Riding in the car today, I was listening to LA’s oldest R&B station, the Stevie Wonder-owned KJLH, and reflecting on music. When I tuned in, they were playing D’Angelo’s and Lauryn Hill’s beautiful collaboration, Nothing Matters. It’s one of those songs that makes you want to curl up and love on that special someone or it makes you reflect on that special someone in your past: the one that got away.
Immediately afterward, Outkast’s I Like the Way You Move was played, and, while the funny and beat-driven song/rap has a tendency to make me tap my foot, it’s an anomaly. (The musical part is reminiscent of Earth, Wind and Fire. Does anyone know if it’s them?) This old lady is ready to beat on the radio when most rap “songs” present themselves. There is more than one reason that my car radio, for the most part, is tuned to talk radio stations.
My musical tastes are very staid. There are a few modern artists that will display enough talent and effort to induce me to spend my money on their CDs—like the aforementioned D’Angelo and Maxwell—but only a few. Like my age, location and cultural contemporary, Cobb, I have a long-cultivated taste for the old-school artists, simply because they didn’t totally rely on technology to produce a listenable product. They relied on something more inspiring: God-given and cultivated talent.
I like male vocalists
Deep voiced singers don’t move me that much, mostly because they tend to sing songs that leave nothing to the imagination. Barry White, God rest him, never had a song that I bought; heck, getting it on was all he sung about. Talk to me about something meaningful for a little while, big boy, before you make your move.
Male singers with a lot of range (and a sensitive lyric-writer) get me going. Stevie will always be my absolute favorite. Sing? Like a bird. Meaningful? When is he not? (My sister, 33, thought that Stevie was about seventy years old because, all her life, there was Stevie Wonder. She didn’t know that he had been a child star.)
Falsetto singers tend to fulfill my requirements. Earth, Wind and Fire’s Philip Bailey sounds just as wonderful now as he did in 1977. EWF’s anthem, Reasons--Bailey’s signature--annoys me, mostly because it was worn out on radio stations in its 70s heyday and still tends to grate the nerves now. However, Bailey’s astonishing voice soars in See the Light and in Imagination.
Imagination:
Magic mirror come
And search my heart
Can you tell me what you see?
There’s thousand voices whispering
Songs; and you’re the melody
So I imagine my heart
With you
See what imagination
Will do
It’s not hard to conceive
Love’s ecstasy
Imagining you and me
One of the best R&B vocal performances by a falsetto singer: A Love of Your Own by Average White Band’s Hamish Stuart. Who knew that a bunch of Scottish guys had that much soul?
Ordinary- and raspy-voiced male singers are extremely cool. Again with EWF: Maurice White has a tendency to pick the perfect songs for his harsh baritone. The best? Love’s Holiday and, a lesser known song, Sunday Morning. In the latter, White’s joy of performing is infectious.
Speaking of joy of performing trumping an ordinary voice, Al Jarreau has long been one of my favorite male vocalists. Most of his good stuff was produced before his Grammy-winning effort Breaking Away. My favorite album CD of his, This Time, contains two of his most wonderful vocal, lyrical and musical efforts back-to-back: Spain and Distracted.
Spain:
I can recall my desire
Every
Reverie
Is on fire
And I get a picture of
All our yesterdays
Yes, today
I can say
I get a kick
Every time they play
That Spain again
I like female vocalists
Not those screechy “soprano” female vocalists who feel the need to warble their tone in every note, but women who can really sing.
Another great R&B vocalist who’s gone from us—sadly, by her own hand—was alto Phyllis Hyman. One of my absolute favorite efforts of hers is a jazzy collaboration with saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, As You Are.
You are to me
A glowing light
So softly lightly up the night
You are a gift
So rare in life
Can’t help but love you as you are
You are to me
A flowing stream
That cools my mind and warms my dreams
You are a gift
Of love supreme
Can’t help but love you as you are
You are to me
A higher place
Where I can go and get away
No one could ever
Take your place
Can’t help but love you as you are
Then there’s the beautiful and vocally-gifted and Anita Baker. Her first big hit, Been So Long, showcased he range and her mega-cool scatting talents, but my favorite of hers is another song on the same album CD, Caught Up in the Rapture.
We stand
Side by side
'Til the storms of life
Pass us by
Light my life
Warm my heart
Say tonight will be
Just the start
I even liked the pitiably Whitney Houston’s voice. Though I never was fond of her choice of songs, the girl can sing (or, at least she could; God knows what’s up at present). One listen to her 1989 tear-inducing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl told the truth. What a wasted talent.
Lyrics
Simple or complex, they need to tell a story, rhyme in a simple or clever fashion and make some danged sense, for Heaven’s sake. Even many of the talented present-day R&B vocalists forget some or all of these simple ingredients for a great song—or even a catchy ditty. Too many of the lyrics I hear now sound like a Verizon commercial. Blech.
(Continued…)
