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Music Throwback Saturday: I’ll Be Good To You

I was in a doctor’s office back in October 2015 which played surprisingly good, and eclectic, music.

Back in 1989, I picked up this album produced by Quincy Jones, called Back on the Block. “The album features legendary musicians and singers from across three generations, including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul, Ice-T, Big Daddy Kane, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Luther Vandross, Dionne Warwick, Barry White, Take 6, Bobby McFerrin, Al Jarreau, Al B. Sure!, James Ingram, and El DeBarge.”

The album went to #9 on the Billboard album charts and was so eclectic that it hit #1 on both the Top Contemporary Jazz Albums and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.

The first single of the collection was I’ll Be Good To You, featuring Ray Charles and Chaka Khan. It was a hit, #18 on the US pop charts, and #1 for two weeks on the rhythm and blues charts in 1990.

I was in a doctor’s office back in October 2015 which played surprisingly good, and eclectic music. I hear I’ll be Good To You, but it’s surely not the Quincy version. It turns out that it was by The Brothers Johnson, who I’ve mentioned on this blog before.

How did I miss this version, written by the Brothers Johnson (George and Louis) and Sonora Sam, and produced by Quincy? It got up to #3 for three weeks in 1976, as well as #1 on the r&b charts.

I’ll Be Good To You:
Quincy Jones, Ray Charles & Chaka Khan

The Brothers Johnson
The Brothers Johnson
The Brothers Johnson on Midnight Special

Quincy Jones turns 83 on March 14.

George Martin

George Martin got Paul to agree to put a string quartet on the song Yesterday.

Beatles producer George Martin, who died this week at the age of 90, had been on my mind recently. The family went to not one, but two programs of Deconstructing the Beatles at the end of February.

One show was about the making of the album Rubber Soul, and the other concerning just three songs: Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, and A Day in the Life. Re: the latter, Scott Freiman described, among other things, how Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick meshed two disparate versions of John Lennon’s song Strawberry Fields together, by “speeding up the first version and slowing down the second.”

It was one of 10 Great Beatles Moments We Owe to George Martin, though there were undoubtedly more. “Martin served as expert and conspirator, taskmaster and mad scientist, friend and father figure throughout the band’s studio life. He shaped their songs in ways that are seldom appreciated but impossible to forget.”

When I was watching CBS News This Morning, some “expert” from Rolling Stone told that Strawberry Fields story but identified the song in question as Penny Lane. Maybe it was an 8 a.m. brain freeze; Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields WERE on the same single. But then CBS played a snippet of Penny Lane, which suggested that they were told in advance by the said expert to cue the song actually written by Paul.

The expert also said it was their songwriting prowess that appealed to Martin, when in fact it was their personalities that first convinced him that they would be successful, long before they showed any evidence of musical brilliance.

Earlier that morning, I heard National Public Radio identify George Martin as the Beatles manager – arrgh.

Paul McCartney described how George Martin got Paul to agree to put a string quartet on the song Yesterday. Later, in his solo career, Paul brought in his proposed songs for the Tug of War album, and Martin’s reaction was something like “that’s nice…where are the real songs?”, which took McCartney aback, but prompted him to write better material.

George Martin: the man who changed pop forever (with a little help from his friends)

Top 10 George Martin Non-Beatles Records

Brian Wilson and George Martin in studio at Brian’s home in LA playing with God Only Knows.

Coverville 1116.

Music Throwback Saturday: Baby, I’m For Real

Marvin Gaye and this then-wife, Anna Gordy Gaye, wrote Baby, I’m for Real

Back in 1990, there were three Motown compilations, now out of print, that I bought. 20 Hard to Find Motown Classics, Volume 1, like its two successors, featured songs by Motown singers who didn’t have enough hits to have their own “Greatest Hits” CDs. But most of the songs were hardly “hard to find.” Many had appeared in other Motown collections.

The three CDs were reissued together in 2001 in the UK as Tamla Motown: Big Hits & Hard to Find Classics, Vols. 1-3. A half dozen songs were dropped.

The first two songs on the first album were by a group called the Originals. The lead singer was Freddie Gorman, who was an early, and sometimes uncredited, songwriter for Motown. He also co-wrote (Just Like) Romeo and Juliet, which was recorded by another Detroit-based group, the Reflections.

Gorman joined The Originals, which was also comprised of lead tenor C.P. Spencer, second tenor Hank Dixon, and baritone Walter Gaines. Despite the talent, was long unable to get a hit, and ended up doing backing vocals for folks such as Stevie Wonder and David Ruffin.

Marvin Gaye took a shine to the group who had also backed him. He and this then-wife, Anna Gordy Gaye, wrote Baby, I’m for Real. Marvin “had protested to Motown CEO Berry Gordy that he wanted to produce his own material and he used the Originals to help get his point across that he can provide a hit.” The song reached number one on the Billboard Top Black Singles chart for five weeks, and reached number fourteen on the Pop Singles chart, eventually selling over a million copies.

The follow-up, The Bells, was also produced by Marvin Gaye and was co-written by Gaye, Anna Gordy Gaye, Iris Gordy, and Elgie Stover. It featured the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with Marvin on drums. The song went to #4 soul, #12 pop.

LISTEN to
Baby, I’m for Real: HERE or HERE
The Bells: HERE or HERE

Run That Body Down

How long you think that you can run that body down?

February is often tough. In addition to the regular stuff – work, home, Friends of the Albany Library, church choir, et al, there’s Black History Month at church. I had everything arranged, or so I thought, but it never seems to work out as it is planned.

For instance, I had arranged for someone to talk about Black Lives Matter during the adult education hour on February 21. But a week and a half earlier, the speaker had an accident, which I found out because of Facebook. (See, it CAN be useful.)

A few days later, I asked if she could still do the gig, and the Friday before the Sunday class, she wrote that she could not. But she offered me a substitute and told me I’d get that person’s contact information.

By Sunday morning, when I had no info, I started throwing together some articles that I thought could start a discussion, such as Black Struggle Is Not a Sound Bite: Why I Refused to Meet With President Obama and I Don’t Discuss Racism With White People. But I barely touched on the former and didn’t even get to the latter as we discussed the history of what got us to the point in the American culture where Black Lives Matter is even necessary.

Two days later, I had no voice. My throat was sore, and I realized I was exhausted. I missed three days of work.

A certain Paul Simon song from his first, eponymous 1972 album came to mind:

Went to my doctor yesterday
She said I seem to be okay

She said “Paul, you better look around
How long you think that you can run that body down?
How many nights you think that you can do what you been doin?
Who, now who you foolin?”

LISTEN to Run That Body Down here or here.