Happy Sunday! It’s a rainy weekend in my neck of the woods of central New Jersey, U.S.A. Because of that and high winds, Rock the Farm, a great annual tribute music festival for an important cause I’ve frequently covered, most recently here, was rescheduled until next June – certainly the right decision under the circumstances but still a bummer!
All of that makes me feel even more like firing up the imaginary music time machine and escape the present reality for some time. Regardless of the weather or other things that may be on your mind, as always, I hope you’ll join me on the trip, and we can have a great time together!
Count Basie Orchestra/Splanky
For our first stop today, we shall set the time controls to January 1958. Picking a winter month in New York City may seem a surprising choice to escape bad present weather, but when the music is great, you can have sunshine on any rainy day. And greatness is certainly what jazz pianist Count Basie and the Count Basie Orchestra, delivered on The Atomic Mr. Basie. Initially titled Basie, aka E=MC2 and reissued in 1994 as The Complete Atomic Basie, this studio album by Basie and his big band features compositions and arrangements by jazz trumpeter Neal Hefti. Here’s the groovy Splanky – feel free to snip along!
Humble Pie/I’ll Go Alone
Next let’s head to August 1969 and As Safe As Yesterday Is, the debut album by Humble Pie. While the English rock band had been formed in January that year by guitarists and vocalists Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott, formerly of The Herd and Small Faces, respectively, the record’s release was delayed due Marriott’s Small Faces touring commitments and Frampton’s legal problems with his old management. By the time As Safe As Yesterday Is appeared, Humble Pie already had recorded enough material for at least three albums. I’ll Go Alone is one of two tracks solely written by Frampton who also sang it. Back in July, I finally caught him alive. While Frampton is battling a progressive muscle wasting disorder and performed seated, he still sounded great!
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes/If You Don’t Me By Now
Time to pay a visit to the ’70s, more specifically August 1972, which saw the release of an album featuring one of the most beautiful Philly soul ballads I can think of: If You Don’t Know Me By Now by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. The song appeared on the group’s debut album I Miss You, which was later reissued as Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. Yes, it’s lush, but what a vocal gem – I don’t wanna sound overly sentimental, you just don’t hear much singing like this anymore. If You Don’t Know Me By Now was co-written by songwriting and production team Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff who formed their own label Philadelphia International Records and are credited for creating the Philly sound. In 1989, Simply Red recorded an incredible cover of that song and scored a major international hit.
Talking Heads/And She Was
It’s hard to follow the beauty of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, but our trip must continue. And on we go to June 1985 and Little Creatures, the sixth studio album by art pop and new wave band Talking Heads. Overall, it became their most successful album, with more than 2 million copies sold in the U.S. alone and top 20 chart positions in multiple countries, including no. 1 in New Zealand. The big hit single off that album was Road to Nowhere, which was very popular in Germany and got the group on my radar screen. Here’s the follow-up And She Was, which like Road to Nowhere and the majority of the other tracks was penned by front man David Byrne, a vocalist with a distinct style.
Lyle Lovett/She Makes Me Feel So Good
By now you may have noticed we’re going chronologically this time. Does the lack of the traditional zig-zag time travel reflect my reluctance to go back to the present? Perhaps a bit, though my primary thought is it can’t hurt to change things a little every now and then. Okay, on the ’90s and an artist I pretty much know by name only: Lyle Lovett. The singer-songwriter from Houston, Texas oftentimes appears to be categorized as country. While I no longer regard this label as terrible, I believe there’s much more to his music. Case in point: She Makes Me Feel So Good, a Lovett composition that has a neat jazzy groove with soulful vocals. This great track is from Lovett’s fourth studio album Joshua Judges Ruth, released in March 1992.
Melissa Etheridge/Juliet
For our sixth and final stop, we’re making a big jump back to the present and a great rock artist fellow blogger Dave from A Sound Day covered earlier this week, which inspired this pick: Melissa Etheridge who I instantly loved when I first heard Bring Me Some Water, off her eponymous debut album from May 1988. Etheridge is currently doing a 10-week residency at New York Broadway venue Circle in the Square Theatre. In an obvious nod to that engagement, she released a cover of On Broadway as part of an EP with the same title on August 25. In addition to the well-known song credited to Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Etheridge’s latest EP includes two originals. Here’s one of them, Juliet. It’s great she’s still out there rockin’!
While I enjoy shaking up The Sunday Six a bit every now and then, what hopefully will never change is including a Spotify playlist of all the tracks we visited during the trip, so here you go! Hope you’ve had some fun on today’s trip and will be back for more music time travel next Sunday!
Sources: Wikipedia; YouTube; Spotify
Christian's Music Musings 