12 Songs
Welcome to a new page on my website. This is the first new work for over 3 years and is a departure from the content flowing from the other pages on this site. 12 Songs is an essay on music, a subject one could argue I have little or no expertise, (I don’t play a musical instrument, unless you count an aborted attempt to learn how to play the piano: she was the Nurse Ratchet of piano teachers), neither do I have a musical background.
So what do I bring to the table? I bring passion and enthusiasm for the music of my generation, I was 12 when The Beatles released their 1st album. But my love of music goes beyond the unforgettable feeling of raw excitement the first time the needle clicks into the groove. Over years of listening to music, attending countless gigs, reading distinguished music books and trashy biography’s and discussing/arguing with family and friends the merits or otherwise of singer x, band y or song z, I have made discoveries, broadened my musical taste and have been given numerous “you’ve got to listen to this” epithets, predominately, it has to said, from my amazing family without whom I probably wouldn’t have discovered Primal Scream Groove Armada, George the Poet, The Shins, Courtney Barnett, Big Thief and many many more. Last but not least, and as good a reason as any for this essay, is an unconditional love of the subject matter from the age of 12, ever since I heard Macca shout into the microphone “One Two Three Four”
Introduction
In all likelihood the human voice was the first musical instrument. As for other musical instruments, archaeologists discovered a bone flute with a V shaped mouthpiece considered to be 38,000 years old. The oldest known song was written in cuneiform in Syria almost 3,400 years ago. From that point, tracing a line to the present day via the choral music of the early Greek theatre, the biblical Hebrew poets, Gregorian chants, madrigals, the virtuoso soloists of the Baroque, parlour songs of the 19th century and music hall; all the way to the technological advances of the 20th century to record, capture and distribute song, is a long long line to trace. They would have all been popular in their time.
And today the number of genres and sub genres associated with popular music is mind blowing. According to AllMusic there are 30 genres and 27 sub genres of rock music alone, including ‘No Wave Post Punk Experimental Rock’. You read that right ‘No Wave’ not ‘New Wave’, a short lived New York project that experimented with noise to “react against rock and roll cliches”. Add to that all the genres and sub genres of soul, funk, country, reggae, folk, jazz, electronic, blues etc it just proves how much we like to label and categorise.
Any written or visual piece about music has of necessity to be highly selective. This essay is no different. It does not indulge in technical analysis or pander to the cult of personality. Nor have I selected songs out of popularity or made famous by the name of the artist alone. In 12 songs I have attempted to examine the common threads that emerge, the constant crossover that takes place and the desire to revolt when necessary, where the song, the singer and the songwriter share a range and a depth that lifts them above the limits and traps set by the music industry.
And a huge multi billion dollar business it has become. The popular music industry in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s has often been seen as a power grab by corporate America. The money men, the artists managers and the company execs saw a cash cow and grabbed it with both hands. There is a wonderful story in the outstanding book on rock music ‘Mystery Train’ by Greil Marcus which has as its central characters the most powerful man in the world, the king of rock and roll and the king’s svengali like manager. I have no idea if the anecdote is true but it feeds the notion of greed and self preservation and goes something like this:-
“The American President, Richard Nixon invited Elvis Presley over to the White House to make him an honorary narcotics agent. Nixon got his pho op with the King and the King left. Later the man who arranges White House concerts phoned Elvis’s manager, Col. Tom Parker and delivered the most privileged invitation. The President requests Mr. Presley to perform at the White House. The Col. crunched a few numbers and said it would be an honour and Elvis’s fee, not including travel expenses and accommodation for his back up group and singers would be $25,000. There was a gasp.
“Col. Parker, nobody gets paid playing for the President”
“well I don’t know about that son, but there’s one thing I do know. Nobody asks Elvis Presley to play for nothin”
It demonstrates how far the music industry had changed in such a short space of time. Svengali like managers had a strangle hold over their performers and their product. Snake oil salesmen in the right place at the right time.
From the birth of rock and roll in the 50’s the twin spectres of racism and sexism were strategically hidden behind the sofa of the American dream. Concerned with the direction and revolutionary zeal new freedoms being spoken about would bring, the predominately white men who ran the industry were not about to get a conscience or some moral backbone anytime soon. The money men targeted a white audience for their product in part because the ad men of Manhattan sold the American people a vision of America as a packet of lucky strikes for the man, a new Westinghouse fridge freezer for the woman who raised his children, a white picket fence to symbolise his territory and Pat Boone singing Little Richard songs to keep the teenage revolution at bay. Fortunately there were enough people to kick back allowing Little Richard and Chuck Berry to sit along side Elvis, Jerry Lee and Buddy as the pioneers driving this new revolution in music.
There were many great artists who were discarded of course, including many of the great women r and b singers who received no credit for their work. In the 1950’s the blues artist Jimmy Reed had written and recorded a number of blues standards receiving sole credit for the songs. Blues historian Gerard Herzhaft points out that many of his songs are written solely or co-written by his wife Mama Reed. But she never received any recognition for this. Others including Dorothy Fields, Barbara Lynn and Billie Holiday wrote or co wrote songs that many of us of a certain age would recognise today, their names omitted for reasons, shamefully, one has to conclude, because of their sex and the colour of their skin.
Ok so a little history is inevitable. Context is important. The 12 songs I have selected do have history, but also an interesting story to tell. Some, like the artist and songwriter, will be familiar to many, some not so much. Some are influenced by other songs, some have developed over time, others changed radically to suit an agenda, some where the history of the singer is more dramatic that the song, some influenced by life changing events. Some are autobiographical, capturing the joy of love in poetry and the abject pain of break up in prose.
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This is 12 Songs (tracks 1-6)
Track 1: Gloria
Written by Van Morrison
“Gloria” was written by Van Morrison in 1963 while he was in Germany performing with a band called The Monarchs. When he returned to Belfast he joined up with members of The Gamblers to form the band Them. The song was recorded in 1964 and became the B side to “Baby Please Don’t Go” and was included on their first album. It would become a staple of many an aspiring band playing in pubs and clubs throughout the 60’s and later appeared on many compilation albums and Van Morrison greatest hits. There was some minor intrigue as to whether band members had played on the original recording or whether session musicians were used and some dispute as to whether a youthful Jimmy Page had played on it, but frankly who cares. We’ll leave that to the talking head music documentaries found on Sky Arts and BBC4 who find such trivia interesting…
And that would have been the end of the story, then along came Patti Smith.
Patricia Lee smith was born in Chicago in 1946. She moved to New York in 1967 where she met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and lived in the Chelsea Hotel for a while along with every other artist around. In 1975 she became a hugely influential figure in the New York city punk rock movement with her first album “Horses” and with one song in particular, “Gloria”. It became the opening track on the album and begins with the words:-
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”
A two fingered salute to her Jehovah’s witness upbringing perhaps. The hostility and the backlash from the media was immediate. Patti was forever answering questions about her faith or lack of it. The line originates from her poem “Oath” which she wrote in 1970 and performed regularly although it was not included in the two books of poetry she had published. She was being noticed and approved of by such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg and the playwright Sam Shephard. The 6 minute long track is built on a simple chord progression building up pace and energy and gradually reaching a crescendo. The power and anarchic spirit of Patti Smith’s vocals are often attributed to the relationship she had with the albums producer, the Velvet Underground’s John Cale. According to The Story behind Patti Smith’s Gloria by Ray Padgett she chose Cale to produce because she loved his music and he “had nice cheekbones”. “I was looking for a technical person. Instead I got a total maniac” she said.
Smith keeps the gender dynamics of the song, as she always did when doing covers or so called covers written by male artists. Yet from the moment the opening piano chords are played and the opening line spoken Gloria ceases to be a cover. Well over half the words in the song are hers and even the bits she takes from Morrison’s original are often radically re-written, yet it is the drive and the raw energy she brings to the song especially to her live performances that sets it apart and makes one of the great opening tracks. Smith succeeds in the onerous task of maintaining the identity of the original while transforming it into something else. Her own.
However in January 1977 Smith’s relationship with the song changed without her singing it. She was 6 songs in to a performance in Tampa Florida when she fell 15 feet off stage damaging several vertebrae in her neck. The accident made her reassess the song and when she had recovered and was able to tour again she stopped performing it. In 1979 she retired from the music industry but thankfully in 1996 both she and the song made a comeback, the original line intact.
Patti Smith Band – Gloria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7sodwiQJ6c
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Track 2: Lived In Bars
Written by Charlyn Marie (Chan) Marshall
Charlyn Marie Marshall, known as Chan Marshall and the stage name Cat Power, was born in Atlanta, Georgia 1972 and had a chaotic childhood. She was born in poverty to an absent blues musician father and a mother who left her and her older sister with her grandmother when Chan was 6 months old. She returned when Chan was aged 3. From the age of 3 Chan and her sister Mandy witnessed their parents divorce and both of them re-marry again and together with their new stepfather they drifted the southern states attending 10 different schools in 5 years. alcohol and violence were never far away. At 13 she became estranged from her mother and had no further contact until she was 24. Her love of singing came from her grandmother taking her to the nearest Baptist church where Chan joined the choir.
In the 1990’s Chan Marshall worked with a number of musicians including a couple of members of Sonic Youth. She moved to New York for a while to record a number of tracks under the band name of Cat Power, which later became her stage name. Some of these tracks would be on her first album “Dear Sir”. In 1996 she signed for Matador records and recorded her first two albums “What Would the Community Think” and the acclaimed “Moon Pix”. Her early songs experimented with punk and folk as well as blues and jazz. Her live performances around this time were erratic, often cut short by stage fright and the influence of alcohol.
In 2006 Chan Marshall moved to Memphis to record her 7th studio album “The Greatest”. She hired some legendary Memphis session musicians such as Leroy ‘Flick’ Hodges, Mabon Hodges and Steve Potts long time collaborators of Al Green and Booker T. Her Dusty in Memphis. The result is fantastic. Nominated by Rolling Stone as the 6th best album of 2006, they were wrong by 5. One of the many great tracks from the album is “Lived in Bars”. It is unclear whether the song refers to her earlier childhood, being dragged around bars by her alcoholic mother, or a candid admission of her own demons (Chan had to deal with her own issues with depression and addiction) which led her to a psychiatric ward in Mount Sinai Medical Centre, California not long after the release of “The Greatest”. When she sings you can almost smell the stale cigarette smoke, her malt whiskey voice wrapped in velvet and vulnerability.
“we lived in bars
and danced on tables
hotels, trains and ships that sail
we swim with sharks
and fly with aeroplanes in the air”
At one point the song becomes very dark
“there’s nothing like living in a bottle
and nothing like ending it all for the world”
And yet two thirds through the song the tempo rises and the song becomes an upbeat soul number as if to say there is a way out of here, a route to escape from all the demons that are going on inside and around her.
“we know your house so very well
and we’ll break down the door if you’re not there”
This break out is punctuated with the repeated lines “out of here” as the song fades.
As well as “Lived In Bars” and the title track the album is littered with other first rate soul songs including “Living Proof”, “Could We”, “The Moon” and “Where Is My Love”. The album was critically well received. *”The mercurial Chan Marshall has returned to her Southern roots and recorded this blissful album in Memphis” – Rhapsody (formerly Napster).
Chan Marshall has written about her childhood and the issues around her own mental health and addiction (in her song “Black” she sang of running up the stairs to escape that someone who was prepared to throw her in an ice cold bath with a slap), but she has endured and over the years has worked with such a diverse range of people like Karl Lagerfeld (as a model for Chanel No. 5 no less), Yoko Ono, Beck, Marianne Faithful and Eddy Vedder. She released her 10th studio album “Wanderer” in 2018.
Cat Power – Lived in Bars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgMSDiavcOM
or check out the live performance on Later with Jools Holland
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Track 3: Corrine Corrina (Corrina Corrina)
Written by – unknown
“Corrine, Corrina” is a 12 bar country blues song first recorded by Bo Carter in December 1928. However It was not copyrighted until 1932 and there are no named songwriters on any of the earlier recordings. The song is recognised for its familiar opening verse:-
“Corrine, Corrina where you been so long?
Corrine, Corrina where you been so long?
I ain’t had no lovin’, since you’ve been gone”
The Mississippi Sheiks with Papa Charley McCoy recorded the same song in 1930 substituting ‘Sweet Alberta’ for Corrine, Corrina. The roots of the song may go back earlier than this. In 1918 the commercial sheet music song “Has Anybody Seen My Corrine” was published by Roger Graham and although different musically and lyrically there are many sentiments similar to Corrine, Corrina.
There were many blues recordings in the early 1930’s notably from Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt and the wonderfully named Frankie ‘Half Pint’ Jaxon. it wasn’t long before other music genres were vying for Corrina’s charms. Jazz versions from Cab Calloway and Art Tatum soon followed but it was in country music and, in particular western swing, where history was made. In 1934 the first Western Swing recording was by Milton Brown titled “Where Have You Been So Long Corrinne” but Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys re-claimed the song and reverted to its original title. Many Western Swing artists were innovators, experimenting with electrically amplified instruments and sound. The song had become a Western Swing standard in the repertoire of many a Western Swing band and on the 28th September 1935 one such band, Roy Newman and his Boys or more notably his guitarist Jim Boyd, became the first known use of an electrically amplified guitar on a recording. And that song was Corrine Corrina.
In 1956 Big Joe Turner recorded a rock version of the song as did Jerry Lee Lewis in the early 60’s. But in 1963 Corrine, Corrina entered into the folk revival when Bob Dylan started singing a version re-titled “Corrina Corrina”. Dylan recorded an acoustic version for his 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Although blues based, Dylan’s version contains lyrics and structure from the original but his melody is lifted from the 1937 Robert Johnson blues standard “Stones in my Passway”. Dylan even lifts some lyrics from the song
“i’ve got a bird that whistles, i’ve got a bird that sings
But if I ain’t got Corrina, life don’t mean a thing”
However, this wasn’t his first attempt at the song. *In October/November 1962, 3 years before he “went electric” he was in the studio backed by musicians including Bruce Langhorne and George Barnes on electric guitars to record “Mixed up Confusion”, about to be his first single release. The B side was an electric version of Corrina Corrina. It was released as Dylan’s first single in December of 62 but was swiftly withdrawn.
*From A Rough Guide to Bob Dylan by Nigel Williamson
Dylan was living with his girlfriend Suzy Rotolo when he started to write Freewheelin’ and his relationship with her provided an important emotional dynamic in the composition of many of the songs and the context in which they were being written. Suzy was intelligent, a political activist and independent, working for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and the anti nuclear war protest group SANE. She providing many an insight for the political songs that emanated from that album such as “Blowing in the Wind”, “Masters of War” and “Hard Rain’s a gonna Fall”. But Suzy’s mother mistrusted Dylan and took her off to Perugia, Italy to study art. It was at this time that Dylan wrote some of his most beautiful love songs born out separation, including “Girl from the North Country” and the wonderful “Don’t think twice it’s all right” Sitting in between these iconic songs is his version of Corrine, Corrina, a simple and beautiful rendition. Dylan and Rotolo corresponded during her absence and he sent her many a verse of songs he was writing as well a line or two from Corrine, Corrina:-
“Corrina Corrina
Gal you’ve been on my mind
Corrina Corrina
Gal you’ve been on my mind
I’ve been sittin’ down thinkin’ of you
I just can’t keep from crying”
Corrine, Corrina has been shaped and moulded into many different guises over the years but it’s the Dylan version that stands out. But with falling in love and separation come break up and the aftermath. Dylan could, as we know, be vitriolic and vengeful in his songwriting. So for every “Tomorrow is a Long time” there is the distressingly graphic “Ballad in Plain D”. Still when Dylan writes and performs a love song he always has a fresh eye, the way he marries music and lyrics, even ones almost 100 years old.
Bob Dylan – Corrina Corrina
https://youtube.com/watch?v=66A5lrrl39E
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Track 4: Come on home
written by Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu
Identical twins Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu were born in the small town of Jos in northern Nigeria in 1948. In Yoruba Taiwo means first to taste the world and Kehinde means second born to twins and chaperone. They enjoyed singing from an early age and their mother bought them records by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Miriam Makeba and later Fela Kuti. The sisters were second cousins to Fela as well as Nobel prize winning writer and political activist Wole Soyinka.
Starting out as session vocalists they became friends and collaborators with multi instrumentalist and producer Biddy Wright and soon were in the studio recording their own material. In the 1970’s they recorded a number of albums on Decca’s subsidiary record label Afrodisia, including Urede (1974), Danger (1976), Mother Africa (1977) and Horizon Unlimited (1979). Lyrically they often took aim at the government and the growing political unrest in Nigeria in the 70’s. Many of their songs had an upbeat disco vibe and as such were billed as the African Pointer Sisters which conflicted with their strong forthright political views. In a Guardian interview with Alex Petridis the sisters said “we needed to sing those songs because they (politicians) were not listening. We needed schools, we needed roads, we needed clean water”.
They became stars in Nigeria and found modest acclaim outside their own country. In 1972 they performed with Ginger Baker’s band Salt at the Munich Olympics. In the Olympic village they were chatting to the mother of Jimi Hendrix (Baker had a few names in his phone book) when they heard explosions that started the terrorist attack in the village. In 1983 they came to the UK to participate in a music documentary and made an appearance on the innovative tv music programme The Tube which of course went out live from Tyne Tees studios in Newcastle from 1982-87.
In 1979 their album Horizon Unlimited was released and became their most critically acclaimed. The track “Come On Home”, sung like many of their songs in a combination of Yoruba and English is the outstanding track, a shimmering mix of afrobeat, funk and Memphis soul. The talking drum and uplifting piano rhythms intro are soon joined by tight vocal harmonies and bass slaps. But the song is more than an uplifting funky number. The Lijadu Sisters were advocates of female empowerment and challenged the age old ‘womens place is in the kitchen’ view. The call of “Come On Home” is not to beg for the return of their man often heard in the to and fro relationships of many a Motown song. This is a call for straying husbands to return and take their responsibilities seriously.
In 1988 the sisters moved to Brooklyn, New York where they performed the song as part of their set following the release of the compilation album “Double Trouble” and it became a firm favourite at New York gigs. The New York times reporter calling it the highlight in a night of beautiful harmonies and silky soulful beats, sounding like “An African Dock of the Bay”
In 1996 Kehinde suffered severe spinal injuries after a fall down a flight of stairs. Her recovery was long and painful. In the 2000’s many of their tracks were sampled by US rappers often without clearance. In 2010 the sisters agreed to work with Knitting House Records who released all four of their 1970’s afro-beat albums to a new audience, but no new work was forthcoming. In 2014 they returned to the spotlight with a series of well received concerts in London with Damon Albarn and Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip.
In their Guardian interview they were asked about the music they created and said they got inspiration from their mother saying “Mum told us, don’t write music just for today because two years later nobody will want to hear it. Write the type of music people will want to listen to hundreds of years later and will still be able to relate to”
The Lijadu Sisters – Come on Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvD776LinE0
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Track 5: Hard Times Come Again No More
Written by Stephen Collins Foster
If longevity in song is important then this is a vital popular song. It is not known the exact date when Stephen Collins Foster wrote Hard Times Come Again No More, sometimes called Hard Times, but we do know that it was published in New York in 1854 by Firth Pond and Company and known less dramatically as Foster’s melodies number 28. The term used was ‘parlour song’, categorisation and labelling started early in popular song, but over time it became much much more than that.
In 1850’s Pittsburgh was in the grip of a cholera pandemic and unemployment was out of control. Foster wrote the song and opened the doors of his overcrowded house to the needy. The song was a plea for the better off in society to consider the plight of the less fortunate. The opening verse goes like this:-
“let us pause in life’s pleasures and count it’s many tears
while we all sup sorrow with the poor
there’s a song that will linger forever in our ears
Oh hard times come again no more”
Foster uses imagery like “pale drooping maiden” and “frail forms fainting at the door” to highlight the drama. Foster became known as the father of American music and it’s first known professional songwriter. His range was wide, from the collection of ‘parlour songs’ and plaintive love songs he wrote to his wife Jean. But more controversially he wrote many songs about the south, having never lived there and visited only once on his honeymoon. They were known as minstrel songs such as “Campdown Races”, “Swanee River” and “My Old Kentucky Home”. They became incredibly popular; minstrel bands were formed and his songs were sung at shows performed by the likes of the Christy Minstrels i.e. white people who blacked up. Apologists argued Foster shed a light on the realities of slavery but in reality they can only be seen as outright racist, portraying as they did, African Americans as lazy, superstitious and stupid. And before we in the UK claim any moral high ground it took us until 1978 to be shamed into cancelling a minstrel show that ran for 20 years on the BBC.
Foster was prolific. He wrote his first song at age 14. He grew up in the city where many European immigrants settled and he became accustomed to listening to the music of Italian, Scots and Irish residents. Among his other parlour songs “I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair” and “Beautiful Dreamer” became incredibly popular and lived on through the years ; they were songs I can remember my dad singing the odd line from or humming when I was very young.
Foster died an gruesome death. He was found naked on the floor of a hotel room in The Bowery, New York, blood pouring from a possible self inflicted wound to his neck. His death at the age of 38 was milked by a number of people who were not there. Many a tale emerged of his death. One such anecdote claimed all he had left in the world was a wallet with a hand written note in it that read “dear friends and gentle hearts” and 38cents, one for each year of his life.
After his death and toward the end of the American Civil War a satirical version of Hard Times about soldiers food became popular called “Hard Tack Come Again No More”. In 1905 the first audio recording was a wax cylinder by the Edison Manufacturing company performed by the Edison Male Quartet and once the recording of song became established it has been recorded many times since. I would have expected more recordings during the 1920’s and 1930’s but only a couple are noted, although in the wonderful Ken Burns documentary “Country Music” the song was sung many times by fledgling country musicians who identified the song with the depression of the 30’s. It was far removed from singing cowboys and western swing. The circumstances and direction of popular music during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s meant the song became almost forgotten.
The song captures moments in American history by being popular in trying and difficult times and poignantly during times of division. The Pittsburgh cholera pandemic, the Civil War, the depression of the 30’s and in the divisive Reagan years of the 1980s the song made a comeback. The Red Clay Ramblers recorded a version in 1980, as did Dolly Parton. Later in that decade and into the early 90’s Emmy Lou Harris, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Nanci Griffith, Bob Dylan, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings all recorded a version of the song on their respective albums. And, as if to come full circle Arlo Guthrie, son of ‘dust bowl troubadour’ Woody, has recorded a version in 2020 to highlight the current health pandemic and the economic consequences on the poor and less fortunate. So much has changed and nothing has changed.
The version of the song that I have selected for this piece, and in my opinion the best, is by Mavis Staples. Her version has soul and gospel coursing through its veins and her voice perfectly encompasses themes the song is meant to convey. Recorded in 2004 some 150 years after the song was first published. Listen on You Tube
Mavis staples – Hard Times Come Again No More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTmDt4j0F6g
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Track 6: Try Me
written by Jimmy Radcliffe
To say this particular song, and more notably the songwriter and the artist, had chequered careers would be a bit of an understatement. Let’s start with Jimmy Radcliffe, songwriter, performer, record producer and multi instrumentalist. In 1964 he met Martin Luther King in Harlem, New York and was inspired to write the civil rights anthem ‘Stand Up‘. in 1965 he recorded the Bacharach-David song ‘Long After Tonight is Over’ which later became one of the classic 3 before 8 Northern soul floor fillers at the Wigan Casino during the 1970’s. The promotion of the song led him to the UK where he toured with The Hollies and appeared on tv shows like Thank Your Lucky Stars. He also wrote music for radio and tv commercials including Pontiac, Polaroid, McDonalds and oddly, the Salt Lake City Tourist Board in Utah. Sadly Radcliife didn’t live long enough to see his version of “Long After Tonight Is Over” become the cult classic it did. Plagued by weight problems he died in 1973 from complications after the removal of a kidney.
In 1966 Radcliffe wrote “Try Me” and was looking for someone to record it when he came across Esther Phillips who had recently signed with Atlantic Records. Esther Phillips was born Esther Mae Jones in Galveston, Texas in 1935. At the age of 14 she won a talent contest at the Barrelhouse club in the Watts district of Los Angeles, owned by the band leader and record producer Johnny Otis. Otis was so impressed he signed her up. He dropped the Mae Jones and signed her to record as Little Esther. In 1950 she recorded “Double Crossing Blues” with Otis and his band which reached number 1 of the R n B Billboard chart. A year later she recorded the classic “Mistrustin Blues” with Mel Walker. Her time with Johnny Otis was brief. After a dispute with Otis over money, she left and signed for Federal Records. Leaving Otis was a mistake. At the age of 17 her experimentation with hard drugs developed into a dependency with heroin and was traumatised, being in the same room, when R n B singer Johnny Ace fatally shot himself. In 1954 she returned home to her father to recover and her career appeared over at the age of 20.
In 1962, her name now Esther Phillips (her surname inspired by a garage sign no less) the country singer Kenny Rogers discovered her singing in a Houston nightclub. He signed her up to his brothers record label where her recording of the country song “Release Me” became a number 1 hit on the R n B charts. She signed up for Atlantic a year later . In 1965 she covered a string laden version of The Beatles “And I Love Her” which became a top 20 R n B chart success. Lennon and McCartney were so taken with her version, or more specifically her voice; Lennon said it was one of the best covers of their songs he had heard, they paid for her flight to the UK so she could tour with them. Thanks to The Beatles she made a number of UK tv appearances. It was her first performances outside the United States.
In 1967 she recorded Radcliffe’s “Try Me” with the mighty King Curtis on sax. From the opening blues piano chords to the breathless “try me” fade Phillips sings in her idiosyncratic, seductive blues style “baby don’t you know my soul is on fire”. And it is.
“with her lubricious naturally high sardonic vibrato Phillips is well equiped to carry Dinah Washington’s torch”. Robert Christgau record guide.
Try Me did not have the success it should. It was often mistaken for the James Brown track of the same name and the amount of play time suffered as a result, although the original James Brown song was released in 1958 it was re-released in the mid sixties as double A side with Papas Got a Brand New Bag. Phillips version has received belated critical acclaim over the years but listening to the song today it is obvious to me both the song and Esther are more deserving.
Esther Phillips last hurrah was in 1972 when her version of the Gil Scott Heron song “Home Is Where The Hatred Is” was nominated for a Grammy. Taken from her critically acclaimed album “From A Whisper to a Scream” the song is poignantly biographical dealing, as it does, with heroin addiction and damaged lives. She lost to Aretha Franklin but Franklin, in an act of warm generosity and recognition for a fellow artist, gave the award to Phillips saying she deserved to win it. Phillips died in 1984 aged 48 from kidney failure as a result of a life addicted to heroin. Esther Phillips was nominated two times for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was rejected both times. Shame on you whoever you are.
She is one of a number of female R and B singers never given the recognition they deserved. The songs recorded by Esther Phillips and many other R and B luminaries such as Sugar Pie DeSanto, Lulu Reed, Barbara Lynn, Betty James and Big Maybelle to name but a few, are a precious jewel in the story of popular music.
Esther Phillips – Try Me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKRDeSzBdCE
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Dave Young - Poet 