Tag Archives: Wedding Bell Blues
When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag – Laura Nyro
Hi all. I'm in the middle of a busy 2-week period with a lot of work and other things. I can't imagine posting anything before Sunday night unless I dip into the archive. So here you are.
Laura Nryo is the last word in pop prodigies. I can't think of anyone whose songs – and ability to deliver them – were so perfectly formed and mature at such a young age. She wrote Wedding Bell Blues at 18, and it, along with And When I Die, Billy's Blues and Stoney End all appeared on her first album, More Than A New Discovery, released when she was 19. When I think back to what I wrote at 18…
That debut album, released on Verve Folkways, brought her to the attention of David Geffen, then a young wannabe agent on the make. He convinced her to take him on, got her out of her previous business arrangements, set up a publishing company with her and got her signed to Columbia. This was a good place for her to be. Columbia had great studios, some of the best producers and engineers (Charlie Calello, Roy Halee and Arif Mardin), and access to the kind of funds needed to hire the best musicians in town to play her idiosyncratic, irregular music: Chuck Rainey, Hugh McCracken, Richard Davis, Alice Coltrane and even Duane Allman are just a few of the musicians who played on her trio of classic albums from the late sixties and early seventies, Eli & the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry and Christmas & the Beads of Sweat.
All of these albums are essential. My favourite is probably New York Tendaberry, which has fewer famous songs than the other two, but is a richer, more elusive and ultimately more rewarding album qua album. Eli is where you go for standout songs and, truth to tell, a little filler (but those highlights include Emmie, Lu, Eli's Coming, Stoned Soul Picnic so who's grousing?).
Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, the last of her three great albums, is something else again. The most diverse and in some ways the most difficult of the classic trio, lacking as it does the unifying themes and mood of New York Tendaberry and the sheer volume of transcendent melodies on Eli, Christmas wrong-foots you by throwing in songs like When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag and her transcendent version of Up on the Roof in among all the difficult stuff. Songs like Map to the Treasure are commendably ambitious in musical form, but lack the assuredness of the similarly complex material on New York Tendaberry (Gibsom Street, say) or the lightness of touch present on Eli.
But When I Was a Freeport is a no-arguments career highlight. It's a slight return to the style of her debut album, albeit one with a wiser, more adult lyrical sensibility. Lines don't come much better than "I've got a lot of patience, baby, and that's a lot of patience to lose", and I never fail to smile at the "Whew" she inserts before the last (very Dylanesqe) "drag-uh". It's a mystery to me why she didn't end the album with this song – no ending to the first stage of her career could have been more fitting.
Nearly up on the roof – Laura Nyro, poet of New York
This entry was posted in Music and tagged Alice Coltrane, And When I Die, Arif Mardin, Billy's Blues, Bob Dylan, Charlie Calello, Chuck Rainey, Columbia, David Geffen, Duane Allman, Eli's Coming, Emmie, Gibsom Street, Hugh MaCracken, Laura Nyro, Lu, Map to the Treasure, More Than a New Discovery, New York Tendaberry, Richard Davis., Stoned Soul Picnic, Stoney End, Up on the Roof, Verve Folkways, Wedding Bell Blues, When I Was a Freeport & You were the Main Drag on March 16, 2016 by rossjpalmer.
She's Gone – Hall & Oates
Hall & Oates always seemed to view popular music as a playground for them to have fun in. Many white soul singers and groups have suffered from a purism born of a desire to be taken seriously. Daryl Hall was taken seriously – by Thom Bell, by Gamble & Huff, by Smokey Robinson (who tried to get him signed to Motown), by the Stylistics and the Delfonics, whose members Hall knew when he was a kid (he's 69 years old – the band have been going since the very early seventies), and by the Temptations, with whom he and Oates struck up an easy friendship.
Knowing that he had the respect of these guys seems to have freed Hall to be whatever he's wanted to be in the moment, and so his music has ranged far and wide. In the late seventies, it acquired new wave synths. He moved to New York and made a punk-infused art-rock solo album with Robert Fripp, king of gonzoid guitar, before casually returning to pop to become an icon of the early MTV age. In the 1980s, Hall, with his huge mullet, and Oates, with his bubble perm and porn-star moustache, were almost like a cartoon of themselves, and always looked like they were having a hell of a lot of fun.
But at heart, Hall and Oates are soul brothers, and their most enduring and emotionally affecting songs tend to be soul ballads, records like Everytime You Go Away (made famous by Paul Young, but recorded in a bravely minimal gospel style by H&O), Sara Smile and, above any other, She's Gone.
She's Gone is one of my favourite records of all time, no question. Top 10, easily. Right up there with Native New Yorker, Wedding Bell Blues (Laura Nyro's recording, obvs), I Need Your Lovin', What You Won't Do For Love and the rest. It's a masterpiece, and I love everything about it: the A/B to B chord change that 10CC nicked for the intro to I'm Not in Love a couple of years later; the way Hall doubles Oates's melody in the verses an octave higher before stepping out at the end of each verse, letting the words pour out of him, as if from some from unhealable wound; the masterful string and brass arrangement; the bluesy guitar in the intro; Bernard Purdie's patient shuffle on the drums. It's all wonderful.
That's before we get to what's probably the finest key change in popular music. Unearned within their songs, most key changes fall flat. They signify no emotional release, only the idea that a raising of pitch might have been connected in some way to a raising of the emotional stakes in some other song in the past, and so might work again here, in some Pavlovian fashion. This "X Factor" key change has given them a deserved bad name. When I noticed Lou Barlow incorporating key changes into a couple of songs on his recent record, I had to stand up and applaud his bravery.- few serious songwriters risk it these days.
The key change in She's Gone is the opposite of the lazy key change. For a start it happens late in a song filled with patient build-up and intelligent lyrical detail. Moreover it comes about in semi-tonal increments, with the listener unsure what key the song's going to land in. It becomes a dare: when we arrive, finally, at whatever key we're going to be in, are the singers going to be able to hit the high notes still? It's like Hall & Oates are setting themselves a challenge, egging the band on to keep raising the bar, always confident they'll be able to clear it. But the actual key change is accompanied by a kind of emotional key change too, from grief to something very close to joy – the journey taken by so much of the best soul music. So much of the best music, full stop.
If you only know Hall & Oates as the group that did Maneater, or Private Eyes, or even Rich Girl, She's Gone is the song to make you permanently re-evaluate them.
This entry was posted in Music and tagged 10CC, Abandoned Luncheonette, Bernard Purdie, Daryl Hall, drummers who can drum/singers who can sing, Everytime You Go Away, Hall & Oates, harmony vocals, I Need Your Lovin', I'm Not in Love, John Oates, key changes, Laura Nyro, Motown, MTV, Native New Yorker, Paul Young, Philly soul, Robert Fripp, Sara Smile, She's Gone, singers who can sing, Smokey Robinson, soul, sound recording, Sound recording and reproduction, the Delfonics, the Stylistics, Thom Bell, Wedding Bell Blues, What You Won't Do For Love, X Factor on February 17, 2016 by rossjpalmer.
That first album, on Verve Folkways, brought her to the attention of David Geffen, then a young wannabe agent on the make. He convinced her to take him on, got her out of her previous business arrangements, set up a publishing company with her and got her signed to Columbia. This was a good place for her to be. Great studios, some of the best producers and engineers (Charlie Calello, Roy Halee and Arif Mardin), and access to the kind of funds needed to hire the best musicians in town to play her idiosyncratic, irregular music: Chuck Rainey, Hugh McCracken, Richard Davis, Alice Coltrane and even Duane Allman are just a few of the musicians who played on her trio of classic albums from the late sixties and early seventies, Eli & the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry and Christmas & the Beads of Sweat.
All of these albums are essential. My favourite is probably New York Tendaberry, which has fewer famous songs than the other two, but is a richer, more elusive and ultimately more rewarding album qua album. Eli is the one to get for great standouts and, truth to tell, a little filler (but those highlights include Emmie, Lu, Eli's Coming, Stoned Soul Picnic so who's grousing?).
Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, the last of her three great albums, is something else again. The most diverse and in some ways the most difficult of the classic trio, lacking as it does the unifying themes and mood of New York Tendaberry and the sheer volume of transcendent melodies on Eli, Christmas wrong-foots you by throwing in songs like When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag and her transcendent version of Up on the Roof amongst all the difficult stuff. Songs like Map to the Treasure are commendably ambitious in musical form, but lack the assuredness of the knotty, emotionally complex material on, say, Gibsom Street, from New York Tendaberry, or the lightness of touch present on Eli.
But When I Was a Freeport is a no-arguments career highlight. You've got to love her vocal on this, and lines don't come much better than 'I've got a lot of patience, baby, and that's a lot of patience to lose' and I never fail to smile at the 'whew' she inserts before the last (very Dylanesqe) 'drag-uh'. It's a mystery to me why she didn't end the album with this song – no ending to the first stage of her career could have been more fitting.
Not quite up on the roof – Laura Nyro, poet of New York
This entry was posted in Music and tagged Alice Coltrane, And When I Die, Arif Mardin, Billy's Blues, Charlie Callelo, Christmas & the Beads of Sweat, Chuck Rainey, David Geffen, Duane Allman, Eli & the Thirteenth Confession, Eli's Coming, Emmie, Gibsom Street, Hugh McCracken, Laura Nyro, Lu, Map to the Treasure, More Than a New Discovery, New York Tendaberry, Richard Davis., Roy Halee, Stoned Soul Picnic, Stoney End, Up on the Roof, Wedding Bell Blues, When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag on September 26, 2013 by rossjpalmer.