The Staple Singers, the gospel-soul family group from Chicago led by Roebuck “Pops” Staples and featuring the unimpeachable vocals of Mavis Staples, was already a going concern by the time they signed with Stax Records in the late ’60s. But that move over to the Memphis label, and the input of producers Steve Cropper and Al Bell, helped take the ensemble to bigger stages and greater commercial heights. This long overdue collection brings together all the full-lengths that the Staples recorded for Stax; a run of albums that resulted in peak R&B/funk recordings like “Respect Yourself,” “I’ll Take You There,” “Heavy Makes You Happy,” and “If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me).” The group’s spiritual leanings were ever-present, but what took precedent was an Afrocentrism born from the waves of change being created by the Civil Rights Movement. Who better to bring messages like “Love Comes in All Colors” and “Give A Hand, Take A Hand,” than this church-bred group. This marvellous run of records sound brand new in these new all-analogue pressings, with the earthy tang of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and the Bar-Kays horn section ripping out of the speakers with hip-shaking fervour.
It’s all capped off by a collection of stray singles and, most vitally, a recording of the band’s set at Wattstax, the day-long concert that brought the best of the label to celebrate the Black art and the Black community of Los Angeles. The Staple Singers’ performance is all fire and sweat, with Pops urging the Black Power movement to keep up the good fight and, on “I’ll Take You There,”Mavis testifying like the Holy Spirit had a hold of her body and soul. This is a milestone of American musical history, treated with the appropriate levels of respect and reverence.
From their gospel beginnings through the folk-rock era to their soul music peak, the Staple Singers travelled a long, artistically-rich road into the mainstream of American music, spreading messages of peace, equal rights and love. When the Staples –comprised of family patriarch Roebuck “Pops” Staples and daughters Cleotha, Mavis and Yvonne– joined Stax in 1968, they were working alongside major rock acts at forums like the Fillmore West and East. Over the next few years, The Staple Singers saw 12 chart hits, including “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There”, both off their 1972 breakthrough album, Be Altitude: Respect Yourself. The Staples continued to record through 1994, when they found a new audience with their cover of The Band’s “The Weight” for MCA Records’ compilation “Rhythm, Country & Blues.” Mavis Staples, who received her first GRAMMY® Award in 2011, continues to record and tour, performing everywhere from the White House to the Kennedy Center Honours stage to major festivals like Outside Lands. Most recently, Staples is the subject of documentary “Mavis!”
“There’s not a note out of place but there’s some clear wear and tear on the singer.” Nat’s angling for Americana MVP this year. First he released this heart-broke pearl, then he got back in step with The Night Sweats for an excellent single before closing out April with a birthday song for Willie Nelson that makes me want to grow pigtails and start smoking weed again.
For a soul singer who promised to drink his life away, and made a good start of it, this is an incredibly delicate album – sombre, regretful, occasionally sweet but much more often bitter. There’s not a note out of place but there’s some clear wear and tear on the singer.
It’s nowhere near the brassy, bombastic fare that made Rateliff a household name. It’s also not out of character; before The Night Sweats he put out two solo records that had him pegged as a bit of a misery guts. The BBC review of his 2010 debut said “It all seems so mournful and woebegone, one starts to suspect that In Memory of Loss is a darkly comic concept album about the futility of existence.” So not exactly a boot scooter.
Existence isn’t pointless on Still Alright, it’s a sharp right hook. It’s also passing. Death and divorce spill out every which way here, but you get the impression Rateliff knows how to dust himself off and it’s not a record that ever feels hopeless.
“All Or Nothing” off the latest album “And It’s Still Alright” on Stax Records
Delaney & Bonnie were the American musical duo of singer/songwriters Delaney Bramlett and Bonnie Bramlett. In 1969 and 1970, they fronted a rock/soul ensemble, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, whose members at different times included Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, George Harrison, Leon Russell, Bobby Whitlock, Dave Mason, Rita Coolidge, King Curtis, and Eric Clapton.
Bonnie Bramlett, started as a backing singer for blues artists that included Little Milton, Albert King and Fontella Bass and gained attention as a history maker as being the first white Ikette for Ike & Tina Turner. Wanting to spread her wings she moved to Los Angeles, met up with Delaney Bramlett who was with The Shindogs and married him just days after their first meeting in 1967. Their daughter Bekka who was born the following year is herself an extremely successful singer. She and her husband became the duo Delaney & Bonnie who became one of the first successful white R&B acts and soon they would tour with Eric Clapton and perform with artists such as Dave Mason, Rita Coolidge , Leon Russell, Duane Allman, John Lennon and George Harrison where they would be known as Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. Seeing success in the charts the songs they are most known for now are possible “Only You Know and I Know” and “Never-Ending Song of Love”.
Also following her own solo career, she and Leon Russell co-wrote the song “Give Peace a Chance” and “Groupie” which would change it’s name to “Superstar” and be a huge 1971 hit for The Carpenters.
Delaney Bramlett passed away in December 2008, He learned the guitar in his youth. He moved to Los Angeles in 1959 where he became a session musician. His most notable early work was as a member of the Shindogs, the house band for the ABC-TV series Shindig! (1964–66), which also included guitarist and keyboardist Leon Russell. He was the first artist signed to Independence Records.
She and Delaney divorced in 1973.
Delaney Bramlett and Leon Russell had many connections in the music business through their work in the Shindogs and formed a band of solid, if transient, musicians around Delaney & Bonnie. The band became known as “Delaney & Bonnie and Friends”, because of its regular changes of personnel. They secured a recording contract with Stax Records and completed work on their first album, Home, in 1968.
Home:
As earthy as it was honest, in retrospect, it’s little wonder the music of Delaney and Bonnie held as much attraction for Eric Clapton in the waning days of Cream as did the Band’sMusic From Big Pink. Precursor to reissues on the same Atco label as that groundbreaking power trio, this debut on Stax Records was even closely aligned with D&B’s roots: the secular devotion as expressed in the couple’s co-writing efforts such as “Pour Your Love On Me” sounds as deeply felt as their rendition of Isaac Hayes and David Porter’s “My Baby Specializes” or that signature of Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.”
None of which is a surprise given the literally down-home cover photo or especially the co-production of tight, economical arrangements by Duck Dunn, bassist of Booker T & The MG’s, whose bandmates all appear here alongside other linchpins of the influential studios,
D&B Together
The title of this album’s more than a little ironic because the principals’ had separated before the end of a series of events during which the record’s original configuration, titled Country Life, was refused release and the couple’s contract was transferred to Columbia Records.Ultimately released with a modified track sequence, the dozen cuts include what’s arguably their most famous number, “Comin’ Home” (its guitar refrain courtesy Clapton), a bonafide hit of their own in the form of Dave Mason’s “Only You Know And I Know,” plus the original version of a song subsequently made famous (in a decidedly sterilized interpretation) by The Carpenters, “Groupie(Superstar).”Reaffirmed with the addition of half a dozen bonus tracks, the gospel and r&b elements of Delaney and Bonnie’s musical approach are in full-flower here, as well as a stylistic departure in the form of the original title cut that, as a baroque waltz adorned with strings, might well have allowed for further expansion of the pair’s already eclectic style.
D&B Together 1972 album was their last album of new material, as Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett would divorce soon after its release. Although released by Columbia/CBS (catalog no. KC 31377), D&B Together was actually recorded for the Atco/Atlantic label, under the working title Country Life. According to his autobiography Rhythm and the Blues, Atlantic executive Jerry Wexler was dissatisfied with the album’s quality upon its delivery to the label, and, upon investigating the situation and discovering Delaney and Bonnie were splitting up, sold their contract – including this album’s master tapes – to CBS. CBS reordered the running sequence of the album. On reflecting on the matter in 2003, Delaney Bramlett was quoted as saying “I thought [D&B Together] was a fine piece of work, so did Bonnie. Unfortunately, Jerry Wexler didn’t agree.”
Delaney and Bonnie’s “Friends” of the band’s 1969-70 heyday also had considerable impact. After the early 1970 breakup of this version of the band, Leon Russell recruited many of its ex-members, excepting Delaney, Bonnie and singer/keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, to join Joe Cocker’s band, participating on Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen recording sessions and North American tour (March–May 1970; Rita Coolidge’s version of “Groupie(Superstar)” was recorded with this band while on tour). Whitlock meanwhile joined Clapton at his home in Surrey, UK, where they wrote songs and decided to form a band, which two former “Friends”/Cocker band members, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon, would later join. As Derek And The Dominos, they recorded the landmark album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970) with assistance on many tracks from another former “Friend,” lead/slide guitarist Duane Allman. Derek and the Dominos also constituted the core backing band on George Harrison’s vocal debut album All Things Must Pass (1970) with assistance from still more former “Friends”: Dave Mason, Bobby Keys and Jim Price.
If you want to understand what makes Albert King such a much loved guitar player and purveyor of the blues then look no further than “Live Wire/Blues Power” his 1968 release. Recorded live at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in June 1968 it is a record that is full of King’s searing guitar and his unique vocals.
King was a regular at the Fillmore, playing there probably more times than any other blues artist. He played three nights at the gig from 25th to 27th June , with support from Loading Zone and Rain. Loading Zone was a local band who released their debut album in 1968, but they never rose above the role of a support band; Rain have been lost to the mists of time.
The opening number is a cover of Herbie Hancock’s‘Watermelon Man’ that Albert turns into a funky fanfare for what is to follow. It’s followed by one of King’s defining numbers, the soaring Blues Power which features some of his finest searing guitar, accompanied by a trademark homily; Stax released it in edited form as a single. This is one of the four self penned numbers on the record and not to be confused with the song of the same name written by Eric Clapton and Leon Russell.
‘Night Stomp’ that follows is co-written by King, Raymond Jackson and Al Jackson Jr. Al produced the album and was the drummer and a founding member of Booker T & The MGs. Raymond, no relation to Al, was also from Memphis and wrote many songs for Stax Records.
‘Blues Before Sunrise’, another King original, is the epitome of a slow blues burner, full of fire and ice, one of those numbers to play people who may have some lingering doubt that the blues are for them. A cover of BB King’s ‘Please Love Me’ follows, with its traditional, ‘dust my broom’ riff. Throughout the band of Willie James Exon-Guitar, James Washington-Bass, Rooselvelt Pointer-Bass, and Theotis Morgan-Drums support King in the perfect way, giving him the space to play.
The set closes with King’s ‘Look Out’ with it’s fast ‘walking bass’ line it shows why Albert King was so beloved by the San Francisco rock crowd who adored Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger service, The Steve Miller Band and the Dead…all of them took influence from the blues and Albert King was the real deal.
There’s not a blues guitarist that has not copped King’s licks and fallen under his spell, in part because this became Albert’s first album to make the Billboard chart on 16 November 1968; it only made No.150 but that’s not the point.
Play it LOUD and relish a night with Albert King at the Fillmore.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats will return with their latest album Tearing at the Seams this year, setting their sophomore album for a March 9th release on Stax Records. Lead single is an inviting, upbeat anthem that opens with a simple and steady piano line, expanding to encompass a minimalist guitar riff, marching bass and Rateliff’s wonderful warm vocals. “I’m gonna leave it all out there,” he promises, his understated delivery doing nothing to dull the song’s infectious energy. It’s a real pat-on-the-back of a track, a fortifying reminder that, in the face of life’s many obstacles, all we can do is “find a way to cross.”
Tearing at the Seams, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats‘ second album, came out in March on StaxRecords. That’s fitting: It’s grounded in the soul music of Otis Redding, the Mar Keys and Booker T and the MGs, where the Hammond B-3 and a tight, expressive horn section are the most important instruments. Rateliff shows his influences proudly — soul, along with the soul-inspired rock of Leon Russell, Van Morrison, the Allman Brothers Band and The Band. But the record is not a period piece — the live, reverb-heavy production by RichardSwift keeps it in the present.
It’s not just groove: Rateliff’s passionate voice and honest songs are the heart of the record. His gospel-style vocals are tucked into the band, but when the lyrics jump out, they offer up little pearls of wisdom. The standout is “Hey Mama,” a tribute and a heartbreaker to a mom who had to tell her boy that life will never be easy: “You ain’t gone far enough to say / At least I tried / You ain’t worked hard enough to say / My legs have failed.” Honest, open-hearted music.
Otis Redding was born in Macon, Georgia, on September 9, 1941. Macon is located near the center of Georgia, and today has a population of around 150,000 people. Despite being unremarkable, it was somehow the birthplace for three pillars of soul and rock ‘n’ roll—Little Richard, Otis Redding, and James Brown— and the Allman Brothers of the Allman Brothers Band.Redding’s career started early. As a 19-year-old, he joined guitarist Johnny Jenkins’ band the Pinetoppers as a singer. The band toured the Chitlin Circuit, and Jenkins had a small, but devoted audience. In 1962, Redding drove Jenkins to Memphis, where the older singer had scored a recording date at Stax Studios, a nascent label taking on a variety of soul and R&B clients across the south in an effort to throw a bunch of singles and singers at the wall and see what stuck. Jenkins spent the better part of a day trying to record a couple songs, and didn’t do so well in that endeavor—most of the Stax house band (including Booker T. and the M.G.’s, and the Memphis Horns) begged off for the day by the time he finished, knowing there wasn’t a hit present. When there was time left on the session, someone and reports vary on this, though apparently Redding may have asked for himself suggested letting Jenkins’ driver cut a record. After failing as bad as Jenkins while trying to record a cover the band members that stayed remember being furious enough to want to leave themselves Otis Redding sang his “These Arms of Mine,” and the rest was history. The band and label boss Jim Stewart heard and loved the song, released the single, and off Redding went.
His recording career only lasted 62 months, from October 1962 when he recorded “These Arms of Mine,” to December 1967. Here’s the math: Redding released five solo albums, one duets album, one live album, and 79 songs before his plane went down in Lake Monona. Four posthumous albums with 46 more songs followed over the next 31 months. Various compilations, live albums, rarities, and alternate takes have been unearthed since, but for all intents and purposes, that’s Otis Redding’s body of work. 11 albums, 125 songs in 62 months. The most famous of those songs is by far-and-away “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay,” a song recorded in the studio three days before Redding died. It’s almost too on the nose, a too perfect swan song; a singer writes his career defining single, his own “A Change Is Gonna Come” or “Blowin’ In The Wind,” about worrying that the social change the ‘60s was seemingly bringing wouldn’t go far enough and help everyone, only to die in a plane crash before it was released. But that isn’t the whole story: Redding never considered the song “done;” he was worried it was too poppy, was considering adding the Staples Singers as backing vocalists, and hadn’t even properly recorded the now famous outro (the whistling you hear is Sam “Bluzman” Taylor), which might have just been a placeholder until Redding could add another verse.
In the summer of 1967, promoter Lou Adler and Mamas and the Papas member John Phillips had the radical idea to stage a concert at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. This was before Woodstock, and before bands like Led Zeppelin were touring hockey arenas; the gigantic American festival infrastructure was more or less invented in order to pull off Monterey Pop Festival. Tickets ranged from $3 to $6.50, somewhere between 25,000 and 90,000 people came each day, and the lineup was meant to reflect a who’s who of young-people popular music: the Who—making their most major U.S. performance to date Jefferson Airplane (technically “the draw” of the fest), the Grateful Dead, and the Mamas and the Papas. But three artists more or less made their careers at Monterey Pop: Jimi Hendrix who memorably lit his guitar on fire and publicly executed every hotshot guitarist on earth Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding who closed out the fest’s second night, reportedly because some of the Airplane had seen him and didn’t want to try to follow him. And what’s more, Redding didn’t even want to perform at Monterey Pop. In 1967, Redding was making bank touring America, and had even started nurturing young artists on his own label. He successfully helped launch Arthur Conley, and was rumored to be a target for Atlantic Records, who would seek to to buy him out of his Stax contract and make him a mega star with their major dollars behind him. So, when his manager came to tell him he wanted him to play a pop festival with a bunch of white rock bands, and, furthermore, expected Redding to do it for free—like the other bands on the bill—he was reluctant. But the opportunity to perform to a crowd that was different than the typical one packing out his club dates was too good an opportunity to pass up. Watching video of the performance released as part of Criterion Collection’s release of the documentary on Monterey Pop is like watching video of Picasso painting, It’s his live masterpiece. He comes out and says “This is the love crowd, right?” and then goes into a straight take of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” before stopping and starting it in the middle; he has them eating out of his hand. He then did a soulful take of “Satisfaction.” You can’t watch the sweat fly off of Redding during this performance and not want to own every album and single, and not want to follow him into war.
It was a cold and foggy day in Cleveland, on December 10th, 1967. Redding and his band had played some shows at a club called Leo’s Casino the night before, and despite freezing rain across the Midwest, they never missed shows, so Redding and his band piled into the plane and headed to Madison, where they were due that night. Two of the band members always rode commercial since Redding’s plane only sat eight. They would find out about the crash at the Cleveland airport.
Around 3:25 p.m., four miles out from the Madison airport at Truax Field, the pilot radioed in to ask for permission to land. Sometime after that call, the plane came out of the clouds, and crashed into Lake Monona. Some residents living around the lake later claimed to have seen or heard the plane come in close to the ground. Police made it out to the wreckage relatively quickly; they were able to find trumpeter Ben Cauley who couldn’t swim shivering and holding onto a seat cushion. Police couldn’t search much that first day, because the water was so cold. They resumed their search after the sun came up on the 11th. They found the other seven passengers during that morning.
Otis Redding was officially pronounced dead on December 11th, 1967. His funeral was a week later, in Macon. JerryWexler, the Atlantic Records executive who was grooming Otis to become Atlantic’s next big star, gave the eulogy.
“Otis Redding was a natural prince,” Wexler said, according to Gould’s book. “When you were with him, he communicated love and a tremendous faith in human possibility, a promise that great and happy events were coming.”
“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” would be released as a single less than a month later. It was Redding’s only number one hit.
Rhino Records will issue The Definitive Studio Album Collection, a seven-LP Otis Redding vinyl box set which features the original mono mixes for all the singer’s studio albums.
The albums included are Pain In My Heart (1964), The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (1965), Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965), The Soul Album (1966), Complete and Unbelievable…The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul (1966), King & Queen (Otis Redding & Carla Thomas – 1967), and The Dock of the Bay (1968).
All of the LPs replicate the original packaging, from the sleeve artwork to the original record labels (Volt and Stax) and catalog numbers and the records come housed in a side-loading slipcase.
Several of these albums are long out-of-print and back on vinyl in mono for the first time in years.
The music follows Redding’s career from his 1964 debut Pain In My Heart up to The Dock of the Bay, which was released in February 1968, just a few months after the singer’s untimely death in December 1967. Despite his short career, Redding recorded songs that helped define soul in the Sixties and beyond.
The albums are packed with Top Ten R&B hits: “Chained And Bound,” “Mr. Pitiful,” “I’ve Been Loving You TooLong” and his cover of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Another obvious highlight is “Respect,” a song Redding wrote and recorded in 1965, which later become a massive hit for Aretha Franklin. Another essential is “Tramp” from his unforgettable duets album with Carla Thomas, King & Queen. As it happens, that’s also the last album the singer would release during his lifetime.
Otis Redding’s music career began fatefully in 1962 when an unexpected opportunity to record two songs led to a contract with Stax Records in Memphis. Throughout his career, the singer was backed by the legendary Stax house band: keyboardist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, and drummer Al Jackson Jr.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats have announced the release of their new album Tearing at the Seams through Memphis’ legendary Stax Records on 9th March. The record’s anthemic lead single ‘You Worry Me’ is premiering worldwide today.
The highly-anticipated new record follows the band’s critically and commercially lauded self-titled debut album, which has now sold over a million records worldwide and is which is certified Gold in the U.S., Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, Platinum in Canada and Silver in the U.K.
In addition to the 12-track standard edition, Tearing At The Seams will be available in a 14-track deluxe edition that features two bonus tracks and exclusive photos. Vinyl editions include the (2-disc, 180-g) 12-track standard edition and the (2-disc, 180-g) 14-track deluxe edition, which features an exclusive photo book and special 7” single.
The band finished recording with producer Richard Swift who has helmed records by The Shins and Foxygen in addition to The Night Sweats’ debut, collectively creating a group of songs that capture the band’s emotion and intensity. The group dynamic is pivotal to the Night Sweats; initial writing and recording sessions for Tearing at the Seams took place in Rodeo, New Mexico where Rateliff & the band re-established their writing and recording process.
“For the first record, I demo’ed everything up and created most of the parts,” says Rateliff. “This time, I felt like we’ve all spent so much time on the road that we should all go off somewhere together. We should all have that experience together.”
Rateliff reflects, “I want – and I need – everybody to feel like they’re a part of this band. I want them to feel like they’re contributing artistically and emotionally to the experience of writing and creating this music. We’ve all had to make sacrifices to be in The Night Sweats and I want them all to know that it’s worth something.”
This group mentality and approach to the record is no more evident than on opener ‘Shoe Boot’ a five minute, funk infused jam and ‘Intro’ (track 7), the raucous jam used to open the band’s sets over the last few years. The album closer and title track however is perhaps the most moving, lyrically tackling the huge challenges and sacrifices faced along the way by a band who are constantly away from home on the road. Tearing At The Seams is a deeply personal yet always accessible record for any situation.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats headline three night at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 11th, 12th and 13th April as part of an extensive European tour. Tearing At The Seams will be released on 9th March.
Lead song from the forthcoming EP ‘A Little Something More From’ and Deluxe version of the s/t Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats album
Although he never retired, soulman supreme William Bell’s first album on a major label in decades should be on anyone’s shortlist for comeback of the year. Not only did producer/multi-instrumentalist John Leventhal frame the 77-year-old Bell’s still vibrant voice in stylish, beautifully arranged instrumentation, but the songs — all but two co-penned by the singer — feel both old school and contemporary, a tricky balance that Bell sinks into naturally. The album also returned him to the road, headlining large clubs with an expansive band delivering searing, emotional and classy performances, arguably the equal of any in his 50-plus year career.
Some people write their memoirs; a good songwriter can sing his life in song. The title track from Bell’s impossibly wonderful new album recounts his days as a teenage songwriter in the Stax stable, when he penned both “BornUnder a Bad Sign” for Albert King and “You Don’t Miss Your Water” for everybody in the world. He puts an eloquent twist on that title phrase: Bell lives in the song, and it’s a privilege to be invited into his home.
The new studio album from William Bell, This Is Where I Live, is available now
The Fat Angel Sings 