Music is the art form that speaks to me first and foremost. I grew up in a house full of music. No. my mother wasn’t a singer and I have no tales about being three years old and singing in the church choir. I actually use to carry the opinion that small children and old people shouldn’t be singing in the choir. The small children usually sound like mice squeeking and the old old people hum half the words because they have forgotten them. But they always know where to say Jesus. Anyway. My home was filled with music.
Growing up, we always had one of those table type boxes with the flip top lid and the record player inside. Some of them had the 8 track player too. Those things had great sound and they looked like furniture too. My mother used to play her 45s on Saturday morning when she got up until she went to bed Sunday night. My mother had a short rotation of artists she really liked. Their music is ingrained in me leaving impressions that still sway my musical soul. My stepfather, on the other hand, had a much wider range of musical tastes. I suppose I liked his music sometimes just because it was different.
Saturday morning would find me awakened by the voice of Al Green. “Love and Happiness”. By the time the first guitar notes are plucked my mama would be shuffling her feet the way Chicago steppers do. Before R. Kelly made dusty stepping nationally known, that was how old Chicago Black folks danced. As a child my friends and I laughed at our parents because that was the only dance they knew. That and the electric slide.
Saturday morning would find us cleaning the house, blasting away the James Brown. My mother owned maybe five James Brown 45s. and she listened to them in the same rotation every weekend. You would think she didn’t know he made other music. My mother’s reason for claiming James Brown was her favorite was because her dead father loved James Brown’s music. So that somehow compensated for the fact that he died when she was 13 and she still to this date hasn’t actually dealt with it. James made her happy. And even now when she hears James Brown she says, “My daddy loved James Brown!” and smiles. It makes her feel closer to her dad and brings happiness to her. I love it too then.
So music for me was some sort of emotional escape too. I remember some of my childhood philosophies on things I was yet to experience were completely shaped by the power of the music. Before I knew what love was, Al “Hot Grits!” Green taught me that “Love can make you do wrong… Make you come home early…. Make you stay out all night…” And I believed that. As smart as I was, if I was tested in school and asked what love is or what love causes… that would have been my answer.
No different than many women I suppose, my mama loved Marvin Gaye. I was almost 8 years old I think when his father killed him. I did not understand his music really. But I understood his voice did something to women. I noticed that when he sings the opening “Baby..” of “Sexual Healing” and a woman heard him, they closed their eyes and smiled. It was a smile I would later learn that if I could cause it… the reward would astonish me. Marvin made my mama smile like that.
But Marvin had nothing on one man in my mama’s eye. He, like others, are lesser known to young people who think R. Kelly is good music. If you think Usher can really sing then you are probably an American Idol voter who roots for the hot young guy even though you know the fat Black girl can out sing him if she was underwater. And no, I’m not talking about Barry White either. His music will not be forgotten. I’m talking about Billy Paul. In specific I mean the song, “Me and Mrs. Jones”. That same closed eye smile Marvin draws from my mother for the first word of “Sexual Healing” my mother carried the entire song for Billy Paul. Go buy or otherwise acquire this song online if you never heard it before. You listen to the fluid smooth plushness of his voice and tell me that recent male R&B artist should be in a league with that man. They shouldn’t. There is far less passion in music, the stories are lacking substance and the soul is dead. Suddenly “soul” in R&B is about a look and not the music. An afro don’t mean you got soul bitch.
I don’t want to get off track so another time I’ll hop on my soapbox about the travesty of modern R&B music.
Back to our story. Chicago is a blues Mecca. And my mama being from the Mississippi delta, the blues rang through my house like church bells. On Sunday morning, after spending the night playing spades, smoking weed and drinking, my mother’s music turned to Gospel and the blues. The Gospel rotation was huge. I can’t even approach naming all the artists. But I heard enough Mighty Cloud of Joy that I thought I could sing in a group too. And to this day I still listen to “You Are The Sunshine’ by The Clark Sisters, a few times a week. I can’t hear those women’s voices squeeze soul from their hearts and then listen to Mary J. Blige. In comparison… if she knows that record and she was honorable in an ancient times sort of way, she would stop singing out of respect for what they do. Although I’ll admit my wife, who is into more gospel than I am, says the Clark Sisters can no longer sing like that anymore.
Can anybody?
After the Gospel and the church talk, which rarely turned into an actual church visit, the blues came out. B.B. King was the favorite in my house. My mama claims my granddaddy was friends with B.B. way way back in the day. So my mother, of cource, thinks no one is better. The blues was my gateway drug into my music addiction. Really. Because before I understood love or happiness I understood pain. Pain and loss. The blues back in the 80s in Chicago was everywhere. You could go damn near anywhere and find old men strumming home made guitars or playing the harmonica on the corner with a hat out for change. And they didn’t play that TV blues. They sat there crying tears of shame from yellow eye sockets that hurt your feelings just to look at. Weather they could carry a tune or not, you saw their pain and felt it as they wailed away. An old man, dying inside, sitting with his bottle in a brown paper bag, taking a sip between tears, puffing a cigarette that dangles from his lip as he sings tells a story you just know is true. The same scene repeated every other vacant lot and corner where people might walk by. All the while the music faded faster than their hopes.
The blues could be upbeat. But when it was slow and painful it was snails pace and devastating. I remember the first song that ever made me cry, and to this day still does hurt me to my heart… “The Thrill is Gone” by B.B. King. I imagine you can’t perform that song, really understand what he is saying, and not cry. The passion in his voice hurts. The devastation he conveys makes me appreciate him for sharing that with me. I know it was written before I was born and I don’t guess he meant it to be an encouraging song but it does that for me. If he could be devastated like that, collect his shame and cart it away… and still have the wherewithal to wish that woman well…. I can get through whatever bullshit I’m dealing with at the time.
So my mother’s music was either exciting, sexual or depressing. And I only understood the depressing part. Actually I understood how exciting James Brown’s music was even though I usually had no idea what he was saying. That brings me to my stepfather’s music. He was into all kinds of shit. Stuff I liked such as P Funk and Mass Production. He was into stuff my mama claimed he listen to “Trying to be white…” like Miles Davis and John Coltrane. My mother, like many people, saw music in terms of colors. And if they didn’t play it on “Black” radio stations then that made it “white people’s music”. And my mother hated it. I don’t think she hated it as much as she hated the idea that she might like it. And even though she knew better… I believe she was afraid if she listened to the music long enough it would make her white. God forbid!
My stepfather had, or at least wanted, a greater appreciation of music. He heard different instruments as a song played. He used to say things to me like, “Listen, that’s Monk… watch he gives it up to Coltrane then he gives it back to Miles. Listen…” But all I heard was a guy playing some sort of horn. I couldn’t distinguish from one to the other. It all sounded the same to me. He would laugh and shake his head slowly. Much like I do with my own stepson now. To that end I now at least know what he was thinking.. And obviously now I don’t know how I couldn’t hear the difference in horns, styles, signature sounds.
I suppose there is a difference between hearing music and really listening to it.
Actually I know there is. Now. But before my freshman year in high school I had heard quite a bit of music but I had never really listened. Quick story… my freshman year in high school my roommate came in the room while I was blasting his stereo. He told me I needed to turn down the bass before I destroyed his speakers. I thought the music sounded great. But it was his stereo and I knew I couldn’t replace it if I blew it up so I didn’t fight him turning it down. He told me, “The bass is distorted. You like listening to it like that?” Honestly I had never used an equalizer. Our stereo at home had a bass knob and a treble knob and both were always set to the max. He adjusted the equalizer and said to me, “There. It’ll sound better now like this.”
“Aww man. Now I can’t feel the drum thump,” I said disappointed that the white boy had taken my jungle music and reduced it to some caged murmur of its self. He laughed at me.
“What drum?”
“The drum. The bass. You took the thump out now I cant feel the drums.”
He laughed at me and went across the hall and got the good ole boy in the room across from us. He brought him in and said, “He thinks there is a drum in this song right here. Listen…”
The good ole boy cocked a crooked smile and laughed at me too.
“Boy you out yo mind. That’s a drum machine. Aint no drum in that.”
“Yes it is!” I insisted. I didn’t care for these white boys teaming up on me. And I didn’t care for them laughing at me either. My roommate fished around his CD collection and found and example of drums and the good ole boy went down the hall to find more people to get to confirm what they said and to laugh at me. He found our advisor who lived at the end of the hall. The boys giggled as they explained to our advisor what the disagreement was about. I played the song and he just looked at me in a way he always looked at me that I could never read… maybe it was pity… maybe it was shame… maybe it was something else but he looked at me the way you might look at a three legged puppy. You hope for the best but you don’t think it will make it.
“Yep. That’s a drum machine.” He said. And before my roommate could play me a real drum I knew I was wrong. The adult confirmed it so they must be right. Then he played some drum intro to a song I no longer remember. It wasn’t even close. I didn’t know my music wasn’t really played on instruments.
That day forward I listened to music differently. I paid attention. . I quickly learned all of my mother’s music DID in fact have real instruments. And although it was the music I was raised on, after that day I heard it all like it was the first time.
As soon as that happened, my musical tastes expanded. Now I began to understand how GOOD the musicians with James Brown were. See, as a kid I heard one beat. That was all I heard. As I got older I could hear individual instruments within the music.
Which brings me to my musical tastes today. I’m not going to say I’m the end all and be all of music knowledge. Nope. But I do think the big music TV networks and radio are destroying music by pushing crap to the masses, who, it seems, will buy anything.
The girls keep getting younger and younger and the closer to naked the better. The men are no better. Not only is vocal ability low on the list to make a good artist… so is song quality. I submit that the music TV networks and the radio stations seek out and promote artist with no real hope of having longevity in their careers so they can rotate them out and prop up a new batch of hot new artist every few years.
Why? You ask. Who does that benefit? The record companies. If artists don’t ever have a successful second album, then they end up owing the record label money instead of getting wealthy and taking their talent elsewhere.
With all the feuding in music I really hope that someone whose trip on the one hit wonder mobile will stand up and throw down a gauntlet and challenge people to sing better. Crazy Idea. I know. But in the final few of American Idol season 5 Elliot Yamin sang “A Song For You”. A Donny Hataway classic that is both beautiful and heartbreaking to me. And he sang the shit out of it. Now if he had have looked in the camera afterwards and said to all the artist out there… fill in any name of your choice really for the most part… If he had have looked in the camera and said, “Look you so called singers… If you can’t do at least that well, show some respect and stop singing. Just stop it. You are embarrassing yourselves and its sad.” Then slammed the mic down and walked off…. He would be my hero.
But I understand we will always be stuck with half ass talent because they look good or get undressed. That’s fine. But please people, think twice before you say your favorite current artist can sing. Sing compared to what?
Im not defending all my musical choices as being good ones. I’m just mentioning that Beyonce, Sierra, Rhianna… they are not in the same league as Anita Baker, Stephanie Mills, Martha Washington… They aren’t. Vocally they couldn’t carry those women’s maxi pads. Sad thing is not everyone knows that.
