Loose Booty

There are some songs that simply make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up every time you hear them. Often these are not even songs which you purposely listen to all that frequently, but will occasionally pop up on your shuffle, at a bar, on the radio or just as the momentary backdrop to an otherwise humdrum day. But for that moment you are instantly reminded of the power that music has to just grab and hold you at some guttural and primitive level, some place that you are unaware of, and shake you with a force of elemental joy. It can literally transform your day.

Imagine then the power of hearing a song that sounds like nothing you have ever heard before. Not some experimental guitar solo that you marvel at for its technical wizardry, or some sampled beat that cries freshness and innovation. No, a song that sounds literally like nothing you have ever heard before. It is difficult in this age of musical recycling, of sampling and stretching, of derivatives and covers, to imagine such a scene. You have to step into the far reaches of musical genres to discover something truly new nowadays, and even then it is often so fresh and innovative as to render it quite unbearable to listen to. Well imagine then what it must have been like to be a music fan in late 1955 and hearing this incredible sound flying out of your wireless.

Out of nowhere a soulful and impossibly sexually charged half-scream, half-exclamation cries out "A-wop-bomp-a-loom-op-a-wop-bam-boom!", before a pounding and rollicking piano led music of unadulterated good vibes is unleashed on you. With the impenetrable but somehow lucid couplet "Tutti Frutti, aw rudy" repeatedly chanted and increasing in intensity, before the vocal drum roll hits again, followed by a verse of raucous tale-telling. To start a song off with a chorus is in itself pretty audacious, but when it is a chorus with such other-worldly charms it borders on downright genius. Little Richard was not the inventor of rock'n'roll, nor is "Tutti Frutti" the first record of the fledgling new music, but there is something about it that takes the music on to a new level and changes the game subtly but crucially.

The twelve bar chord progression and hard-driving music is significant as a model for future records. But more than that, "Tutti Frutti" sexes up the music in an unadulterated fashion, and gives voice to a new, unashamed, confident and flamboyant black star, the repercussions of which have hit far and wide since. That Richard was gay (if not openly then certainly not hiding the fact as far as the times allowed) and as wonderfully camp as a tent convention is also significant. Imagine that, a gay, black, sexually charged pop star in 1950s middle America. Like I said before, it is difficult to consider now quite how ground-breaking this was. Those in the know also were aware of the fact that the original song, a staple of Little Richard's live shows prior to the unplanned studio recording in late 1955, had the chorus "Tutti frutti, loose booty", with tutti frutti a street slang term for a homosexual male. If music and society were not quite ready for an all out overt celebration of gayness, the so-called cleaned up version still remains one of the archetypes of rock'n'roll music and is simply a killer tune that refuses to date, and never loses its impact.

The early history of rock'n'roll is a fascinating story to tell, and can never be dated to one song or one artist. It is a progression and amalgamation over time that became a social and cultural revolution, with key players and moments too numerous to mention here. In many ways Little Richard came at the end of this process, and was a culmination of a many number of elements that came before. But he took those elements and added something new to the mix. It could be said that he added the funk to it, and thus paved the way for much of the great soul and r'n'b music that followed, and all that this in turn influenced. His original recording career was brief, but this does not detract from its enormous impact. In some ways it makes it even more stunning. So don't wait for the next time that "Tutti Frutti" turns up on your radio. Dig it out. You're day will always be a better one after it.

Debut, See?

As far as I am aware, and I should be given that I write it, this is a first for A Story To Tell. For today we are going to delve, albeit briefly, into the confusing, slightly scary and yet infinitely beguiling world of Classical music. We often try to take you back, and sometimes strive to remind or inform you of a box of musical history that has perhaps lain neglected at the back of your cupboard. Of people or musical recordings of repute that deserve to be the subject of re-acquaintance for whatever reason. But rarely do we go this far back, or step so far across the tracks. But a lack of expertise should not be a hindrance to learning, it should be one of the best reasons for it.

Now I am the first to maintain that there are vast, vast gaps in my musical knowledge. We all have them, and as I have said before it is the variation in tastes, and the ongoing, seemingly endless, discovery of the new that makes the appreciation of music such an enduring pastime. And classical music is one such world. It seems so big a topic that it is almost too difficult to know where to start, a massive musical universe that is intimidating in its intricacies, and yet so much a part of all of us, of our collective musical heritage and consciousness. Surely we all have a piece of what would be classed classical music that we instantly recognise and love, even if we don't know the composer, performer, symphony number, or age from which it came. Maybe we hear it occasionally on a TV advert, or in a favourite film. Maybe we wish we knew more about where it came from but don't know where to start. Maybe it is just an area of music that we just haven't got around to starting with properly, just like jazz, country and hardcore Dutch gabba techno. Okay, maybe we'll never get around to the last one, but you get the point.

However, I do know what I like, and there are certain classical pieces, and in rare cases, classical music figures, that I have expanded my flimsy knowledge of as a result of simply being besotted by their sheer beauty and creative brilliance. And one such figure is French composer Claude Debussy. My brother is a brilliant pianist, and has always been a fan of Debussy's work, and it was through him that I first heard Debussy's work and was tempted to find out more. I also had an equal fascination with French contemporary and friend Erik Satie, which acted as another motivation. Satie's "Les Trois Gymnopedies", perhaps his most famous work, is a stunning piano piece of incredible beauty. Melancholic and yet uplifting, it is simply wonderful, and you will almost certainly know it yourself. But it is Debussy who has the greater significance. His life and work span the turn of the twentieth century, and his influence both to contemporaries and in the time since is profound. It serves to underpin and characterise the huge cultural, technological and social shifts at work during this period, as the western world searched for an identity and to define what modernity would mean for us as a society. And it was his innovation and rampant desire to look outside of the western tradition, to ignore convention, which really provides his importance.

For it was through Debussy that modern music was given the license to become the multi-headed beast of variety that we all know and love. As with many advances, it took a far-sighted pioneer to dare to be different, to stand on the shoulders of the giants who had gone before and aim for a different horizon. Debussy is often characterized as a musical "Impressionist", a term which he disliked and disagreed with, which saw him placed within the contemporaneous artistic tradition of the likes of Monet and Renoir. This tag was partly because of his evocation of tone and colour, his layering of sounds, as well as this repudiation of traditional norms in his compositions, favouring dissonance in sound and unlikely scales and chord structures. Debussy was also a great believer in seeking inspiration from Eastern traditions, as well as from the vaults of antiquity, and it is all of these things, this ability to synergise diverse inspirations and make new rules which is the key to his importance for music.

Pop music, from its inception, has always followed set formulae for success, a state of affairs which has led to the blandness and reality-show-type manufacture of much of the output we hear on the charts and on the radio today. But, if pop is the constant in our cultural world, it is also the norm which works of true brilliance and innovation rail against, and it is this for which we must thank Debussy. He is one of the main reasons that those hidden albums of non-convention exist, why musical gems can appear out of their context, and keep music evolving and reinventing itself. Why pop itself can be turned on its head repeatedly and yet retain its pre-eminence. Why artists everywhere continue to bend and break rules and feed our own ongoing desires for new sounds. Debussy's work is not everyone's cup of tea at all, but for me it is often simply beautiful.

Listen, for example to "Claire de Lune" from "Suite Bergamesque" and it is difficult not to be captured entirely by its seemingly simple charms. And so, next time you are wondering why that obscure album you love, of whale song set to afro breakbeats, didn't make it up the charts and isn't essential listening for everyone, wonder no more. Just raise a glass to Debussy and accept that it is because we all have different tastes, and if all music played by the same rules then life would be a pretty boring place. Plus Simon Cowell and his ilk of identikit pop manufacturers would be even richer, and perhaps have achieved their clearly transparent evil
plans of global dominance through pop dross, the opposition of which we can all drink to.

Dap dappin'

Whether you know it or not there is a revolution going on and it is one which you should consider hitching yourself to with the utmost haste. If you are yet to discover the funk and soul gold of Daptone Records' Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, as I was until relatively recently, then time is even more of the essence. Music this good deserves to be unearthed and revelled in. I had been aware of the group for some time but, as is sometimes the way in my world of lethargy, I had neglected to look into them properly. And this despite the fact that what I knew of them already I liked immensely. Dripping in the retro sound of the best of 1960s and 1970s soul and funk, one of my favourite places to dwell, the group eschew digital recordings and stick to an analogue technique, also limiting themselves to the other instruments and recording styles of the era. No pro-tools wizardry for this outfit.

When I discovered that they contributed significantly to Amy Winehouse's much heralded Back to Black LP, itself at one, albeit mainstream, vanguard of this retro renaissance, I didn't bite. Mooted current projects with Questlove, Jay-Z and Kanye didn't up my priorities any. Recommendations from trusted acquaintances did not even move this lazy old lump to investigate further. It wasn't disinterest, just a lame inability to get around to it, and in my defence there is a hell of a lot of worthy music out there. But now, dear reader, I have finally seen the light. And what a bright light it has proven to be. A chance inclusion on a free compilation and then, wham, I'm hooked in. And like a Depeche Mode addict, now I just can't get enough.

The song that I first heard was a modest opening gambit but carried an element of fate, 2005's cover of Kenny Rogers and The First Edition's "I Just Dropped In (to see what condition my condition was in)". A great start for any Lebowski fan I'm sure you'll agree. But when I found their original work it really clicked for me. Their three full length LPs have the feel of instant classics. They really do evoke the era that inspires them, to the extent that it is almost impossible to believe that they are not reissues from some vault of precious musical gems at Stax or Curtom. But original is what they are and if you think that borrowing heavily from your influences is some kind of short-term gimmick then you couldn't be more wrong.

This is no Acid Jazz scene and in my opinion the time is coming for a more populist conversion to their cause. For though they wear their influences on their sleeves, and indeed their record sleeves (with even cover design taking on the appearance of old classics) their music is innovative, crazily soulful and downright funky. It might hark back to the good old days, but is also somehow definitively modern in its sound and sentiments, a stunning feat if you can pull it off. It is helped by the fact that the Dap Kings are no average house band but rather made up of some of the best funk and jazz musicians from the New York scene, and especially the Deep Funk movement that has coalesced around Daptone Records (and previous incarnation Desco Records), including such key players as Neal Sugarman on saxophone and Bosco Mann on bass.

And then there is Sharon Jones herself, a heaven-sent voice of such sweetness and power as to be almost improper. Jones's own career has been a story of ups and downs, the fickle music industry over-looking her major talent because she did not fit their aesthetic. And now, in her early 50s, Jones's own renaissance is at full tilt, where she seems to make up for the forgotten years with every vocal performance, live or on disk. Jones brings raw fire to the microphone, and sings with a soul voice drenched in passion, heartbreak, commitment and sometimes pure sex, some of the finest ingredients of any soul stew. Pick anyone of their three LPs, 2002's "Dap Dappin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings", 2005's "Naturally" and 2006's "100 Days, 100 Nights", and I challenge you to find a weak track.

From all out funk jams to mellower sultry soul, this band have it all in abundance, and the soul resurgence may just see them get the recognition they deserve. For these are no hipsters, catching a ride on a wave of faddish enthusiasm. They are the real deal, and if ever the old adage was true it is when applied to the new hardest working band in show business. Form is temporary, but class is permanent.

Mind if I turn on*.the radio?

We talk a lot on A Story To Tell about great musical artists, obscure songs, forgotten albums, killer party tunes, all sorts of things. However, it is not that often that we talk about inanimate objects. There wouldn't on the face of it appear to be too much scope for discussion, after all. However when you stop to think about it, one of the interesting aspects of musical creativity is that all of it, with the obvious exception of the human voice and the use of body parts for percussion, is made with objects that of themselves can do very little, the instruments themsleves. Now, unless your life is one massive Fantasia sequence, where objects animate themselves and spring to life willy-nilly, or you are a huge acid casualty, this statement may appear pretty banal.

Of course instruments require the input of us humans to create the wonderment of music, the clue is in the name you idiot writer. They are instruments, instruments of our creativity, the mere vehicles of our musical output. But the relationship, of course is symbiotic, and what is amazing is the wonderful array of instruments that we have at our disposal, increased manifold by advances also in electronic equipment, and how we have learnt to use them, to diversify their sounds, to test their very limits, and in doing so stretch the boundaries of our own perceptions and understanding of the world we inhabit. Is that not part of what music is all about? And the story of how instruments first came about is surely an interesting tale to tell as many are absolutely bizarre concepts taken out of their accepted context, or perhaps that is just me.

Now I don't know how the guitar was first invented, but I do know that Hendrix could do things with an electrified version that defy belief. I don't know who first twisted brass into a trumpet shape, but I do know that Miles Davis could bring sounds out of it that sounded like nothing else on earth. I don't know how the African Kora came to be, but I do know that Toumane Diabate is a god-like virtuoso on it. However, I do know, and now I am getting to the point of this posting, who invented the LM-1 Drum Computer, and believe it or not you also know the sound that this machine makes. I also know that one particular exponent used it to an effect, if not as startlingly creatively as those talents, then every bit as masterly, and arguably with more influence.

Step forward, of course, the one and only Prince, whose use of the Linn Electronics LM-1, one of the first programmable percussion machines and the first to use digital samples of real drum sounds, came to define his work throughout the 1980s. Now it would be churlish in the extreme to reduce Prince's incredible musical talents and prodigious output in this decade to one tool, and this is not the point here. But rather I just wanted to draw attention to the instrument itself and quite how ubiquitous it is in much of Prince's best work. Pick out any (yes any) tune from "1999" or "Purple Rain" for an example of how good the sound from this machine is. I told you that you knew its sound. Indeed it is not just Prince who used it extensively.

Along with its successor the LM-2 (LinnDrum, which added cymbals to the mix), and the Roland TR-808, the machine arguably defined the decade, certainly the early part of it. And so, for many reasons, the Linn Drum, and inventor Roger Linn, should be celebrated, and their importance to music heralded. If for nothing else than without them we would not have "The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker", and I for one am unwilling to countenance such a reality. It is just too gruesome for words.

Think outside the boxxx

When rap's most dynamic duo, Outkast, released their critically acclaimed double disc "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" in 2003, there was understandably a lot of fuss made. Was this a sign of tensions breaking the long-time friends apart? A portent of things to come? A musical diversion of tastes that saw Andre 3000 get his Princely funk on, while Big Boi carried on the trademark hip-hop sound perfected through the astonishingly consistent previous four albums, and culminating in 2000's incredible "Stankonia"? Was it a clever marketing ploy to allow for the musical meanderings of Andre 3000 while still giving rap heads their market share of beats to head-nod to? Or a devilish marketing tool to test the waters of Andre's pop credentials before an all out assault on the market that lapped up the all-conquering pop-soul of "Hey Ya" but would never countenance listening to any Ghettomusick?


Well, the answer, as it turned out, was probably all and none of these at the same time. But in many ways the reasons behind the development of the album are irrelevant because what we were given with this unprecedented hip-hop album was close to perfection, a high watermark of rap in the 21st century and a record that transcends its allotted genre, to stand as simply a great musical reference point. All of this being the case, it has always seemed that, with its P-Funk mimicry, multi-instrument explorations, soulful vocals and spacey metaphors for love that Andre 3000's "The Love Below" was always going to get the lion's share of attention and plaudits.



Why? Well basically because people don't expect rappers to do that, and so when they do, and do it well, critics and fans alike can fawn in breathless wonder, marvelling at the sheer artistry of it all. Now don't get me wrong, "The Love Below" is a great album of itself, with some particular high-points such as the undeniable genius of "Hey Ya" and the quite beautiful "Baby, Take Off Your Cool". But my questions is really whether it would be so heralded, or even noticed, were it not an established rapper turning his trade on its head, albeit a rapper from a group who have set the standard for funky quality and cornered innovation as an established trademark. Possibly not. "The Love Below" glitters, but is it really all gold? On the other hand, Big Boi's "Speakerboxxx" is a stunning tour de force of straight-up hip-hop from start to finish, cementing the Outkast sound and moving it on to new levels of brilliance.


It stands alone arguably much more easily than it's soulful sibling, and it is this that I wanted to draw attention to. I don't want to denigrate the former at all, because I genuinely do love it, I just want to give a shout out to Big Boi for his half of the equation. Understated on its release, "Speakerboxxx" is simply one of the best rap albums of the last 10 years, point blank. It is easy to miss the point that Big Boi, despite his more traditional rap alpha-male leanings, has many things to say. Significant things. While "The Love Below" is an essentially narcissistic and sometime syrupy play on the intertwined themes of love and sex, Big Boi's manifesto takes in the Iraq conflict, religious musings, single parenthood, social injustice, as well as love in its many colours. Of course he also gets his pimp on at times, and all to a sonic backdrop of relentlessly impressive and ground-breaking funk, soul and ass-shaking bass, just like the dirty south expects.


There are heavy rumours of an actual solo album slated for release this year, provisionally entitled "Sir Luscious Leftfoot", and tipped to be along the musical lines of "Speakerboxxx" and so in some ways my assertions will be put to the test. Whatever the case, one thing is for certain, and that is that Big Boi can rhyme with the best of them, and I look forward to another unadulterated feast of good hip-hop. Like any good relationship, Outkast's strength lies in the fact that their core stability and trust in one another provides the backdrop for the individuals to flourish, and to service their own creative needs. They can think outside the box without needing to leave it, and that in itself is a thing of beauty

Sweet insomnia

It may well be the case that their 1967 album "Reach Out" marks the accepted high point of the recording career of Motown stalwarts the Four Tops, and it is easy to see why this would be the case. While the latter tracks (or Side 2 in vinyl parlance) are standard covers of popular songs from the hit parade of the day, Side 1 is simply outstanding and as close to Motown perfection as any other album to come out of Hitsville, USA. A long player that includes three of the greatest soul songs ever committed to plastic * "Bernadette", "Reach Out, I'll Be There" and "Standing In The Shadows Of Love" * is always going to be well regarded.

However for me the archetypal Four Tops song is not one of these superbly sophisticated pop productions, as incredible as they are, but rather their first offering for Motown, the simple yet sensational "Baby, I Need Your Loving". Written by the genius threesome of Holland-Dozier-Holland, for whom the Four Tops were the main male vocal group outlet and with whom they had a dynamic partnership similar to that with The Supremes, "Baby I Need Your Lovin" is just a great pop song. However, what elevates it to brilliance is undoubtedly the quite awesome voice of lead singer Levi Stubbs. For me Stubbs is one of the great vocalists of all time, and his gritty baritone is never better displayed than on this tune.

For a man to swing so sweetly is almost indecent, and while the sentiments of the song are basic, Stubbs' voice adds an ambiguity that elevates it to a new level, and takes what could have been a pathetic plaintive begging to an almost heroic declaration of affection. The production team often wrote Stubbs' vocals as tenor parts to put him at the top of his range and give the vocal performance an added dimension. It is this intentioned straining, combined with Stubbs' own natural vocal power, that provide an added element of drama and tension to the Four Tops' music missing from that of many label mates. And in "Baby I Need Your Loving" the template is set for a quite startling run of success.

One should not forget the vital contribution of the three other band members * Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton * to the group's sound, but Levi Stubbs was born to sing soul music in its truest sense and on this song he single-handedly turns a potentially ordinary single into something spectacular. The lyrics are straightforward, the arrangements relatively unremarkable, and yet in the second verse Stubbs reaches a phenomenal level which sets the bar for the group's output, and arguably for that of Motown's male singers more generally. And when he sings the immortal coda that says that lately he's been losing sleep, a line so effortlessly soulful, surely a million ladies yearned to be the baby whose loving Stubbs so desperately needs. Absolutely timeless. Now, just don't get me started on the Tops' later offering "Loco In Acapulco", for that really is next level!