Soul Caravan

Thelma Houston - Don't leave me this way - YouTube

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:32:43 +0100

Thelma Houston - Don't leave me this way - YouTube

Jackson 5

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:12:09 +0100

Jackson 5

The Specials

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:11:17 +0200

The Specials

The Supremes

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:09:05 +0200

The Supremes

Sly Stone

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:58:59 +0200

Sly Stone

Bob Marley

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:58:19 +0200

Bob Marley

Ike & Tina Turner

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:57:13 +0200

Ike & Tina Turner

Jimi Hendrix

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:55:08 +0200

Jimi Hendrix

Bob Marley con Peter Tosh e Rita Marley

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:51:00 +0200

Bob Marley con Peter Tosh e Rita Marley

Prince ~ Darling Nikki

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:01:00 +0200

Prince ~ Darling Nikki

L'incantesimo di Phyllis Hyman

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:05:06 +0200

“God is a spirit, music is spiritual so every time you hear Phyllis sing she lives.”
– Roberta Flack

June 30, 1995, stands as the day the world lost the voice, talent and beauty of one of the truly great female vocalists of our times. Dealing with the loss of loved ones, depression and loneliness, the statuesque diva ended her life, overdosing in her New York City apartment. She was found hours before she was scheduled to perform at the Apollo Theatre. Her suicide note read in part: “I’m tired. I’m tired. Those of you that I love know who you are. May God bless you.” She was 45 years old.

The first time I heard Phyllis, was on a remake of The Stylistics’ song, “Betcha by Golly Wow!”, that she performed on Norman Connors’ 1976 album, You Are My Starship. I was hooked from the moment I heard her voice.

I frequently go through my iTouch and really listen and absorb the full range and beauty of her voice as she takes you through the emotion, the joy, the longing and the pain of being in love and the bittersweet journey that it can be. You can hear it in the range of the notes she sings in – even if she had sung the words in another language, you knew what she was saying. I wonder if this is why she had so many adoring fans outside the US.

Phyllis was a star that just never managed to reach the level of stardom and success that lesser vocalists had. That could partially be attributed to the fact that she never had a particular musical genre or style she could be put under. She did it all, Jazz, R&B, Soul, Pop, Disco and of course musicals, as evident with her Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in “Sophisticated Ladies”.

Despite this, Phyllis is best know and remembered for her ballads, love and torch songs – songs which she could pour her own personal experiences and interpretations of heartbreak and struggle.

I often think to myself while listen to her songs, what if she was still with us, where would she be right now. I would hope that she would have been recognized at the level she should have been and deserved. But only time and God could have answered that. All we are left with, is the legacy of her recordings and the sound and beauty of her glorious voice.

Vic
http://www.victorvarela.com/blog/2010/06/30/remembering-phyllis-hyman/

The Private Struggles of a Genius

By Mark Anthony Neal

When Nikki Giovanni wrote “A Poem for Aretha” it was as much a cautionary tale as a celebration of Aretha Franklin’s groundbreaking talents. She wrote it during what was arguably the height of Franklin’s popularity — a moment that established her as the most popular black female entertainer ever.

And it was that immense popularity that most concerned Giovanni, as she wondered aloud whether or not Franklin would ultimately visit the same fate as so many other black women entertainers before her.

Names like Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and Esther Phillips (who was no doubt dying a slow death when Giovanni’s poem was first published) are more than footnotes to black musical genius; they are constant reminders of the travails and dangers that black women face in an industry that seemingly cares little for them and has always seemed to place more value in their sexuality than their talent.

One can only wonder if Phyllis Hyman had ever read Giovanni’s poem before she took her own life in June of 1995. Though Hyman never achieved the popular success Franklin did, she still stands as a diva among divas.

Living All Alone gave audiences a small glimpse of the feelings of loneliness and depression that had begun to engulf her. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Pittsburgh, as a teen Hyman didn’t think herself much a singer. As she told Jacquelyn Powell in a 1981 profile, “I didn’t know I could sing… Not like Nancy Wilson, or Dionne Warwick.” But pianist Dick Morgan thought different, and after hearing Hyman sing at local clubs in Pittsburgh in the early ’70s, asked her to tour with his band.

It was while Hyman was doing regular gigs in New York City at Rust Brown’s and Mikell’s in 1975 that bandleader and producer Norman Connors first heard her. A year later he tapped her to sing the lead in his version of the Stylistics’ classic “Betcha by, Golly Wow.” Nearly 30 years after its release, it remains one of Hyman’s most memorable performances.

Hyman initially signed as a solo artist with Buddah Records, which had difficulty finding the right material to make her the crossover star they wanted her to be. Though Hyman would have minor success singing mainstream R&B and disco, as witnessed on tracks like “You Know How to Love Me” (1979) and “Can’t We Fall in Love Again,” recorded with former Miles Davis sideman Michael Henderson in 1981 (the duo was first paired together on Connor’s “You Are My Starship” in 1976), she was more at home within the jazz and pop-jazz idioms.

Though she didn’t sell many records during her two-album stint at Buddah, Phyllis Hyman (1977) and Somewhere in My Lifetime (1978) remain a testament to her link to some of the great torch singers, such as Nancy Wilson and Abbey Lincoln. Hyman was eventually given the chance to fully shine within the jazz tradition when she accepted a role in the Broadway production Sophisticated Ladies, a revue of Duke Ellington’s music in which she sang Ellington classics such as “Prelude to A Kiss,” “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” and a stirring, heart-wrenching rendition of “In a Sentimental Mood.”

Hyman received a Tony Award nomination in 1981 for her work in Sophisticated Ladies but Arista, her label at the time, failed to capitalize on her new found mainstream popularity, instead trying to re-capture the dance-floor magic of “You Know How to Love Me,” her first “hit” for the label.

The awful “Riding the Tiger” from her 1983 recording Goddess of Love is an example of these efforts, though the song did help introduce Hyman’s music to gay audiences, who reportedly embraced the song as a favorite at drag performances in the mid-’80s. Hyman would finally find a label receptive to her unique talents in Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International Records (PIR).

Living All Alone (1987) powerfully captured the full range of Hyman’s vocal gifts, but it also gave her audiences a small glimpse of the feelings of loneliness and depression that had begun to engulf her. As her friend and manager Glenda Gracia told writer Esther Iverem, Hyman was “uncovering the riddles of stuff in her life…sometimes when you start that process, the demons that you confront may have more for you than you might have thought you would find.”

Part of the process for Hyman was dealing with very real feelings of loss after the death of her friend, songwriter Linda Creed, the long-time writing partner of Thom Bell (the duo penned “Betcha By Golly Wow” among other classics). Creed’s “Old Friend,” which appears on Living All Alone, was one of the last songs she wrote before her death.

Four years later Hyman returned with Prime of My Life (1991), which proved to be the most mature recording of her career as well as the last released during her lifetime. Tracks like “Meet Me on The Moon” and “When I Give My Love (This Time)” exhibit what producer Barry Eastmond refers to as “Phyllisisms.” The record also contained her only chart-topping R&B hit, “Don’t Wanna Change the World,” which ironically was a throwback to her dance-diva days, complete with her first rap performance.

Though the title of the album suggested that the then 42-year-old Hyman was at peace with her life and career, “Living in Confusion,” a track she co-wrote with Kenneth Gamble and Terry Burrus, suggested a deeper darker reality. In the song’s chorus Hyman sang, “seems like I’m always going through changes/Living in confusion…” Things took an even darker turn when Hyman’s mother and grandmother died within a month of each other in 1993.

Hyman was working on what would be her last recording, ironically titled I Refuse to Be Lonely when she chose to take her own life on June 30, 1995, leaving behind a note that stated simply “I’m tired. I’m tired.”

When I Refuse to Be Lonely was released in November of 1995, it became one of Hyman’s fastest selling recordings. According to Esther Iverem, so much of the recording was supposed to be about how Hyman “claws back from the brink, back from the place where she fought depression, loneliness, alcoholism, obesity and a consuming anger at lesser voices enjoying more commercial success.”

Hyman’s depression is telling in that the male-centered recording industry has rarely dealt with how gender impacts how artists are perceived, or with the way various artists choose to deal with the pressures of celebrity and the constant need to please fans, producers and A&R folk.

Women artists are also forced to conform to some perceived notion of beauty. More than six feet tall, Hyman also battled her weight, often ballooning close to 300 pounds. Though folks remember Dinah Washington dying of a drug overdose, few remember that she overdosed on diet pills — an addiction directly related to her feelings that her body wasn’t the right size.

More often than not, women in the industry who struggle with these issues are described as “difficult,” as was the case with Hyman, or even Mary J. Blige during earlier moments in her career. While these women may indeed have been “difficult,” folks in the industry rarely ask why, or more specifically, how their experiences in a decidedly patriarchal and often sexist industry may have informed their personalities.

And it’s not just women in the entertainment industry. As Iverem wrote in a 1996 Essence Magazine feature on Hyman’s death, her passing “offers a particularly poignant example of the private struggles that many talented, intelligent black women face.”

Many women face this reality with a resolve that suggests that such darkness is in fact inevitable. In her book If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holliday scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin reflects on an interview Mary J. Blige did with Dream Hampton in 1997, where the “Queen of Hip Hop Soul” responds to the invocation of Billie Holiday with the quip “Dead. Like Phyllis Hyman. Dead.” According to Griffin, for a young woman like Blige, the lives of Hyman and Holiday are only a reminder of “Death. Pain. Sadness.”

In the end we are only left with the music of Phyllis Hyman. Though the recently released Ultimate Phyllis Hyman is a good introduction to her music, fans might want to instead take a look at The Legacy of Phyllis Hyman, which was released in 1996.

For those desiring to hear Hyman at her most exquisite, it might be worth the effort to track down a copy of Pharaoh Sanders’s obscure Love Will Find a Way (1978), on which Hyman sings the gems “As You Are” and “Love is Here.” As Roberta Flack told mourners at a memorial service for Hyman, “God is a spirit, music is spiritual so every time you hear Phyllis sing she lives.”

Mark Anthony Neal is an Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University where he also serves as the Director of the Institute for Critical U.S. Studies.

[SOURCE: The New Black Magazine.com]

Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:05:06 +0200

Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar

C'è chi conta le parole dell'Hip Hop

Tue, 10 May 2011 10:46:00 +0200

L’idea è quella di costruire una geografia del linguaggio legata all’Hip Hop statunitense. Tutto basato sui dati ricavati dal conteggio delle parole presenti nei testi.

Ecco la pagina del suo progetto per conoscere i dettagli: http://www.kickstarter.com/…/the-hip-hop-word-count-a-searchable-rap-almanac

Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:39:18 +0200

Per celebrare simbolicamente il 62° compleanno di Gil Scott Heron ho scelto una delle tante perle che ci ha regalato: “Winter in America“. Tastierista, autore, poeta, scrittore. I profili di Gil Scott Heron sono diversi. La sua visione rivoluzionaria passa attraverso “Midnight Band – The first minute of a new day” con Brian Jackson. “La stagione nefasta, l’inverno,ha spazzato via primavera ed estate, le stagioni della rinascita rappresentate da Martin Luther King, John e Bob Kennedy”. Questo è il concept di “Winter in America”. La copertina è un omaggio al leader delle “Black Panthers” Huey Newton. Un gorilla adagiato sulla poltrona di vimini resa celebre dal militante e sul retro il gorilla nel “nuovo giorno” armato di fucile automatico e in tenuta militare. La lunga session di “Winter in America” è un inaspettato successo jazz funk che conferma la bontà del sodalizio con Brian Jackson.

http://vibe-capital.blogautore.repubblica.it/2011/04/04/uno-04-vibe-ft-oldani/

Flora Purim (VIBE ft Oldani)

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:33:00 +0200

Ieri ho trovato nella mia libreria l’album di Flora Purim “Nothing will be as it was…tomorrow“. La versione giapponese. Si diceva che fossero le migliori masterizzazioni, ma sempre analogiche. L’album è stato pubblicato nel 1976, il primo con un budget interessante grazie alla Warner. Forse per questo “Rolling Stone” la definì “special talent” e venne nominata ai Grammy Awards nella categoria femminile jazz. Le credenziali artistiche c’erano. Flora Purim, moglie di Airto Moreira uno dei migliori percussionisti brasiliani, aveva richiamato per questo album George Duke, Patrice Rushen e un paio di Earth Wind & Fire: il chitarrista Al McKay e il cantante Philip Bailey. Il loro contributo è fondamentale per “Angels”. Ieri sera l’ho programmata e lo studio di Capital è lievitato.

http://vibe-capital.blogautore.repubblica.it/2011/03/21/diciotto-03-vibe-ft-oldani-2/

listening to "Marvin Gaye - Heaven must have sent you"

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:18:28 +0200

listening to "Marvin Gaye - Heaven must have sent you":

Marvin Gaye – Heaven must have sent you #Motown #MarvinGaye #soul

Gene Dunlap (VIBE ft Oldani)

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:48:00 +0200

“It’s Just The Way I Feel” è il confortante album di debutto di Gene Dunlap, un batterista jazz che ha avuto la capacità di creare uno stile sofisticato nell’ r&b. Un paio di album in due anni all’inizio degli anni 80. Poi Gene Dunlap ha vissuto praticamente di rendita. Peccato. Le sue ballate impreziosite dalle voci delle Ridgeways, immortalate nel retro copertina di “It’s just the way i feel”, dal talento autorale di Kashif e anche dalla produzione di Quincy Jones sono la conferma di un approccio sofisticato al soul jazz. “Before you break my heart“ è una ballata smooth jazz in chiave bossa nova in cui le voci delle Ridgeways si rincorrono creando un’alchimia praticamente perfetta.

http://vibe-capital.blogautore.repubblica.it/2011/03/17/sedici-03-vibe-ft-oldani-2/

Norman Whitfield (VIBE ft Oldani)

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:46:00 +0200

Non è la prima e non sarà l’ultima volta che parlo, e che scrivo, del produttore più innovativo e rivoluzionario della Motown: Norman Whitfield. Non era solo un produttore, era anche un autore, arrangiatore, talent scout e inventore di un nuovo genere, il “soul psichedelico.” Quando Norman Whitfield è scomparso nel 2008, nel mio personale coccodrillo ho semplicemente elencato le sue produzione. Impressionante. Tra i gruppi inventati da Whitfield c’erano anche gli Undisputed Truth. La voce femminile era di Taka Boom, la sorella di Chaka Khan. L’immagine era futuristica. Abiti e copertine spaziali. L’apologia dell’abbigliamento kitch, ma grande ricerca nella produzione. Tra i successi “Smiling Faces Sometimes” un monito alle false amicizie, un anno prima che ci pensassero gli O’Jays di “Backstabbers”. “Law of the land” è spettacolare a tal punto da indurre Norman Whitfield a farla riproporre ai Temptations, un altro “suo” gruppo come i Rose Royce.

http://vibe-capital.blogautore.repubblica.it/2011/03/16/quindici-03-vibe-ft-oldani-2/

Quincy Jones Day (VIBE ft Oldani)

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:44:00 +0200

Difficile riassumere in un’ora la carriera di Quincy Jones. In questa playlist 11 brani prodotti dal 1957 con la su Orchestra e la voce di Dinah Washington al 2011 di “Soul Bossa Nostra”. Buon Compleanno Maestro!

PLAYLIST

01) George Benson – Give Me The Night

02) Dinah Washington – Makin Whoopee

03) Quincy Jones – Is It Love That We’re Missing

04) Brothers Johnson – Stomp!

05) Quincy Jones – Sanford & Son Theme

06) Diana Ross & Michael Jackson – Ease On Down The Road

07) Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough

08) Rufus Ft Chaka Khan – Do You Love What You Feel

09) Patty Austin & James Ingram – Baby Come To Me

10) Quincy Jones – Secret Garden

11) Quincy Jones Ft. Ludacriss, Naturally 7 And Rudy Corrence – Soul Bossa Nostra

http://vibe-capital.blogautore.repubblica.it/2011/03/15/quattordici-03-vibe-ft-oldani/

Bootsy Collins (VIBE ft Oldani)

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:41:00 +0200

Ritorna il bassista più eccentrico e forse più talentuoso che il funk abbia mai conosciuto. Le credenziali sono James Brown, Parliament, Funkadelic e la creatura a sua immagine e somiglianza Bootsy’s Rubber Band: Bootsy Collins. “Don’t take my funk” convince. Non è una operazione nostalgica. La presenza di Bobby Womack impreziosisce il primo singolo. Il nuovo cd “The funk capitol of the world” uscirà il 26 aprile. Le aspettative sono alte, perchè Bootsy Collins, aka “Bootzilla” aka “Casper”, è stato il motore del P-Funk, sullo stesso piano di George Clinton che non poteva mancare a questa liturgia. Una trentina di artisti duetteranno con Bootsy nei 16 brani dell’album.

http://vibe-capital.blogautore.repubblica.it/2011/03/12/undici-03-vibe-ft-oldani-2/