Black Music Month 2008: In the Midnight Hour: Soul for Lost Love and Crises of Faith
This is the first in a series Black Music Month 2008 Playlists that will explore common themes in the Soul Music Tradition.
Classic recordings like Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour" and Ray Charles's "The Night Time is the Right Time" gave witness to the magic of the night, but the midnight hour is also a time for reflection and prayer. The following playlist examines the themes of lost love and crises of faith as they might be experienced late in the midnight hour.
Bobby "Blue" Bland--"Chains of Love"
Not enough people talk about Bobby "Blue" Bland these days, though his signature hiccup (if you could call it that) is one of the more classic idiosyncrasies in the history of American pop music. Give Kanye West and Shawn Carter some credit for recovering "Ain't No Love In the Heart of the City," a great Bland track no doubt, but not representative of the classic sides he laid down for Duke in the late 1950s and 1960s. Tracks like "Turn on Your Lovelight" (see the opening montage in Eve's Bayou), "That's the Way Love Is" or "Cry, Cry, Cry" are quintessential Bland. As the latter song displays, didn't nobody beg better than Bobby "Blue" Bland in his day and "Chains of Love" is classic example. In the song Bland laments the power of a love that he can't extricate himself from ("now I'm a prisoner"), as he begs for his lover to stop holding him hostage if she's not gonna love him back ("if you gonna leave me, please set me free"). But it is the last verse that gets at the sense of despair as Bland sings, "well it's 3 O' Clock in the morning, lawd and the moon is shining bright...and I was just sitting here wondering, lawd (hiccup) where can you be tonight" and you can just imagine this man sitting on his porch rocking his body back and forth recalling the classic "Trouble in Mind" ("I'm going down to the river...if the blues don't get me, I might have to rock on away from here."
Mable John--"Your Good Thing is About to End"
Mable John is probably best known as the sister of the late and tragically forgotten Little Willie John ("Fever"), but she was also a vocalist on the Stax label in the mid-1960s. John languished as Stax for lots of reasons, including the inability of the label to better promote the women on its label, save Carla Thomas. But John did leave some gems and "Your Good Thing (Is About to End)"--laced with those classic Stax horns--is one of those gems. "Your Good Thing" presents the woman's view on the man whose taken her for granted, but it's John's voice which just screams defiance that makes the track such a treasure. The track was brilliantly featured in the recent documentary, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, as the soundtrack to the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. The scene in the film is a reminder that this music was never just about romance and partying, but that the very sound of the music resonated in the world that black folk struggled to make for themselves.
Aretha Franklin--"So Long"
Aretha Franklin was on fire when Atlantic released the oddity Soul '69. Having established herself as the centerpiece of American popular music in 1967, Franklin chose to stretch out and record tracks that spoke to her comfort with the genres of Blues and Rhythm & Blues such as Percy Mayfield's "River's Invitation" and "Today I Sing the Blues" (like the sides she recorded for Columbia prior to the legendary move to Atlantic in late 1966). "So Long" was one of those tracks. Coming in at nearly 5-minutes, "So Long" is one of Franklin's singular achievements as she channels the influences of Dinah Washington, Esther Phillips, Clara Ward and so many others as well as singing to the emotional dramas of her own life (her difficult marriage with Ted White). And yet she still simply holds up the blood-stained banner for the best of Soul music. "So Long" signals the beginning of Franklin's artistic peak (not commercial), culminating with Amazing Grace (1972) and the underrated If You Don't Think (1974)
The Staple Singers--"You Gonna Make Me Cry"
The Staple Singers came to Stax, after the great purge of 1967--Atlantic's taking of all of Stax's masters--and were a focal point of Al Bell's attempt to rebuild the label. They were largely known as a Gospel group--but began to transition into general uplift music with classic recordings like "Respect Yourself" and "I'll Take You There." Of course you can't talk about the Staples without chatting up sister Mavis (Dylan's secret boo) whose voice maps a range of pains, pleasures and desires that we've never had language to describe (though Daphne Brooks will one day). And that's why the not-often remembered "You Gonna Make Me Cry" deserves attention as one of the group's most important performances. This is a song about despair, but not simply that "you don't really love me no more " despair but that "the kids need knew shoes and what we gonna eat for dinner?" level of despair. This is a song of betrayal--as much about the betrayal of some man, as it is the betrayal of the State. Another quick reminder that the personal is the political.
Dorothy Moore--"Misty Blue"
A few years ago, Mary J. Blige gave "Misty Blue" a spin on her live recording and it seemed apropos for her to give some tribute to a performer who is remembered, at best, as a one-hit wonder--if she is remembered at all. For a few years though in the 1970s, while so many had become addicted to the rhythms of Disco, Al Green was in the midst of spiritual crisis and Soul music had generally lost it geographic bearings, Dorothy Moore held down Southern Soul. Tracks like "I Believe You" and her take on Willie Nelson's "Funny (How Time Slips Away)" never became national hits, but were emblematic of an artist that took the tradition seriously. "Misty Blue" (1976) was a major hit and achieves its success in its simplicity--Soul music with a country twang. It was the last commercial gasps for a generation of artists like Moore and Joe Simon, though many would remake themselves in the world of Gospel music.
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