Category: "jazz"
MENAHAN STREET BAND: THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
Menahan Street Band: Make the Road By Walking
Menahan Street Band: Home Again!
From Make the Road By Walking (Dunham, 2008)
The Menahan Street Band (MSB) comes out of the Daptone Records camp - the Band's leader, guitarist Tommy "TNT" Brenneck, is part of the Dap-Kings (of Sharon Jones/Amy Winehouse fame) and he branches off here with a remarkable instrumental soul album where Brenneck himself plays guitar, bass, drums, organ and piano while having back-up from some of the leading Brooklyn soul players such as Leon Michels (of Truth and Soul), trumpeter Dave Guy and vibraphonist Toby Pazner, among several others. (For the full line-up, see here).
"Instrumental soul" is a rather awkward label - most folks would just call it "jazz" and I'm not one to get too hung up on genre labels. At the end of the day, the music is soulful and that's all that matters. MSB does bear similarities to another underrated album in the same ilk from a few years back, the El Michels Affair's Sounding Out the City and both share a knack for patient, but intricate arrangements, strong rhythm sections and to me, the deal-sealer - excellent horn sections that fill the tracks with a sense of drama and intensity.
That's certainly the case on "Make the Road by Walking," which first came out last fall and was promptly (remarkably fast!) sampled by Jay-Z for "Roc Boys". You can hear how the power of the brass is what Jay-Z's track zeroes in on.
However, my favorite parts of the MSB album are sometimes the subtler, quieter parts - such as that guitar that begins "Home Again!" and how the bassline lines slide in as a warm, but understated complement to the brighter parts of the melody. There's a lot going on in the song and you have to marvel and how well the pieces fit together - it's sublime.
In case you're curious to hear what the MSB sound like with vocals thrown on - check out Dunham's 7" single version of "Tired of Fighting" with Charles Bradley singing over it.
By the way, it'd be wonderful for a week to go by without having to acknowledge the death - or deaths - of remarkable artists but these days, it just seems like we're losing more and more everyday. As some of you likely have heard, Levi Stubbs, lead singer for the Four Tops with his legendary baritone, passed away last week. My fellow Vibe.com blogger, Mark Anthony Neal, wrote an excellent post on Stubbs and his legacy.
I wanted to also acknowledge the passing of Dee Dee Warwick. Dee Dee was the older sister to Dionne Warwick but despite a long recording career, she never enjoyed the same successes as her younger sibling. It's a shame because Dee Dee had one of those voices that could pierce through any setting and demand attention. Here's one of my personal favorites:
Dee Dee Warwick: Foolish Fool
From Foolish Fool (Mercury, 1969). Also on Best Of.
Meanwhile, be sure to check out Soul Sides for a sneak peak at new soul cover songs by John Legend and Seal.
LINGERING IN YOUR EAR: CALIFORNIA SOUL
The 5th Dimension: California Soul
From Stoned Soul Picnic (Soul City, 1968)
Marlena Shaw:California Soul
From Spice of Life (Cadet, 1969)
Marlena Shaw:California Soul (Diplo Remix)
From Verve Remixed 4 (Verve, 2008)
There's some kind of a generational and/of cultural divide that separates people when they hear Marlena Shaw's version of "California Soul." For spliff-smoking, Jansport-toting, sample-spotting types, the reaction is likely to be, "oh snap, that's Gangstarr's 'Check the Technique'". For wine-sipping, khaki-sporting, stock-trading folks (note: the two groups are not necessarily mutually exclusive these days), they may be more apt to say, "hey Chad, isn't that the song from that Dockers commercial?" (see this amusing series of ad remixes). Whichever camp you fall into, it's hard to deny the "classic" status of the song, by which I mean the song isn't simply awesome but also indelible; one of those examples of where a cover song >>> the original. In this case, due credit goes to Shaw's piercing vocals but they wouldn't be nearly as impressive without those signature strings, to which you have to nod to Cadet's in-house arrangers, Richard Evans and Charles Stepney - two more examples of how Chicago has been positively blessed with musical genius over the years.
At the same time, you also need to acknowledge that the song was written by none of those folks. For a long time, I erroneously thought "California Soul" was a Gerald Wilson composition, but actually, his was a cover as well. The originators behind the song are actually Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, aka Ashford and Simpson whose career in the '70s tends to obscure their songwriting talents in the 1960s. There's some debate over when the very first version of "California Soul" appeared given that Ashford released the song as a single for Verve in 1968. However, the first big hit version of the song belongs to 5th Dimension, off their Stoned Soul Picnic LP and there's a vague consensus that says Ashford and Simpson wrote the song for them first. Regardless, Nick's own single is fairly obscure whereas the 5th Dimension had a legitimate hit with theirs, though not nearly as big as when Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell tackled it (and the list hardly stops there - the song's been covered at least a dozen times. Ashford and Simpson were prescient in coming up with this line, "it's all in the air/you hear it everywhere.")
I have to admit: when I first heard Diplo was going to remix the song for the Verve Remixed 4 compilation, I didn't really think one could do much more to a song that's been worked over so many times but I was more than pleasantly surprised by his take on it. I wrote this back in June and it bears repeating here: "instead of piling on, he pulls back, keeping the audience anticipating - but never quite delivering - the crashboombam they expect, at least until the very end where he brings back those gorgeous strings again." Indeed, this is Diplo's most unexpected move - the breakbeat is part of what made the song so appealing, especially to hip-hop fans, but Diplo chooses to downplay the drums throughout the song. He'll still kick them in when needed but he finds a way to make the rhythm on here move without relying strictly on lowering the percussive hammer. He does, however, very wisely use the strings to full effect, especially at the end of his remix where they come screaming back in (unlike the original where you only ever hear them at the very beginning). As the song goes, "no matter what you do, it's gonna grab hold of you."
