Al Wilson - Searching For The Dolphins (expanded edition 2008; orig. rel. 1969)

Sticking with the charity shop finds for the second post this week.  Picked this one up on the assumption it was based around a take on Fred Neil's evergreen song that I find weirdly moving whoever's doing it, and it does indeed kick off with a very nice Dolphins, Mississippi-born Al Wilson (1939-2008) in fine voice.  This is followed by a solid By The Time I Get To Phoenix - okay, so it's a late-60s pop-soul album, and a pretty good one.  

 

The original LP, on the Liberty-distributed Soul City label, came with a hot Wrecking Crew backing band - Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon, Larry Knechtel, James Burton et al - and a great Southern soul vocalist out front.  Wilson released a handful of non-album singles at the turn of the 70s, which are captured here as worthwhile bonus tracks (check out CCR's Lodi).  Then there's The Snake, sitting at the halfway point of the LP, which instantly brought back great memories of nights out for me.

In the late 90s/early 00s, Edinburgh College of Art's indie disco night on Saturdays was never complete without the DJ, who must've been a bit of an old Northern Soul boy, dropping in The Snake to bring it to the attention of a new generation of hip young kids in their skinny jeans.  So that was nice to hear again after 20 years, and it's still a belter.  Even better to hear it in the context of an album-plus, to get a broader view on Wilson's incredible voice and the classic production with those top-drawer musicians.

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Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information (1974)

Between the release of his second album Freedom Flight and this, his third, Shuggie Otis transitioned from precociously talented and well-connected teenager to a young adult and true auteur.  Working from a home studio, he wrote and produced this album alone, played all the instruments bar the horn and string arrangements, and virtually abandoned his blues roots for something (even) funkier and altogether weirder.

It was a sound that didn't have much impact at the time, and ended up with Otis being dropped by Epic, but Inspiration Information's time would come a quarter of a century later when David Byrne's Luaka Bop label first revived it.  At that time, Shuggie was posited as a proto-Prince, which does hold up in the loose, funky songs and singular artistry and musicianship.  It's also historically congruent with the advances in the studio that Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone had been making in the early 70s, not least in the use of a primitive Rhythm King drum machine.

The first side of the album is a flawless run of four great songs, bursting into life on the smoking funk groove of the title track, followed by the languid Island Letter.  Next are the taut, spare groove of Sparkle City and the drum-machine based comedown experience Aht Uh Mi Hed.  Other than the first 58 seconds, the album's second half is entirely instumental, in common with its predecessor.  Unlike Freedom Flight, there aren't two lengthy jams here but a clutch of short impressionistic sketches, which reach their experimental apex in XL-20 and Pling.  Shuggie might have been too ahead of his time in 1974 for this record to be huge, but now it just sounds timeless.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Here Comes Shuggie Otis
Freedom Flight

Shuggie Otis - Freedom Flight (1971)

Shuggie Otis' second album was such a huge step up from his debut that it's easy to forget this was still the work of a 17 year old.  With two execptions, he's the sole songwriter, and his already prodigious guitar talent continued to shine as well as showing off his skill at several other instruments.  Shuggie's rising profile also brought guest stars on board for this one: George Duke and Aynsley Dunbar are featured here.

Freedom Flight is perhaps best known for Strawberry Letter 23, the gorgeous piece of baroque psychedelic pop that would later be a funked-up hit for The Brothers Johnson.  That's only one of four superb songs on the first side of the album though, which is filled out by one of the funkiest blues covers ever recorded.  The album's second side was taken up by two lengthy instrumentals: the bluesy Purple, which expands on the template of Gospel Groove from Shuggie's debut, and the beautifully mellow title track.  It's difficult to pick Shuggie Otis' masterpiece between this one and the one coming up next week.

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Shuggie Otis - Here Comes Shuggie Otis (1970)

First in a three-Friday exploration of the slim but awesome discography of Johnny Alexander Veliotes Jr, best known by the pet name his mother gave him, and the shortened surname that his famous father already went by.  Shuggie Otis started performing live with his father's band in the mid 60s when he was eleven years old, where he'd "wear dark glasses and a paint a moustache on" to disguise his age, as he relates on this album.

Here Comes Shuggie Otis was his solo debut as a prodigious teenager, and consists mostly of material co-written by father and son, its standout feature being Shuggie's rapidly developing guitar versatility.  The ten tracks touch on the psych-soul and baroque AM pop sounds of the day, with a bedrock of blues and R&B.

The highlights include Oxford Gray, the longest and most ambitious piece that opens the album, and the slow-cooking Gospel Groove, pointing the way to what was to come.  As mentioned above, Shuggie's Boogie starts out with a potted autobiography of his formative influences, saved from being a bit precious and corny by exploding into another great twelve-bar tearup.  From here, Shuggie's playing, singing and writing would just get better and better.

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Various Artists - Motown Chartbusters Volume 3 (1969)

Here's another thing I started listening to in the late 90s, which also subsequently became a summer tradition for me to dig out and enjoy afresh - although it's still 45 minutes of truly timeless music at any time of year.  In 1997, these British Tamla-Motown compilation LPs from the 60s and 70s came out in a fresh wave of budget CD reissues, and this one was reviewed as the absolute jewel in the crown.

Not all the tracks selected for these original LPs were the most recent Motown hits of the day - some dated back a few years, reflecting either a re-release of the song, or the delay in being issued for the UK charts, and suchlike.  This is what led to Volume 3 having a particularly outstanding tracklist, bookended by I Heard It Through The Grapevine (1968) and The Tracks Of My Tears (1965).  Virtually everything in between is pure gold, so to mention the highlights would be to list almost all sixteen tracks.  Just enjoy some prime pop-soul music - and in the words of one of the album's extra sublime entries, summer's here, and the time is right for dancing in the streets.  Or if your physique's anything like mine, at least walking sedately in the streets.

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Laura Nyro and Labelle - Gonna Take A Miracle (1971)

Absolutely love, love, love this little gem.  For her fifth album, Laura Nyro took a break from songwriting to put together a heartfelt tribute to the music she grew up listening to in The Bronx in the 50s and 60s.  With new friend Patti Labelle and her group singing backup, and Gamble & Huff producing at Sigma Sound, the result was a perfect mix of classic girl-group and soul material with a now-legendary Philly sheen.

A huge part of this album's charm for me is its spare instrumentation and production, and just how alive and joyful each track sounds.  According to legend, everything was recorded first-take in a single day, after almost all the studio time had been frittered away just goofing around and enjoying the songs that everyone knew so well.  This freshness makes the uptempo selections absolutely burn through their grooves (Jimmy Mack, Nowhere To Run, the medley of Monkey Time and Dancing In The Street) and the ballads shine in their ethereal, stark beauty (Desiree, and my personal album highlight The Wind).  And if anyone's recorded a more perfect version of Spanish Harlem that just drips with languid, urban midsummer eroticism, I've yet to hear it.

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Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid (2010)

Forgot how much I loved this album until one of its singles (Tightrope) turned up on a TV advert recently.  Back in 2010, this was Janelle Monáe's first full-length album, and was one of those rare double-albums where not only do none of its 18 tracks feel like filler, but it just appears to get better and better as it goes on, with the most stunningly ambitious material in its second half, culminating in a deft reconfiguration of Debussy's Clair De Lune in the penultimate song.

Before getting to that, prepare to luxuriate for an hour in an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink stew of pop, soul, folk, punk rock and a full blotter-sheet's worth of psychedelia, as the rough overall concept unfolds of the titular android being sent to liberate humanity in the funkiest possible way.  If I had to pick favourites, they'd be the woozy Mushrooms & Roses with its blistering guitar solo, or the hushed choral folk of 57821, but the whole thing is just a stone cold masterpiece.  Definitely time for me to pull out the follow-up album (The Electric Lady from 2013) and enjoy it afresh, and keep my fingers crossed for the new material she's been promising for this year.

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Van Morrison - Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)

With my trans-Irish Sea parentage, Van Morrison was always going to be part of the musical staple diet growing up - and this album remains a favourite.  Recorded in late '71/early '72 at the height of Morrison's California period, Saint Dominic's Preview is perfectly balanced between short, zippy soul/blues classics (straight off the blocks with the breathless acapella euphoria of Jackie Wilson Said) and two 10 minute+ epics.

Of the latter, Almost Independence Day drifts in a stream of Krause-synth consciousness and two chord 12-string guitar, giving it a striking resemblance to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here title track from three years later.  But the  definite highlight of this great record is Listen To The Lion - for me, it's simply one of the greatest, most unreserved and fearless vocal performances Morrison ever accomplished.  Gives me chills every time once he really lets rip in the middle section, before things calm down again.

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Prince - Musicology (2004)

Prince Rogers Nelson - June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016

Another truly unique legend gone... seriously, Death, WTF?

Wanted to post this album as it's stuck with me as a personal favourite from Prince's latter-day work (using Emancipation as a rough dividing line).  There's the usual amount of deeply personal, sometimes obtuse soul-searching, but above all just so much joy and a fresh reveling in the all-encompassing mastery of his art.

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