“El Manicero (The Peanut Vendor)” is easily one of the best known Cuban compositions in the world, covered many many many times over yet it is a tune I never, ever seem to tire of. I’ve been lax in actually showing proper love even though my intentions have been there for a while: both Cachao and Sedes’ versions had been in the back of my head for future posts but it was hearing Peru’s Raul Llerena’s version tonight that finally forced me to bajar mi culo.
Cachao’s is straight classique, from one of Cuba’s grand masters and while I’d hesitate to call this the definitive version (I’m sure, in fact, it’s not), there’s something about this that sounds like how you ideally want “El Manicero” to sound. Every part of the song is done beautifully, especially as the opening builds from percussion, to guitar, to piano, to horns, and finally to vocals. Perfect.
Finding this song on Sedes’ album was unexpected if only because it seemed like a bit of an old fashioned choice for a song that otherwise sounded quite contemporary but like everything else on the incredible Mama Calunga LP, Sedes and his team murder their version, especially around 2:20 when they downshift in tempo and rework the song into a slow burner of a son montuno only to descarga it up by the end. At five and a half minutes, Sedes gives his band room to play and their joy is palpable in every bar.
Lastly, we come to Ranil and His Tropical Band with a Peruvian chicha twist on the tune. Gotta love the mash-up of styles here, with the telltale surf guitar of chicha playing the main melody, a cumbia beat to rock to, and then, out of nowhere, what most definitely sounds like a few licks of “Mambo Italiano” thrown in! This is off of a killer new reissue that Light in the Attic is helping distribute, bringing one of the lost legends of 1970s Peruvian cumbia to light (I’ll be writing more about this album in the near future).
This is easily one of the most extraordinary albums I’ve come across in a long, long time. Cultier represents one of those ultimate examples of transnational musical mastery – a pianist born in Martinique but recorded in both Canada and France and sounds like he’s from everywhere and nowhere at once. Even though My Way is ostensibly a “jazz” album, it switches styles up with remarkable diversity, ranging from the straight balladry of “Nathalie” (sung in FrenchKreyol), to the unmistakably Cuban sabor of “Ochung” (sung in Spanish), to all that crazy ass moog elsewhere on the album, whether you’re talking about the overly seductive, bossa-like smoothness of “The Way It Should Be,” to the frenzied percussive thunder of “Zouk.” Seriously, what is the moog even doing on here? (and I don’t pose that question in any negative way): it’s just completely bonkers.
(I normally wouldn’t share this many songs off a single album but there’s just no way to capture the insane diversity of what Cultier does here with just a couple of examples.)
This album is so weird in fact, it managed to bump off my previously “most weirdly incredible Afro-Caribbean album, the self-titled LP by Cuba’s Grupo Los Yoyi. The latter has the funk tip on lock, especially with a beautifully groovy disco touch. I posted another song off this same LP a few months back but “Banana” and “Paco La Calle” are probably my two favorite cuts off that album (another Latin funk Grail, btw). The Yoyi LP is the better weapon in a dance-off but it’s hard to imagine too many other albums offering a greater set of musical styles than Cultier’s.
(As always, gotta thank Cool Chris. He was the first one to play me the Los Yoyi LP, about four years ago, now that I think about it and I picked up My Way from the Groove Merchant on my recent trip up to the Bay)
i originally posted this song almost exactly five years ago, albeit under very different circumstances. At the time, it was following the Katrina disaster and I was mentally and emotionally spent and I posted a few of Toussaint’s songs as both homage and salve.
Five years later and I was at the Groove Merchant this past weekend and Cool Chris was playing “Soul Sister” and I remembered how fucking great this song is (pardon mon français). It’s funny because I recently was re-listening to a lot of Erma Franklin (you’ll find out why soon enough) and the opening to “Soul Sister” instantly reminded me of her “Piece of My Heart,” which isn’t too surprising since both use similar approaches to the vaunted I IV V chord progression (which is also why “Soul Sister” bears a resemblance to “The Joker” and a gazillion other songs.
Regardless, the beat is catchy enough but what really sells this are Toussaint’s vocals, the male back-ups and the unexpected female singers who come in to sing, “thank you brother, thank you baby,” immediately followed by that the men, vigorously hollering back, “Hey you!” As a sequence, it’s hellaciously awesome.
I can’t claim that anything else on this album can top “Soul Sister” but if you ever get tired of just putting that tune on repeat (but really, how can you?) you can always flip over to “Fingers and Toes” for a far moodier ballad that’s pretty much the emotional antithesis of “Soul Sister’s” cheery, anything-can-happen vibe. This is a song at the end of love and damn if Toussaint doesn’t even make that sound compelling (a really intriguing hook on this song, btw. Sounds like a chorus written a couple thousand miles north of NOLA even if the rhythm is all Crescent City).
Seriously? How the f— have I never posted this before considering it’s pretty much one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs of all time which is another way of saying it’s one of the greatest songs of all time. Perfect pop song: under 3 minutes long, killer hook, a beat that you can’t help but smile at and Stevie at his finest, vocally.
Lately, I’ve gotten my wife hooked on the song after she heard it at a wedding I went to. Her and my daughter danced to it which only made good memories I have about this song even better.
Also: this is one of those songs that I just have to credit to hip-hop for my first encounter with it. I am talking, of course of:
It’s my birthday today (that’s right, me, Sean Penn and De Niro, motherpluckers). Since I’ve already given myself a birthday gift, I wanted to share one with all of you.
Before me and Wil’s weekly party at the Short Stop ended, we had planned on making a mix-CD together, dedicated to all slow jams. Alas, we never managed to put that together before the night ended but I still have my half of it. The zip file has 10 songs individually saved but the whole thing goes together in a mix.
Boogaloo 2: The Slow Jams
1. Robin Thicke: Ms. Harmony
2. Isley Brothers: Footsteps In the Dark
3. Lee Fields: Honey Dove (2002 version)
4. Bill Withers: Moanin’ and Groanin’
5. Bobby Caldwell: What You Won’t Do
6. Joe Bataan: I Wish You Love Pt. 1
7. Wendy Rene: After the Laughter
8. Aaron Neville: She Took You For a Ride
9. Bob and Gene: You Made My Life a Sunny Day
10. The Impossibles: Easy To Be Hard
Hope you all enjoy and thanks as always for supporting Soul Sides.
(Editor’s intro: I first met Lauren Onkey at the EMP Pop Conference where she gave this incredible paper on Black bands in Liverpool and all I could think was, “ok, I need to meet this person.” Since then, I’ve come to value both her knowledge and passion and I’m glad that someone as capable as she is working at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame. I was overdue in getting her to write a summer song post for us but here she is, talking about that “Sweet Sticky Thing.” –O.W.)
Since 1975, when I first bought the single, I dig “Sweet Sticky Thing” out every summer. It’s the heat, and the memory, and the fantasy, and the sex. Summer songs for me are as much about my memory of summers past—or, truth be told, my fantasies of those summers—than soundtracks of whatever life I might actually be living. Honey was part of the soundtrack of 7th grade, when parents were freaking out over busing and integration, and the kids were trying to avoid the crossfire and figure out how to live together, through music as much as anything else—could Brass Construction, Earth, Wind, & Fire and The Brothers Johnson coexist with Aerosmith and Peter Frampton? Seems like we could all get into “Love Rollercoaster”—must have been the hormones. (Hey, come to think of it, The Brothers Johnson’s “I’ll Be Good To You” is another summer soundtrack song).
At first, “Sweet Sticky Thing” isn’t the flat out funk you expect from the Ohio Players, like “Fopp” or “Fire.” Leroy “Sugar” Bonner’s jazzy guitar intro and the synth strings set up what sounds like a soulful, romantic girl-watching song, like “Just My Imagination” (well, after the wolf whistle). Clarence Satchell’s sax starts out smooth, too, and then Bonner and the other horns lay down a funky groove, and Satchell goes a little nuts. The woman, “leaving her honey everywhere,” is driving them all to distraction. And it grooves along that way for 6 minutes, hot and smooth, and a little dangerous. It’s hot out, and everybody’s wearing as little as possible, the heat’s shimmering off the asphalt and that honey’s starting to stick. You don’t know what’s going to happen, and you’re not even sure you know what you want, but you’re just drawn to that honey. The guitar, sax and horn workout for the last minute of the song could be the soundtrack to sex, or a fight, or a threat—or an attack on the woman, for that matter. Depends on your summer. –Lauren Onkey
I recently blew past my standard “ceiling” for record purchases in order to lay my hands on “the Phirpo album” (thanks Beto and Adam!). If you recall my previous discussion of record “Holy Grails,” there are certain criteria a Grail has to meet, including, but not limited to: obscurity, difficulty of purchase (based on price and/or rarity), quality. And on all those levels, the Phirpo LP completely meets or exceeds.
It is, in short, the best Latin funk LP I know of. Completely blows the doors off of whatever else I could put up against it, especially in being more than 1 or 2 tracker but practically going end to end with almost half the album being caliente indeed, and all but one or two of the rest of the songs acceptably “good”. The only real let down was “Micaela” (which is not a cover of the Pete Rodriguez boogaloo-era classic).
I don’t know much about this group at all except that they’re from Venezuela (though their album came out on Philips in both Colombia and Venezuela, but with different covers). I suspect Porfi Jiminez was a member since he wrote two songs for the album and I don’t believe either is a cover from his own solo output. Whoever was in this outfit frickin’ smoked though. Ridiculously so. Just listen to that clavinet that opens “Y Esa Pava Que?” that then slides into the drums, the horns, the rhythm guitar, etc. Holy moly. All this plus covers of a Fela Kuti and Tito Rodriguez? Are you kidding me? This was worth every (extravagant) penny.
Anyways, this got me thinking of other “best of” Grails in my private mind garden.
Some are super easy, as in the Grail-iest of Grails in Latin soul: Har-You Percussion Group’s self-titled album. I still don’t own this and I suspect, one day, I’ll just throw down for it (but not anytime soon given its “market price”).
Strangely, I don’t really have any hip-hop Grails, maybe because I’ve more or less acquired any rap release I really really wanted. That’s not to say there’s not some great random rap stuff out there I wouldn’t love to get my hands on (“Stitch By Stitch” being high up there) but these aren’t Grails to me; I don’t daydream about copping ‘em.
I don’t lack for soul Grails but there’s also nothing that quite stands out as clearly as, say, Har-You or Phirpo. It may be that the playing field is slightly more level in soul, with many different titles competing across a wider spectrum of “soul” styles. If there’s any one album I’d highlight, it’d be East of Underground. If you put both this and Har-You in front of me and offered them, I’d be torn but ultimately, I’d have to admit that the EoU is the greater Grail given its legitimate obscurity. After all, copies of the Har-You LP do turn up but finding an EoU for sale is some Haley’s Comet-type phenom.
Anyways, it always feel good to scratch a title off your “most wanted list” (alas, it’s a rather long list).
My man Ted Jahng put together a pretty nice lil summer mix.
01. Floating Action – So Vapor
02. Paul Parrish – English Sparrow
03. Sublime – Steppin’ Razor
04. Nairobi Sisters – Promise Land (Dub Mix)
05. Francoise Hardy – Je T’ Aime
06. Gal Costa & Caetano Veloso – Que Pena
07. Bibio – Jealous of Roses
08. Shuggie Otis – Inspiration Information
09. Seu Jorge – Mania de Peitao (Jamais Plus Jamais Mix)
10. Mgababa Queens – Akulaiwa Esoweto
11. Hermas Zopoula – Seigneur Apprends Moi
12. Bitty McLean – Walk Away From Love
13. Gaylads – I Need Your Loving
14. Rita Lee – Minha Vida (In My Life)
15. Serge Gainsbourg – Ballade de Melody Nelson
16. Yo La Tengo – The Summer
17. Commodores – Night Shift
Side A
New Hope – Godofallofus
The Inspirational Gospel Singers – The Same Thing It Took
The Week Sisters – What Will It Be Like
Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens – I’ll Take The Long Road
Andrew Wartts and the Gospel Storytellers – There Is A God Somewhere
The Religious Souls – Heaven Sweet Heaven
T.L. Barrett & Youth For Christ Choir – Like A Ship
Side B
Charles May and Annette May Thomas – More Faith Is What It Takes
The Art Reynolds Singers – Down Here Lord/How Did It Feel?
The Joubert Singers – Stand on the Word
Donny Hathaway – Lord Help Me
Robert Vanderbilt – Especially To You
The Truthettes -So Good To Be Alive
G.C. (Gospel Clouds) – Let Us Pray
The Relatives – Goodbye World
A few months back I put out a remix challenge to folks who wanted to mess around with “Your Love,” done by the Many Styles of Bobby Day. I wanted to share two of the entries that came in:
I’m in the middle of another assignment/teaching storm but two things:
1) If you’re not listening to Matthew Africa’s Best of Luv N’ Haight podcast, you wack. This is basically what I was geeking out over ten years ago and most of this STILL sounds fresh as hell. Courtial! Darondo! Leno Spencer! Sugar Pie! So so awesome.
In 2006, I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles and at the time, the spot my wife and I moved into didn’t have enough space for me to unbox my rap records so I just left them in the garage and ever since then, that’s where they’ve stayed: completely boxed.
In moving to the new spot, I have enough shelving to absorb much of the rap collection but not everything. More to the point though, the fact that 90% of my hip-hop collection could stay boxed for four years meant that I clearly wasn’t really making use of them at all and that was a big neon sign that screamed “time to purge.” It’s a daunting task though – I have somewhere around 50-60 boxes of records that need to be gone through which is it’s own headache.
I finally started today. I went through about 6-7 boxes of stuff, including “Aboriginals” through “Biz Markie,” stopping along the way to keep more of my Aceyalone records than i might have predicted while gutting a lot of my Beatnuts records, much to my surprise. Anticon titles = out. Big Daddy Kane records = in. And so forth.
The upside to all this (and believe me, this is the thinnest of silver linings) has been rediscovering a few odd ball records that I figured I’d share just to salvage something useful out of all this.
All said, Romeo Black isn’t exactly killing it on the rhymes and the song goes on at least 1-2 minutes more than it should. But what caught my ear was that producers, The Hollywood Impact, flipped the Average White Band’s “Reach Out” in a way that’s very similar to what Sir Jinx did for Ice Cube’s “Steady Mobbin” only Romeo Black had the beat a year before Cube did (of course, Jinx also did it better).
Interestingly, Kwame flipped Stevie Wonder’s “Hey Love” a year before De La did it and both their songs use conversations within them though De La’s was funnier and less corny. (Speaking of which, if you want to understand why Biggie deaded Kwame’s career over the polka dots, this LP cover says it all).
Supposedly the first rap group of San Bernadino (Inland Empire, represent), dropping verses about NBA stars over “Cutie Pie.” As gimmicky as gimmick songs can get but I’m kind of forgiving given the era and the place. Besides, it’s still probably better than listening to actual NBA stars rap.
The purge will be going on for months so we’ll see what other goodies I can bring you from it.
(Also, if anyone is in the market for a few thousand rap records, uh, hit me up?)
