A batch of Cross Rhythms reviewers consider the merits of 25 mainstream albums

1993
Roots
Nanci Griffith
Other Voices Other Rooms
Elecktra
Up until the release of this Grammy Award winner, Texan singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith had ploughed a commendable furrow as a songwriter with albums such as 'The Last Of The True Believers' and 'Late Night Grande Hotel' which proved her worth as a songsmith. For what was to be her tenth release, Griffith decided to record and release an album made up wholly of other artistes' songs. Ever keen to acknowledge her folk music roots, 'Other Voices Other Rooms' came about after a late night conversation with fellow country legend Emmylou Harris about the need for new voices to sing old songs in order to keep them alive. This, together with some encouragement from former Zombie and Griffith producer Rod Argent, prompted her to start out on what was a labour of love and what would ultimately result in being one of her most popular albums of her career. Containing a generous 17 songs - no doubt whittled down from a lengthier list - Griffith saw the importance of doing a peerless job that would enhance the legacy of the chosen songs, their message and their writers. As a result, a top notch core of musicians were employed - Frank Christian on guitar and piano man James Hooker amongst others - with producer Jim Rooney keeping a skilful eye on the proceedings. Not content with this calibre of personnel, Griffith invited a collection of her own heroes to participate. For example, Bob Dylan lends some harmonica on a tender version of his own "Boots Of Spanish Leather" whilst Arlo Guthrie adds harmonies to Townes Van Zandt's "Tecumseh Valley". Elsewhere, the aforementioned Emmylou Harris features on "Across The Great Divide" by the late Kate Wolf with other country luminaries such as Chet Atkins, Alison Krauss and John Prine appearing throughout. Intent on letting the song take centre stage, Griffith et al pour a vast amount of love, warmth and reverence into each performance, honouring both the piece of work and the author whilst serving to breathe new life into less familiar songs like "Woman Of The Phoenix" and "Ten Degrees And Getting Colder" by Vince Bell and Gordon Lightfoot respectively. Reflecting the obvious connection between the folk scene of yesteryear and the civil rights movement, Griffith subtly references politically aware artistes such as Tom Paxton and Malvina Reynolds to ensure the novice listener is aware of the folk genre's purpose and background as well as her own interests in the field of protest. Nevertheless, this aspect never dominates and each track offers something different whether it be a heartbreaking rendition of Malvina Reynold's lament for lost childhood "Turn Around" or the sheer thrill of the Woody Guthrie classic "Do Re Mi". The album finishes up with a joyous version of "Wimoweh" featuring a host of contributors including the Indigo Girls, activist and singer Odetta and even Griffith's dad who lend a hand to sum up the spirit of not only the album, but also the solidarity and influence that the folk movement of the past embraced and emitted so passionately.
Lins Honeyman

1987
Latin
Bezerra da Silva
Justiça Social
RCA
To those whose only experience of it is within the context of Carnival, samba music means decadent hedonism and not much else. Those with a little more knowledge of Brazilian culture know that those hot rhythms sometimes accompany stinging political commentary and heart-rending stories of poverty and deprivation. Bezerra da Silva was the godfather of socio-politically conscious samba music; an outspoken voice for the favelas (slums), regarded by many as Brazil's Number 1 'Sambista'. The title of his 1987 release sums up what he was all about. As well as railing against injustice, Bezerra tackled other issues Brazil's lower classes faced - especially drugs - all to some of the finest pagode samba tunes I've heard in a long while. Bezerra became a Christian in 2001 and recorded a gospel-inspired samba album, "O Caminho de Luz" (The Path Of Light) a few years later. He died in 2005, aged 77.
George Luke

1984
Rock
Bruce Springsteen
Born In The USA
Columbia
One of the problems with pop music is the pop bit. For music to be defined by its popularity is always going to present a distorting perspective for those intrepid souls trying to assess genuine creative value. As any rock historian will tell you, 'Born In The USA' has sold more than 15 million copies in the US alone and catapulted the New Jersey rocker into the world's biggest stadiums. Numerous critics have declared this album to be the greatest piece of popular music ever made but surely such lavish praise is considerably OTT and to me 'Born In The USA' has neither the bite of his groundbreaking 'Born To Run' album (1975) nor the power of his astonishing home-made demos recording 'Nebraska' (1982). Still, there is much which has stood the test of time here. The title track is a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans and is still hugely powerful today while "Racing In The Street" with its long instrumental coda from the E Street Band shows The Boss could produce music of heart-lifting power. Another standout here, "Cover Me", was written by Springsteen for Donna Summer. Now that's an intriguing thought. Graham Cray once wrote, "Springsteen used to glamorize street life and urban poverty, now he writes about pain and disillusion in a way that affirms the human spirit." I'm not sure I agree with the last sentiment but then I've always found the good bishop's obsession with REM and Springsteen to be rather myopic. Let's just say 'Born In The USA' is a pretty good album.
Tony Cummings

1980
Phil Collins
Face Value
Virgin
Face Value, released in 1981 was Phil Collins' first solo album, appearing around 10 years after joining Genesis as a drummer, and 5 years after becoming their lead singer. He'd not contributed much to the song writing process of the band, but suddenly various personal and emotional events opened a creative torrent from within. Far more personal in content than a typical Genesis number, the album title and close-up cover photo indicate the intimate nature of the lyrics on offer. The set kicks off with the iconic "In The Air Tonight", recently made famous again by Cadbury's drumming gorilla. The song can hardly contain the emotional tension while Phil sings what sounds like a desperate prayer for help as he watches his life and family torn apart: his (first) wife had an affair while he was away on tour. Perhaps he was away too much. When the drums kick in, it's a sensational outburst that urges the listeners' arms to mimic, flailing about like long grass in a gale. The sound of the drums made studio engineers around the world change their methods, and made teenage lads convert their rock-star dreams from guitar hero to drum king. Note the dryness and space caused by the complete lack of cymbals: creative and original to the extreme (though perhaps inspired by old Genesis colleague Peter Gabriel's appetite for textural experimentation). Later on, the theme of separation and loneliness continues with in the sassy "I Missed Again", the haunting "You Know What I Mean" and the smoky smooch of "If Leaving Me Is Easy". If you want to know how harrowing divorce can be, listen to these heart-on-sleeve moments. Thankfully, Phil fell in love again (he found his future second wife), the joyful process of which is documented in "This Must Be Love" with its delicate bongos and zippy bass line, and "Thunder And Lightning" which features the bold brass of Earth Wind & Fire and crisp lead guitar of long-time cohort Daryl Steurmer. Such poetic honesty has rarely been heard on a rock record, but it quickly became one of Collins's solo trade marks, gaining him affection from all those male Genesis fans' girl friends, sisters and even mothers! The album closes with a tribute to John Lennon who was murdered during the period the album was made: a fluid psychedelic cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" followed by a quiet-as-a-mouse acapella "Somewhere Over The Rainbow". 'Face Value' does not appear to hold any specific spiritual insight. But it is a revealing account of the emotions and feelings caused by a broken marriage and the almost redemptive effect of finding true love again.
Andy Cooper

1979
Rock
Paul Simon
One Trick Pony
Rhino
This is the soundtrack to a life on the road. Given that the particular life in question is himself a soundtrack for the emancipated '60s, I could try asking the penultimate question first, since by now we are at a point in Paul Simon's career where just about every song alludes to the possibility that the next might well be his last. So what is the question? Well, how close do you have to be for you and God to hear each other? Or maybe the question is, how desperate? There is a prayer-moment in the second last song here which lays bare Paul Simon's searching spirit for all to see: "Lord, I am a surgeon/And music is my knife/It cuts away my sorrow/And purifies my life/But if I could release my heart and veins and arteries/I'd say God bless the absentee." The oh-so-close to being blessed experience seems a self-fulfilling prophecy for Simon, as he cuts to the chase in every song to provide a marker of just what he feels his life has amounted to, in spite of his phenomenal success. The joyous opening track "Late In The Evening" kicks off the bio with remembrance of every significant encounter which shaped Paul's life: from the one-and-a-half year old baby hearing strains of music seeping into his room with his mother's laughter, the early social whirl and scent of girls "out on the stoops" to the under-age guitarist cranking up his amp 'til he "blew that room away." At this point, the music is light and brassy and funky and definitely uplifting. Then, in the next song, the singer/songwriter dispassionately swings us through a stark opening statement that when he was born, his mother died. Find out for yourself. But the intense escapism required to sustain such a mother-image provides the excuse for the song title and the slide-guitar music-box treatment of "That's Why God Made The Movies". For Simon, the search into those other worlds has begun. We'll come to The Movie later. It is 1979 and he has been on the road almost 14 years. His present "ace" line-up are serving him well - electric and nylon string guitar from jazz guitarist Eric Gale, Richard Tee on piano, Tony Levin on bass, session man extraordinaire Steve Gadd on drums - and the fainly laconic voice is in great shape, but this isn't the laid-back, sardonic 'Still Crazy After All These Years' and we haven't yet reached the celebratory, seminal 'Gracelands'. Some things are still being worked out: do I live for a person; live for an experience; live for a dream? The title track takes a stab at it in pulsating style, setting himself up for the fall with a plea for simplicity, burdened as Simon feels with "the bag of tricks it takes to get him though his working day." Interestingly enough, in Paul's 1983 album 'Hearts And Bones' one song title laments "Maybe I Think Too Much". In this album, he would like to deny it, but there is no escape. It's the curse of the creative. With "Ace In The Hole" cooking along with plectrum-bending abandon, he cannot help slowing the whole process down centre-song, to remind us of where he really is in his head, "Riding on this rolling bus/Beneath a stony sky/With a slow moon rising/And the smoke-stacks drifting by/In the hour when the heart is weakest/And the memory is strong/When time has stopped and the bus just rolls along." We've all been there. On "Oh Marion", in third person this time, Paul faces the stark dilemma of being blessed with a questioning mind. "He said, 'the more I get to thinking/The less I tend to laugh.'" He is in even more confessional mode, claiming that his voice is his natural disguise. It is a brilliant paradox by which no one is fooled. Yet there is nothing mawkish or sentimental here. Would that we could all be as honest about our own doubts. What if the flaw is that the singer can't trust, cannot ever let go? It just might be a fear which taps into all our waking hours, but we are unlikely to wear our hearts on our sleeves the way Simon does. On "Nobody" Paul sings to his beloved, "Who makes the bed that can't be made/Who is my mirror, who my blade." The nobody-but-you-girl claim feels just a little unconvincing; more a sorry-for-myself plea. Of course, that might be his delivery, since Paul Simon's only minor irritation is that you never know when he is angry, when he is ecstatic. The singer just doesn't do vocal histrionics, only subtle intonation, mischievous innuendo, cruel inflexion and a taut, wonderfully crafted syntax which has his tongue at times planted firmly in his cheek. Or at least, one may hope so. The "Long, Long Day" with which he wraps things up, cellos fully deployed, is not a work-well-done sigh, more how-on-earth-did-it get-to-be-this way cry of the heart. Vulnerability as an art form. The musical experience is sustained by its intimacy, its raw, emotionally charged honesty and the realisation that his disaffection is everyone's restless disaffection with the status quo. The three upbeat tracks, however brilliant, make little impression; it's the seven mellow, beautifully wrought cameos which hold us spell-bound, and indeed, compensate for the less than cohesive film from which they come. This is not a deliberately self-destructive journey into the soul, and certainly not a plea for help. That is not Simon's style. This is the emotionally raw, honest, unsentimental admission of the way things are in the life of a man who is becoming more and more estranged from his long-suffering wife and their son. The film tries to deal with the story, cutting from vibrant live performances to a portrayal of the minutia, the hum-drum business of being family, then back onto the road. But the music does it better. It seems Simon doesn't do family well. Dig deeper and it's no wonder. One song above all stands as the perfect metaphor for his state of heart. Accompanied by a haunting string section and a searingly picked guitar, he takes us to the core of his pain: "In a phone booth/In some local bar or grill/Rehearsing what I'll say, my coin returns/How the heart approaches what it yearns." That is it. He can't get through. I would say that, in his relentless search for meaning, for wholeness, for peace of mind, at this point he already knows that ultimately it all pivots on how much he is prepared to sacrifice. There's a school of thought around such songwriting which is uncomfortable for the Christian - that intense creative hunger is in itself a form of surrogate spirituality. Like Paul Simon's deeply personal one-trick-pony view of himself, the response can only be rhetorical.
Phil Thomson

1977
World
Fela Kuti
Zombie
Wrasse
According to those pop culture pundits you always see on those "list" programmes on telly, the 12-inch single was invented by American club DJs during the disco era. That is complete nonsense, of course (but then those list programmes inevitably are). The 12-inch single was, in fact, invented in Nigeria by Fela Kuti - a man whose albums usually consisted of one half-hour track per side. If you were to ask those same rent-a-talking-head pop experts which pop/rock act released the most stinging politically satirical song in the year 1977, they would no doubt respond, "That's easy: it was the Sex Pistols' 'God Save The Queen'." Again they would be wrong - and once again, you'd have to look to Fela for the right answer. To Nigerians of all ages and persuasions, 'Zombie' is a classic. Musically, Fela was at the peak of his powers. Years earlier, he had spent time in both the UK and the USA and discovered jazz music and the Black Power movement. Those two elements formed the backbone of the Afrobeat genre Fela created; one gave the music its overall feel and sound, the other its radicalism and politics. 'Zombie' is one album on which those two strands really gel together. The title track opens with a simple guitar riff, which gradually builds up as the basses, percussion and other parts of Fela's enormous band join in, leading up to Fela himself on saxophone. After six minutes (if you're listening to the short version, that is) of instrumental Afrobeat heaven, the vocals kick in. Fela brutally takes the mickey out of the military regimes that took turns ruling his country throughout the '70s and '80s, likening them to the undead: "Zombie no go go unless you tell am for go/Zombie no go stop unless you tell am for stop/Zombie no go think unless you tell am for think" (ie, a zombie won't move or think - or for that matter, do anything at all - unless you order it to). "Mr Follow Follow" was another broadside against blind conformity: "Some dey follow follow, dem close dem eye/Some dey follow follow, dem close dem ear" (some people follow others with their eyes/ears, etc, closed). Fela paid a bitter price for his irreverence. Shortly after the album's release, soldiers raided his home and threw his mother from a balcony. She died as a result of injuries sustained in the fall. But if that was meant to shut him up, it failed; the tragedy simply provided material for a later album, 'Coffin For Head Of State'. Fela remained one of the sharpest - and funkiest - critics of political corruption until his death in 1997.
George Luke

1977
Rock
Dennis Wilson
Pacific Ocean Blue
Sony Legacy
When Brian Wilson stopped touring with the Beach Boys in the mid-1960s there was no chance of younger brother Dennis doing a Phil Collins by abandoning his drum-stool to take over as one of the lead vocalists. Just listen to his rendition of "The Wanderer" on 1964's 'Beach Boys Concert' - if you can hear it above the screams. Actually, Dennis could carry a tune but vocally he was not the equal of Brian or Carl Wilson. Still, he could sure hit those drums and the girls loved him; after all, Dennis was the only genuine surfing beach boy and certainly looked the part. Cut to 1967. Brian Wilson has abandoned his masterpiece 'Smile' and is becoming increasingly detached from reality. Over the next few years those who bother to read the credits on the Beach Boys' albums will notice that every one from 'Friends' (1968) onwards invariably has a composition by Dennis. A single was released in 1970, "Sound Of Free" by Dennis Wilson And Rumbo, the latter being the Beach Boys' keyboard player Darryl "Captain Keyboards" Dragon who was later to become half of hitmakers The Captain And Tennile (Toni Tennile being a backing singer for the Beach Boys). But we digress. The 1970 solo album disappeared with the better tracks being used on the Beach Boy's 'Sunflower' LP. By the mid-1970s the Brian Is Back campaign saw Brian Wilson back in the studio working on what was to become 'Fifteen Big Ones'. This back to basics project bored Dennis (and Brian too, by many accounts) so the Wilson brothers started to amuse themselves in their own studio, the aptly named Brother Studio. CBS producer and occasional Beach Boy bass player James William Guercio heard some of Dennis's songs and offered him a solo record deal. So in 1977, seemingly out of nowhere, came 'Pacific Ocean Blue'. It is true to say that no one else could have come up with an album like this and equally true to say that it sounds like nothing else ever recorded, whether by an unknown singer/songwriter or established star. It is easy to describe something unusual as unique but, in this case, the description is entirely appropriate. The opening "River Song" starts with a gentle, trickling piano riff and builds up to a crescendo of voices with a multiplicity of over-dubs from Dennis (and Carl is clearly audible too although the terms of his contract did not allow him to be credited) and when Alexander Hamilton's Double Rock Baptist Choir join in the only appropriate description is to try and imagine Wagner writing a white Californian gospel song. "River Song" is impossible to follow so Dennis wisely changes tack. Indeed, this is typical of him as he never repeats himself. "What's Wrong" is a simple blues-pop song, co-written with long-time collaborator Gregg Jacobson (who, like Wilson, had a narrow escape from Charles Manson). It is a simple homage to the power of rock 'n' roll and, as anyone who has ever tried to write one can tell you, the simple songs are the hardest to write. "Moonshine" was inspired by his volatile relationship with his current wife Karen Lamm. Lyrically "Moonshine" shows an awareness that pleasures do not last: "It was you who said there won't be tomorrow" and musically it shows Dennis using broad brushstrokes with the synthesiser in a style not unlike brother Brian's work in 'The Beach Boys Love You' (1977). "Friday Night" shows us that Dennis is aware that rock and roll on its own is not enough. The opening is dark and brooding as we see the "white punks" coming out to play with their motorcycles. But this is not enough. "I believe my Jesus is in my soul," sings Wilson before he returns to chasing the rock and roll dream. "Dreamer" has more of a jazz flavour than the preceding tracks. Dennis starts by looking back to a carpenter who had a dream: "Killed the man but you couldn't kill the dream." But then Dennis tells us that his dreams were different: to be a star, "To wake up in bed with a star," to make music that will carry those blues away. He asks the right question but gets the wrong answer. "Thoughts Of You" was written with a different collaborator: Jim Dutch. This is a much more reflective song as Dennis looks at a period of separation from Karen. The words and music fit together perfectly in what is one of the most tender, heartbreakingly honest songs I have ever heard. The closing lines get me every time: "Loneliness is a very special place/To forget my love is something that I've never done/Silently, silently you touch my face." His voice is strained, tired, ruined by too many cigarettes but totally convincing; think Tom Waits. "Time" was written with Karen and tells of the "kind of guy who loves to mess around" but who knows that it won't satisfy him in the long run. "You And I" is the lightest track on the album. It opens with the sad statement that "I've never seen the light that people talk about" but instead of seeking that Light, Dennis turns instead to playing around with his women and his music. Next is the almost title track, "Pacific Ocean Blues" with lyrics by cousin Mike Love. Very good lyrics, actually, although not quite at home with the rest of the album. As we move towards the close, the atmosphere gets darker again with "Farewell My Friend". This was written to mark the death of Dennis's close friend Otto Hinsche, the father of Beach Boys band member Billy. Lyrically, it is simple without being trite and musically it is almost easy listening until we listen to the words. It is, in its way, a perfect song for a secular funeral and was played at Dennis's own in 1984. "Rainbows" is the closest that 'Pacific Ocean Blue' comes to a Beach Boy song and those who have ears to hear will again notice Carl Wilson in the chorus. And we close with "End Of The Show", another heartbreaking look at the transience of human life and love. Throughout the music is excellent. Dennis played much of it himself along with some top session musicians. Yes, his voice has almost gone but, somehoe, it does not matter. This album is about emotion. It is raw, challenging and, ultimately, desperately moving. I fear that Dennis Wilson never really knew the Jesus he mentions in his songs. If he had taken the trouble to find out more then his life would have taken a different and happier turn. Dennis Wilson drowned in his beloved Pacific Ocean on 28th December 1983, aged 39.
Steven Whitehead

1974
R&B
The Stylistics
Let's Get It All Together
Avco
Ever since I first heard the form on Oldies And Goodies compilations I'd loved the sound of doowop. All those '50s groups like the Moonglows, the Channels, the Flamingos, the Five Satins, the Orioles and dozens more seemed to emanate an otherworldly musical quality you couldn't hear anywhere else. Though I enjoyed the doowoppers performing ludicrous bass voice novelties it was when they sang ballads with their lugubrious harmonies, delicate lead voices and wistful sense of schoolboy innocence that the hits of the '50s registered most deeply. By the '70s of course doowop was an anachronism. The music of the ghetto had moved on from the near-acappella purity of doowop. But there were still traces of the old sound to be heard in the early soul hits of Detroit's the Miracles, New York's Little Anthony & The Imperials and the falsetto-led Philadelphia harmonisers the Delfonics and the Stylistics. It was the latter who made the best records. Although William Hart of the Delfs was every bit as good a singer as the Stylistics' Russell Thompkins Jr, the latter group's trump cards were songwriting team composer/arranger/producer Thom Bell and lyricist Linda Creed. This brilliant musical partnership for a season wrote songs every bit as good as Burt Bacharach and Hal David and the Stylistics got to sing some of their best. Gems like "Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)", "Betcha By Golly Wow" and "You Are Everything" are quite simply pop music masterpieces where Thompkins' pining falsetto, Bell's symphonic soul arrangements and Creed's bittersweet lyrics seem to convey much of the yearning innocence of those old doowoppers. The Stylistics reached their peak and enjoyed their biggest ever hit (number two in the States) with the spellbinding Bell/Creed ballad "You Make Me Feel Brand New". The classic standout on this album is still utterly affecting today and as a statement of pure romantic love has few equals. When Thompkins purrs "God brought me to you" you simply have to believe his sincerity. There's nothing else on 'Let's Put It All Together' which is in the same league as "You Make Me Brand New" and as it turned out 1974 was the year Thom Bell split from the Stylistics. The group's output after that quickly became vapid sentimentality with lesser producers like Hugo & Luigi and Van McCoy unable to replicate the group's Philly glory years.
Tony Cummings

1973
R&B
Marvin Gaye
Let's Get It On
Tamla
For many years I held to the opinion that this was Marvin's greatest work. Although it didn't have the bite, ambition and social concern of 'What's Going On' it was one of the most beautifully executed sets of slinky, funky R&B songs you're ever going to hear and Marvin's sublime, ducking-and-weaving vocals had never sounded more soulful. But as the years rolled on I began to feel uneasy about the lyrics of this collection of songs. During the period the veteran soul star recorded this, a married Marvin was locked in a destructive sexual obsession for a teenage Janice Hunter. This obsession dominates the music here and slowly I began to feel alienated by Gaye's lascivious songs like the title track, "Distant Lover" and "You Sure Love To Ball" despite all the slinky trappings of classic '70s soul music. In the album's original sleevenotes Marvin proclaimed, "I can't see anything wrong with sex between consenting anybodies. I think we make far too much of it. After all, one's genitals are just one important part of the magnificent human body." Such comments are rich, coming from a songwriter who on this set is obsessed with the details of copulation. With producer Ed Townsend, Gaye created a hard-hitting funk foundation to build a conceptual album which perfectly balanced the layers of Marvin's melismatic vocals with the Funk Brothers' cooking rhythms while Melvin "Wah-Wah" Ragin's guitar work is truly wonderful. But the lyrics drag 'Let's Get It On' down in the same way that so much of today's bump-and-grind R&B flounders.
Tony Cummings

1960
Blues
Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters At Newport
Chess
When I first got into the music of black America this was one of THE albums that was like a calling card to demonstrate that you were in the clique of R&B and blues devotees. Recorded live at the Newport Jazz Festival it was, to the bearded folk music purists who up until that time constituted Europe's small audience for genuine blues music, a hugely controversial album as Muddy turned up the amplifier of his guitar. Here was music that teleported the searing blues of the Mississippi Delta to sleazy Chicago jukejoints and then teleported it again to an emergent white jazz and folk audience. For those young Brits young enough to search out Muddy's music (no easy task, when I first asked a record shop assistant if they had 'Muddy Waters At Newport' I got the response "I don't know. who's it by?") Muddy's music was a revelation. For there was a generation of beat group musicians trying to find something gutsier than the anaemic playing of The Shadows. On this album Muddy's renditions of "Tiger In Your Tank", "I've Got My Brand On You" and the Big Joe Williams' opus soon to be covered by the Van Morrison-fronted Them, "Baby Please Don't Go", sounded utterly unlike anything you could hear on the radio. The best song of all was a pounding version of Muddy's 1957 hit "Got My Mojo Working". After this album, the song entered the repertoires of hundreds of British groups trying to reproduce the cathartic fire of Muddy and his fellow Chicago bluesmen though in truth no one got close. It was quite awhile before I began to understand the lyric of "Got My Mojo Working" and its reference to occult talisman. Today for that reason alone I choose to stay clear of the song. Muddy of course was a towering figure in the development of popular music, the bridge between pre-war blues and post-war rock and roll and it was encouraging to learn recently from Stephen J Nichols' Getting The Blues book that before his death in April 1983 Muddy had made his peace with God and been embraced by the Church. One of Muddy's key songs had been "I Be's Troubled" with its eerie incantation, "Lord I'm troubled, I'm all worried in my mind." It was a comfort to learn that after many years of whiskey, women and mojos, he'd come into the arms of a forgiving God.
Tony Cummings

1957
R&B
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Sings
Atlantic
Since his death in 2004 and the moving biopic celebrating his life, music critics by the hundred have lined up to declare what a genius Ray Charles was. The "genius" tag was in fact something dreamed up by Atlantic Records publicists in the late '50s and anyway, I'm not sure that Ray Charles Robinson is deserving of such hyperbole despite his immense contribution to popular music development. To my mind, Ray had a talent in both popularising others' stylistic innovations and fusing together existing forms. Any study of gospel music history will show how much the blind singer pillaged the sounds, vocal stylings and even songs of African American church in his relentless push to showbiz success. The call and response fervour of black church worship and the rasping, soulfully dramatic invention of the hard gospel quartets took Uncle Ray to stardom of course once the God references had been purged. But to be fair, black church music weren't the first musical elements that Ray absorbed. He began with the Maxim Trio aping Nat King Cole as well as doing a close imitation of languid blues singer Charles Brown. However, by the mid-'50s he'd also brought big band jazz and secularised gospel into the mix to score his first hits. It's this album from 1957 which sees his musical eclecticism bearing fruit and hitting R&B chart paydirt. The 1954 hit "I've Got A Woman" is a re-write of a gospel song with God removed while his version of Lulu Reed's old R&B hit "Drown In My Own Tears" was deep soul music years before such a phrase was coined. Those tracks and his 1956 hit "Hallelujah I Love Her So" (this album was re-issued in the '60s and given that song's title) were seminal recordings and still sound thrilling 50 odd years after they were made. Yet despite their appeal I still feel a little uneasy at the way in which the black church tradition was so wantonly secularised.
Tony Cummings