Sweet Soul Music /
Arthur Conley
Novelty track?  You decide. This was Arthur Conley's only real hit, but man, it swings. And sure, the whole point of it is to name-check other, greater, more durable talents on the soul scene in 1967 -- but let's give Arthur his due, okay?

It certainly helped that Arthur had recently come under the tutelage of the late great Otis Redding, who co-wrote this song with him and supervised its recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.  (Check out the Muscle Shoals regulars, guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn behind Conley on that tiny bandstand.)  Technically, he also co-wrote it with Sam Cooke, since it was based on Cooke's minor hit "Yeah Man" ("do you like all the dances? Yeah, man...") But Conley and Redding transformed that track completely, stealing an arresting horn fanfare from The Magnificent Seven intro and cranking the funk level up to eleven. 

This song deserved its brief reign at #2 (oh, so close!) on BOTH the R&B and pop charts. I remember how it cleared the sidelines at eighth grade dances that summer, everyone jumping up to join in on the dance floor. "Do you like good music," we'd raucously sing along with Arthur . . . because indeed we did.

I'll even so so far as to say that Conley's charmer holds its own against the six songs he refers to in the course of the song.  Why don't you listen and judge for yourself?

Arthur doesn't mention Smokey Robinson and the Miracles by name -- but come on, EVERYBODY back then would have picked up on the first verse's reference to this December 1965 Motown classic.

And how about this soul-drenched 1966 hit from Lou Rawls, mentioned in verse 2 ("oh don't he look tall, y'all?")

 
And the incomparable Stax soul duo Sam & Dave, of "Soul Man" fame -- this March 1966 hit was their first major breakthrough record.

By the time "wicked" Wilson Pickett released this hot hot hot single "Mustang Sally," we already knew him from "In the Midnight Hour," not to mention "Land of 1000 Dances" -- which sorta paved the way for Conley's song by name-checking current dance crazes.

Okay, here's one that I would rank above "Sweet Soul Music" -- a 1966 hit by Conley's mentor Otis Redding, who tragically would only survive Conley's tribute by a few months.

And last but certainly not least -- the Godfather of Soul and the hardest working man in show business, Mr. James Brown. It wasn't for nothing that Conley refers to him as "the king of them all -- since 1964's "Out of Sight," James Brown had pushed soul music to new funky frontiers. Conley doesn't single out any particular Brown tracks, but going with Conley's general 1966 time frame, I'm throwing in Brown's big-production diva number, "It's a Man's World." Why not?

Next to all these monumental singles, Arthur Conley's uptempo dance number comes off as a refreshing alternative. Was he trying to put himself in their league?  No way.  (It's interesting to note that in later years Conley moved to Europe and changed his name, not so much to escape this hit but to give himself space to do other kinds of music.)  But the effervescent joy of this song is hard to resist.  I'm out of my chair and dancing already.

"Shama Lama Ding Dong" / Otis Day and the Knights

Flying home from Milwaukee in a post-Nick Lowe euphoria yesterday (more on that to come), I was seated next to an ineffably cool gentleman with long graying dreadlocks, obviously a musician -- the fact that everyone in his party was carrying a guitar case was a dead giveaway. It turns out that he was Gemi Taylor, guitarist for Otis Day and the Knights, en route to Orlando to play a Disney World gig. Ever since our delightful plane conversation I've had this song in my head -- no, not "Shout", which is the song Otis sings in the famous toga party scene in Animal House, but the one they sing later in the film, in the roadhouse scene, where Boon ecstatically greets the singer with the famous line, "Otis -- my man!"

Otis Day and the Knights, it turns out, was a band concocted specifically for the movie; DeWayne Jessie was an actor hired to play Otis, who'd never even sung professionally before. (I haven't fully researched this yet, but it looks like someone named Lloyd Williams actually sang the vocals used in the film.) But folks phoned up to offer them gigs once the movie was released, so of course they took them -- and they haven't stopped touring since.

Everybody knows "Shout", a pumped-up Isley Brothers hit that's perfect dance party material. "Shama Lama Ding Dong" is much mellower, with a groove just dripping with honey. I now learn that it was originally written by Otis Redding, which makes perfect sense -- that cha-cha rhythm, the supple melody, were Redding's stock in trade. But what I most love about this song is its light-hearted lyrics, which half the time seem to mean nothing at all: "Cause you shama lama / In the rama lama ding dong / Baby, you put the ooh mau mau (oh, oh, oh, oh) / Back into my smile child." Do "shama lama" and "rama lama" mean something specific in street slang? Does it matter? You can imagine what he means, and it's best left unspoken.

You almost have to dance, working your way into that bridge: "That is why / That is why-y-y / You are my sugar dooby doo." I love how Otis cascades over those extra syllables in the "why's." This thing is just so damn smooth it hurts.

Shama Lama Ding Dong sample

"I've Been Loving You Too Long" / Otis Redding

I saw a fabulous documentary on PBS last night about the history of Stax Records, which got me to thinking Otis Redding thoughts. Every shot of him in that film showed an exuberant smiling face glowing with life and love of the music; all over again I felt sad that he died so young, just when his big crossover success was about to happen.

The Stax sound was tougher, sweatier, and just plain funkier than the Motown I was raised on; the AM radio stations I listened to in Indianapolis were willing to play Stevie Wonder and the Supremes but I sincerely doubt I ever heard this track as a kid. We got nothing, really, until "Sitting On the Dock of the Bay," and by then Otis had already gone down in that tragic plane crash. Ah, well, I wouldn't have known what to do with this song then anyway. It's absolutely drenched with desire and pain and a whole lot of other things that Otis Redding's shivery grit-edged voice could express better than anybody else.

The title's a little misleading -- "I've been loving you too long" sounds like he's bored and ready to give it up, but in fact the full line says "I've been loving you too long / To stop now." This is guy hooked on his woman, hooked bad, and the way Otis's voice pauses, then trembles in agony, you know he's not simply amortizing his investment. There's something almost dreadful about that weary tempo, those hammering piano chords, the dogged shifts from major to minor keys. He CAN'T stop loving her; she's become a "habit" to him, and I'm guessing more like a drug addiction than a Henry Higgins "I've grown accustomed to her face" sort of habit.

And now comes the hard part: she's NOT in love the same way. "You are tired and you want to be free...You are tired and your love is growing cold" -- he can see it all too well. It's killing him. So he's here, putting EVERYTHING on the line to hold onto her. If this doesn't justify a crescendo of Memphis horns, I don't know what would.

I love how Otis backs off some of those lyrics, as if he's in too much pain to face it (even the guitar seems to flinch and get tentative). He wails full force on "My love is growing stronger" then chokes his way through "as our affair, affair, grows old." I absolutely believe him when he testifies "Don't make me stop now / No baby / I'm down on my knees / Please, don't make me stop now / I love you, I love you, I love you with all of my heart." This is not a song with tight clever lyrics; it's almost like improv, and I picture Otis Redding literally dropping onto his knees, swaying and swooning, getting all worked up the way Sam & Dave or James Brown used to do. God, I wish I'd been lucky enough to see this man perform live.

This song is simply the essence of soul -- an artist's heart and naked essence laid out on stage, no holding back. Even though Stax had a stable of excellent songwriters -- Isaac Hayes among them, before he made it as an artist -- Otis Redding was one of those rare soul artists who wrote his own material (this song he co-wrote with Jerry Butler) and I suspect that helped him pour that extra throb of passion into his songs. Who else could pull this off? I could never buy the Stones' cover, though Chris Farlowe's is suprisingly close to the mark.

It's an undeniably great track, and I'm VERY happy to have it in my head today.

I've Been Loving You Too Long sample