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.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 71-75

I realize that most of these are "transition" songs -- singles that crept into my heart during down times when my big music manias (British Invasion, New Wave) had spent themselves. Indianapolis was more of a Motown city than you might expect, so it was inevitable that some soul classics would land here, as much a part of my musical DNA as the British beat stuff is. Jump from there to the 1980s to find an oddball pair of MTV-enhanced songs, among the last singles I ever owned in the Decade That Killed Rock Music.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

71. "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" / Bill Withers (1971)
By 1971, Motown fare already felt too slick -- R&B and rock were moving closer and closer to each other, and they didn't need to be kept in separate boxes anymore. When I hear Bill Withers' debut hit, though, it still feels like a real sea change to me. I was a senior in high school, a founding member of our school's crunchy-granola Human Relations Forum; we thrilled to this song, believing that Sam Cooke's longed-for change was finally gonna come. Withers' voice had a creased and weathered quality so different from the mellifluencies of Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson; this song was produced by Stax mainstay Booker T (released on Sussex Records), but the personnel also included rockers like Steven Stills on guitar and Jim Keltner on drums. Even more important, "Ain't No Sunshine" had a restless, provocative bite -- those morose verses, with their glum plodding bassline (Donald "Duck" Dunn?) and repeated melody -- "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone / It's not warm when she's away / Ain't no sunshine when she's gone / And she's always gone too long, anytime she goes away." Who knows why she's away -- a quarrel? infidelity? or is she just a free spirit? He's so down in the dumps (hear the grief-stricken swell of those minor-key strings), he can't even tell us. And of course, the best part: "Well I know I know I know I know I know" repeated 27 times, sung with shifting syncopation on one loooooong breath that finally peters into a croak. We just had to sing along with the "I knows," every time, it was so damn cathartic. Apparently Withers -- who when he recorded this still had a day job in a toilet-seat factory -- sang it this way in the studio as a placekeeper, intending to write a "proper" chorus, Holland-Dozier-Holland-style. Thank god Booker T was there to stop him.

72. "Standing in the Shadows of Love" / The Four Tops (1966)
The Temptations may have been Motown's most reliable hitmakers, but I'm sorry, in a smackdown between the Temptations and the Four Tops, I'd always choose the Four Tops.

73. "Tears Of A Clown" / Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (1970)
(No, not "Death of a Clown" -- sorry, Dave Davies fans.)
So why "Tears of a Clown" and not "Tracks of My Tears" -- Smokey Robinson's 1965 mega-hit, one of the greatest soul recordings ever made? I really struggled with this one. Frankly, in my mind the two songs always run together -- "Tracks of My Tears" has basically the same theme (that great line "my smile is my make-up I wear since my break-up with you"). In fact this was originally conceived as a follow-up to "Tracks of My Tears," taking that laughing/crying dichotomy one step further -- working that clown imagery, even throwing in some strains of circus calliope and a reference to Pagliacci (for those few Motown fans who also listened to grand opera?). But while "Tracks" may be slower and more earnest, "Tears of a Clown" seems way more poignant to me. I was won over by that winsome melody, courtesy of co-writer Stevie Wonder (the only Motown artist I loved more than Smokey Robinson); it's perfect for Smokey's high breathy voice. "Now if there's a smile on my face / It's only there trying to fool the public / But when it comes down to fooling you / Now honey that's quite a different subject" (that "public/subject" rhyme kills me). Brisk and perky as the song seems, there's just enough creepy desperation in the arrangement -- listen to those shrill piccolos competing with a lagging bassoon -- because, I dunno, what's creepier and more haunting than a sad clown? I can just imagine this guy dancing as fast as he can, juggling all his balls in the air, even as his heart is breaking. I'll admit that "Track of My Tears" has been forever tainted for me by Linda Ronstadt's cover. But ultimately, as with so many songs on this list, it's all a question of timing. When "Tracks of My Tears" came out, I was lost in a British Invasion fog, but by 1970 my ears thirsted for Motown again. And of course, a year later Motown would leave Detroit and the whole soul thing would split wide open...

74. "Come On Eileen" / Dexy's Midnight Runners (1982)
Just listen to all the surprises in this song. That sappy Celtic folk fiddle opening ("Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms"!!), switching in a heartbeat to a chugging rock & roll jig that was yet somehow ska-flavored -- strange and wonderful. "C'mon Eye-leen!" Dexy yelps in the background -- love the Irish pronunciation -- and then he and his mates work their way up a scale singing "Too-ra-loo-rye-ay." It was just this side of a novelty number. But why shouldn't an Irish rock song sound like it came from Ireland? (It's no accident it lasted for 11 weeks as #1 on the Irish charts.) Dexy invokes the spirit of "Poor old Johnny Ray," whose music spoke to an earlier generation -- but how can modern kids relate to those elders, with their "beaten-down eyes / Sunk in smoke-dried faces, they're so resigned to what their fate is." He needs a new untarnished sound, something for his generation, and thank god New Wave music had expanded the available vocabulary. Naturally he's got an ulterior motive -- he wants Eileen to shrug off those old Catholic morals and sleep with him. ("At this moment / You mean everything," he pants; "With you in that dress / My thoughts I confess / Verge on dirty.") He's pulling out every trick he can think of. Keys change, tempos change; the syncopated jig gives way to a march, and then it crashes to a halt for that bridge -- "Come on [beat] / Eileen, too-rah-ay!" begun as a lumbering chant, then accelerating into absolute frenzy. I loved this song even before I saw the video, but the video sealed the deal -- a grainy black-and-white beauty directed by Julian Temple, with Dexy and Eileen wandering around gritty urban streets in sleeveless tanks and loose denim overalls. I guess I wasn't surprised that we never heard of Dexy's Midnight Runners again -- what were the odds they'd catch lightning in a bottle twice?

75. "Wrap It Up" / The Fabulous Thunderbirds (1986)
Kim and Jimmie helped me get through 1987 -- the year we lived through major apartment renovation with a colicky newborn baby. I'm sure our neighbors hated this song, though; we played it often, and loud.

“Shop Around” / Smokey Robinson

MOTOWN WEEK #1

At the theater the other night, seeing Jersey Boys, our friends were raving about how the Four Seasons were the soundtrack of their childhoods in New Jersey and Queens. I had to stop and think; I mean, I liked the Four Seasons all right, but . . . well, I’m from Indiana and I never felt they were singing to me. Same deal with the Beach Boys – I figured I needed to be a sun-bleached blonde with a year-round tan to really get the Beach Boys. So what was the music of my youth, I wondered? Then it came to me: Motown.

And so, in honor of that epiphany, I hereby declare this MOTOWN WEEK.

The beauty part of Motown was that it wasn’t black music just for blacks – even we white kids could dance to that glossy soul-infused pop. And the guy who most epitomizes that Motown sound to me was William “Smokey” Robinson. Whether he got that name from his velvety tenor or those mesmerizing hazel eyes, Smokey was romance incarnate, tricked out with enough book-smart lyrics and polite manners that you could always bring him home to the folks. (Though we cannot ignore the fact that “Oooh Baby Baby” was the most intoxicating ladies-man seduction ever recorded – it makes Barry White’s sexy growl seem tepid).

Smokey could go in all sorts of directions, from house-party tracks like “Mickey the Monkey,” “I Second That Emotion,” or the infectious “Going to a Go-Go” to dreamy slow-dance ballads like “Tracks of My Tears.” Just where the self-pity classic “Tears of a Clown” fits in I don’t know, but it is one memorable tune (and the only dance hit I know that references the opera Pagliacci).

Smokey wrote “Shop Around” with his mentor Berry Gordy, and maybe that why it has a darker edge, or maybe it’s because it’s from 1960 (the label’s first #1 single) before the Motown commercial formula had been completely refined. This song is Smokey’s Some Like It Hot moment, with his high silky-smooth voice morphing into an female impersonation of his mother giving him advice: “Just because you've become a young man now / There's still some things that you don't understand now / Before you ask some girl for her hand now / Keep your freedom for as long as you can now’ / My mama told me:” The whole song jerks to a dramatic halt for a beat, then Smokey's voice swoops down dramatically low to deliver the punch line – “’You better shop around'.”

Is it just me, or is there something Oedipal about this? Sure, Mom’s just looking out for her baby boy’s best interests, urging him, “Make sure that her love is true now / I'd hate to see you feelin' sad and blue now.” Clearly this mother is in NO HURRY to see her son settle down with another woman, and she’s willing to sell out her own sex – “Pretty girls come a dime a dozen,” she says cynically, adding: “Try to get yourself a bargain son / Don't be sold on the very first one!” Caveat emptor and all that.

Now remember, this guy is just repeating what his mother said; it’s possible he’s using this as an excuse to deny a woman who’s pressuring him to settle down. But as the song swings into the coda, it builds to a frenzy of call-and-answer between back-up and lead vocal -- either his mom is picturing his love-making in incestuous detail, or he himself is quivering at the idea that girls are going to hold him tight and take his hand, et cetera. “Be a man, son,” he advises himself in his mother’s voice, as if playing the field is the only way to prove his manhood. And if mama told him to, he’s gotta do it, right?

Well, there are a lot of psychological layers here, more than usual for a pop song. But there’s also a boppy dance beat, a sizzling sax solo in the break, and those finger-wagging back-up “oohs” and “mmms” (listen and you'll hear Smokey’s future wife, Claudette Rogers). It comes flowing out in glorious monoaural -- a song made to be listened to on a transistor radio on a summer night, or blaring out of open car windows (who had AC in the car back then?). This is Motown, and I want more.

http://www.mp3raid.com/search/download-mp3/8/miracles/1.html