. By this point, Gartside was the sole remaining member of the original band and he moved to New York and hooked up with keyboardist David Gamson, who Gartside was aware of through them both being on Jive Wire, the second NME tape. The pair began recording the tracks for what would become Cupid & Psyche 85, Scritti’s UK top five album. Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) was recorded with legendary producer and arranger Arif Madrin who, amazingly, had also worked on the recording of Aretha’s I Say A Little Prayer. The song shimmers with 80s pop sophistication, from the pounding drum and bass programming to the gleam of the layered synths and those ethereal, breathy vocals. It was all a very long way from DIY-squat post-punk and, released forty years ago this week, the single became the band’s major breakthrough hit in the UK, reaching the top 10.

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Me and Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin (1971)

This week in 1971, Janis Joplin’s final record Pearl went to number one in the US album chart. Recorded in the autumn of 1970, it was not quite finished when Joplin was found dead in the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles on 4 October from a heroin overdose at the age of 27. Jimi Hendrix had overdosed and died at the same age only sixteen days beforehand. After the (literal) highs of 60s counterculture, suddenly the 70s looked a bleak place. Joplin was primarily known for her impressive live singing voice but her few previous studio recordings were not considered to have captured that feeling. Producer Paul Rothchild wanted to make sure that Pearl achieved this and had been working methodically through each track, getting her amazing voice down on tape. He only had one vocal track left to record when she died, so Buried Alive In The Blues was left on the album as an instrumental tribute to her when the Pearl was released posthumously, three month after her death. Not only was the record seen by the critics as successful at finally presenting Joplin at her best, it was also the most commercially successful record of her short career and has sold over 4 million copies to date. The LP includes Joplin originals like Mercedes Benz (referenced in my piece on Margo Price in WIS2Feb24) and the fantastic Move Over. Her blues-rock cover of the Garnet Mimms 1963 soul hit Cry Baby demonstrates the range in her voice but I am playlisting another cover, her only US No1 single Me and Bobbie McGee. Written by Kriss Kristoferson and originally recorded by Roger Miller in 1969, its tale of two drifters crossing the American south to California and drifting apart is given a definitive reading by Joplin. Although it starts understated, the punch she brings to outro with her scat singing gives the song great energy as the band let go swapping piano, organ and guitar solos . And it’s got a killer key change! “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose/Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free” seems absolutely made for her to sing.

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Swallow My Pride – The Ramones (1977)

How best to round off a week of upbeat tunes, I wonder? Well, a quick blast of the Ramones never fails to lift my spirits and given the horrible throat infection I had over the last week, I certainly needed my spirits lifted. Normally my colds follow a well-established pattern – a short period of dry, scratchy throat which quickly morphs into a snotty nose and a chest cough. This time round, it never really got past first base with four straight days and nights of very painful swallowing, mitigated by regular salt water gargling, chewing ice cubes and sucking Strepsils. So it seems appropriate that I playlist the first single from the Ramones second LP Leave Home as the final track this week. It was written by singer Joey Ramone after problems with their contract with their label Sire and drummer Tommy telling him that when it comes to signing with record companies, “you gotta swallow your pride”. It lasts just two minutes and nine seconds and, in my circumstances, the line: “And things were looking grim/But they’re looking good again” seems to resonate with the way my week went. And talking of resonance, the image on the single sleeve is an evocative one for me. Swallow My Pride was paired with Pinhead on the single b-side, another track from the second LP. Not content with having one of the funniest, knowingly self-deprecating lyrics in rock’n’roll (“D-U-M-B/ Everyone’s accusing me!”), it also has the goofy but brilliant “Gabba Gabba Hey” refrain as the song plays out. When playing Pinhead live, Joey used to brandish the sign, presumably to ensure the crowd got the words right. I can still picture that image seen through the flailing limbs of many sweaty bodies in the QMU in Glasgow in October 1978 on the only occasion I saw them perform. Forty six years later, it still remains one of my favourite ever gigs.

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Last Word

I am pleased to announce that we have two guest blogs coming up over the next couple of weeks. First up is my old Edinburgh flatmate from the 80s Mike Lynch with his selection of unusual covers, curated and posted all the way from sunny Adlelaide, Australia. Following this, I’m delighted to have persuaded one of my music gurus and all-round good bloke Ken Macdonald to choose some tunes and scribe a blog for WIS in his own inimitable style. Both Mike and Ken hail from my hometown of Paisley but future contributions from anyone unlucky enough not to be born in Scotland’s biggest town are very welcome.

And after all the OCD angsting about numbers in the Master Playlist last week, I found out that there were some tracks missing! So it’s all gone to pot again as I add this week’s six but I’ll sort it out soon. Don’t let that stop you clicking the link…

WeekInSoundMaster

AR