JACKIE WILSON
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1957–1976 |
Early soul-pop |
It’s So Fine (1958) |
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Album
released: March 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) Etcetera; 2) To Be Loved;
3) Come Back To Me; 4) If I Can’t Have You; 5) As Long As I Live; 6) Reet Petite; 7) It’s Too Bad We Had To Say Goodbye;
8) Why Can’t You Be Mine?; 9) I’m Wanderin’; 10) Right Now; 11) Danny Boy;
12) It’s So Fine. |
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A
few unfortunate circumstances have conspired to make Jackie Wilson a much
lesser presence in the mainstream R&B pantheon than he truly deserves. One
is his relatively «solitary» status: despite being born in Michigan and
having lived most of his life in Detroit — in fact, ironically, it was the
success of his first single, written by Berry Gordy, that helped fund Berry’s
label in 1959 — Jackie was never signed to Motown, recording exclusively for
Brunswick Records during his peak years, and thus eluded the enduring
popularity of Motown’s top names, persisting through the years and decades
together with the general legend of Motown. He may have had Top 10 singles
all the way up to 1967, but hits fade out of memory quite easily if they are
not supported by well-kindled artistic mythology, and nobody was there to
help kindle and re-kindle it for Jackie the way Motown and Atlantic steadily
supported their own superheroes throughout the 20th century. |
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Another reason is that, for all his talent and stage
presence, Jackie Wilson never had a lot of «social relevance». He was an
entertainer, a singer and dancer, who’d spent all his life singing love songs
and nothing but love songs — no ‘Change Is Gonna Come’ or ‘Papa Was A Rollin’
Stone’ behind his belt. He was as «R&B-deluxe» as B. B. King was «blues
de-luxe»: formally admired and revered, but rarely taken seriously, and
rarely scrutinized and explored by those generations who were born too late
to catch his latest catchy single on the radiowaves. Michael Jackson may have
paid tribute to him upon his death in 1984, calling him a pioneer and a great
entertainer, but he never repeated his predecessor’s mistake: had he not
dared to get out of his own relative comfort zone with Thriller, his own legend might have faded away just as easily as
Jackie Wilson’s did. In 1957, however, African-American performers were
not expected to radiate a lot of «social relevance»: they were expected to
entertain black and (select) white audiences alike, and this is exactly what
Jackie did, first with a three-year stint as lead singer with Billy Ward and
the Dominoes (in which he had replaced Clyde McPhatter himself), and then,
having gained enough confidence, with his solo career. Signed to the
Brunswick sub-label of Decca, he remained based in Detroit, where he had
formed an auspicious partnership with Berry Gordy Jr. — primary songwriter
for his first batch of singles, most of which have been included on this LP
from March ’58. The very first of these put Wilson on the map firmer
and steadier than anything he’d done with the Dominoes: ‘Reet Petite’ is a
two-and-a-half minute explosion of light-headed R&B exuberance, a song
that all but guarantees to get you up on your feet and blow your mind at the
same time. The musical sound is fast, tight, and sharp — unfortunately, I
have not been able to locate any actual credits, but the rhythm and brass
sections kick as much ass as any given Atlantic team at the time, and that’s
really saying something. But the chief attraction is, of course, Wilson’s
vocal performance, which is every bit the equivalent of a young Jimi Hendrix
displaying each and every one of his guitar gimmicks to a stunned audience
during some early live performance of ‘Killing Floor’. In trying to convey
the full spectrum of his feelings for the lucky lady, Jackie scats, stutters,
croons, roars, yells, howls, and goes through several octaves — not to
mention rolling his R’s on the "rrrreet petite, the finest girl you ever
wanna meet" chorus in a way Louis Jordan (whose ‘Reet Petite And Gone’
obviously served as the inspiration behind the lyrics) could never think of. If the boppy sound of the song happens to remind you
of Elvis, specifically in his ‘Don’t Be Cruel’-style avatar, you are on the
right track: Elvis was a big fan of Jackie from as early as his days with the
Dominoes, while Jackie, in turn, frequently proclaimed his admiration for the
King, humbly insisting that he took as much from Elvis as Elvis took from
him. There can be no doubt, of course, that Presley’s own stuttering, hiccupy
style that he adopted so naturally on his fast pop-rock numbers, came from
African-American R&B, and you will be hard pressed to find a black
performer whose style matches Elvis’ more closely than Jackie Wilson. He does
generally sound a bit softer and sweeter (which does not necessarily make him
a softer and sweeter person — heck, he might have had a career in boxing
instead of singing had his mother not pulled him out of it at an early age!),
but softness and sweetness come to him more naturally than they do to Elvis. For contrast, ‘Reet Petite’ was quickly followed by
‘To Be Loved’, an epic romantic waltz with sugary strings and a wide-ranging,
powerhouse delivery that blew every other pop performer at the time out of
the water — this is some Celine Dion-level shit we’re talking here, and in
the context of the year 1958 that is actually a compliment (though, frankly,
the song itself is nothing special — it is only Jackie’s vocal circles in the
air that give it personality). The B-side, ‘Come Back To Me’, returns us to
the world of fast-paced R&B, and should be particularly notable for the
opening "HE-A-E-A-Y " bit which the Isley Brothers later reworked
into ‘Shout!’ (a song that would be inspired by several of Jackie numbers,
including this one as well as ‘Lonely Teardrops’). Strange enough, for the
third single Brunswick picked power ballads for both the A-side and the
B-side: ‘As Long As I Live’ and ‘I’m Wanderin’ both followed the formula of
‘To Be Loved’, and while Jackie does a great job on both, the public clearly
was not as enamored with him in the role of torch balladeer as it was with
his capacity to get them up on their feet and throw cartwheels left and
right. Maybe this is why, when it came to recording a
complete LP, the only other ballad on it was ‘Danny Boy’, a song that had
been in Jackie’s repertoire since the dawn of time and which he had first
recorded at the age of 19 (as «Sonny Wilson»). Technically, this is a true
tour-de-force here, as the man tries out every register, every possible
inflection to make the song into a little universe of peaks and valleys
(listen to him slide downwards upon the first "..do-o-o-own the mountainside..."
bit — crooner theater!); the only problem is that there are approximately
seven million versions of ‘Danny Boy’ in the universe, and even if this one
happens to be the very best — and why not? — it may still be ruined by
over-familiarity with the song, and in any case, my attention would rather
drift to compositions written specially for Jackie. And there’s quite a few attention-grabbing moments
here indeed, starting with the opening track, ‘Etcetera’, which, all by
itself, is a little creative wonder — starting off deceptively with
percussion only as a 3/4 waltz, then changing pace after just a couple of
beats with some wild laughter from Jackie, who goes on a short spoken rant
before subtly and seamlessly breaking into singing... not to mention
transforming "et cetera, et cetera" into an unforgettable vocal
hook for an exuberant love song. Great vocal, cool twangy lead guitar, weird
wobbly vocal harmonies — how come this thing was never a hit single eludes me
completely. Furthermore, there are two or three almost as strong candidates
down the line: ‘If I Can’t Have You’, ‘Why Can’t You Be Mine’, ‘Right Now’ —
all of these are jolly, well-produced, marvelously sung (and quite
unpretentious) little pop-rockers that sound better and better with each new
listen. The record ends on one of its strongest notes as
well: ‘It’s So Fine’ is a unique blend of mambo and R&B, shifting not
only tempos and time signatures between each verse and chorus, but singer
moods as well, when Jackie slides from sly and stuttering mumble in the verse
to all-out bellowing in the chorus. It’s a special kind of effortless musical
transformation that you won’t frequently encounter on any Elvis album — but
with He’s So Fine, these quirky
surprises seem to be the norm of the day: you really don’t have any idea
where exactly this thing is going to go next. Ultimately, the album is more «pop» («soul pop», if
you wish) than «R&B», what with the overall prevalence of catchy pop
hooks over jump-blues grooves, but the distinction is pretty vague anyway —
with the variety of tackled styles and moods, I’d say the record is more or
less equidistant from the already well-established Atlantic sound, the
soon-to-be-invented Motown sound, and old-fashioned doo-wop and crooner
entertainment. Old-fashioned is an
important word here, though, because despite all the creativity in individual
details, Jackie’s goals and beliefs do not seem to have drifted far away from
those of his mentor’s (Clyde McPhatter) — he is here to simply provide you
with a good time, not awaken your inner demons or incite you to save the
world or anything. But in 1958, not a lot of people around could boast the
same set of pipes and the same level of energy to provide their audiences
with a good time. |
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Album
released: February 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Lonely
Teardrops; 2) Each Time (I Love You More); 3) That’s Why (I Love You
So); 4) In The Blue Of Evening; 5) The Joke (Is Not On Me); 6) Someone To Need Me (As I Need You); 7) You
Better Know It; 8) By The Light Of The Silvery Moon; 9) Singing A Song; 10)
Love Is All; 11) We Have Love; 12) Hush-A-Bye. |
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Jackie
Wilson’s discography is fairly sprawling — like many other pop artists with
plenty of soul to burn, but not enough independent vision to hold one’s own
ground, he was over-exploited by his record label throughout the peak years
of his career. But this does not necessarily mean that each of those albums
consists of one or two great singles and a pack of filler. Letting aside the
fact that if you really love Wilson’s voice, you will never even distinguish
filler from non-filler, there is absolutely no telling with this guy when one
of his obscure B-sides might turn out to be more fascinating than the
formulaic A-side, or when an LP-only track will feature some stunning vocal
acrobatics that puts the concurrent single to shame. It is, therefore, not
entirely meaningless to plow your way through the jungle of Jackie’s LPs to
make your own ultimate playlist, rather than rely on best-of compilations —
provided you have the time and energy. And if you don’t, well, you can always
rely on the impeccable taste of your musical host, heh heh. |
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Lonely
Teardrops was, of course, built around the smash success of Jackie’s fifth
single, his highest Fifties’ entry on the US charts and still the song that
probably defines him in the memories of the casual listener. But if we want
to remain rigorous in the chronological aspect, the oldest recording to
appear on the LP is actually his interpretation of ‘By The Light Of The
Silvery Moon’, which was originally the B-side to 1957’s ‘Reet Petite’. All I
can say here, though, is that the accordeon sounds cheesy, the backing vocals
sound unbearably retro, and that my favorite thing about the song is still
its linguistic anachronism — "By the light of the silvery moon / I want
to spoon" certainly sounds
different today than it used to in 1909, or even in 1957, doesn’t it? (If you
are not a native English speaker, check out meanings 2 and 3). Oh
well, at least it is still much better here than in Little Richard’s version,
and I also appreciate the oddly out-of-the-blue bits of quasi-bel-canto
crooning that Jackie does during the instrumental break. Next in line is Jackie’s fourth single, which is
precisely what I was talking about: the A-side is ‘We Have Love’, an
arch-pompous, anthemic ballad from Berry Gordy, is a melodically generic
waltz which tries to override its predictability with as much bombast as
possible — Tchaikovsky’s strings, Wagnerian brass, and Neapolitan vocal
energy. Official members of the Jackie Wilson fan club will adore this, but I
much prefer the equally pompous,
but speedier and more playful ‘Singing A Song’, credited to Jackie himself
and some of his Wilson relatives; here, Jackie actually takes a vocal lesson
from Elvis, borrowing the agitated-exuberant jumps and hiccups from
‘One-Sided Love Affair’ and smoothly leading them into the anthemic
conclusion — except that his triumphant "singing a song of
looooooove!...", which one would expect to be cut off on a high note,
paints a sonic arc in the sky and hilariously comes crashing down in a creaky
voice overtone, creating a fun bit of dissonance between the sacred and the
profane. Perhaps if ‘Singing A Song’ were the A-side, the
single would have charted higher — because the public clearly liked Jackie
for the fun things, not so much the
predictable things he did with his voice. They got this right for the next
single, where the B-side was ‘In The Blue Of The Evening’, another fairly
generic crooning number. The A-side was ‘Lonely Teardrops’, which they
apparently first recorded as a slow ballad, but when this did not work, the
tempo was slightly sped up, the rhythm was slightly Latinized, and the flow
was reinvented as a series of startling stops-and-starts to bring Jackie’s
voice to full effect. To properly appreciate it, I think, one might want to
compare the song with the inferior 1975 cover on John
Fogerty’s solo album — it is nice to see John tipping his hat to Jackie, but
he smoothes out the song’s whackiness with a stupidly boring 4/4 beat and
pretty much loses everything that made it so interesting in the transition.
We could complain, of course, that there is not much of a truly lonesome or
tearful atmosphere throughout, but then neither does Ruth Brown truly sound
like she’s got teardrops raining from her eyes on ‘Teardrops From My Eyes’,
and that one’s still a great song as well (though Ruth plays it out as a
power statement, whereas Jackie is all about submission). ‘Lonely Teardrops’ turned Jackie into a superstar,
but this would be hard to guess from just listening to the recordings in
chronological order — the very next single, ‘That’s Why (I Love You So)’, is
a simple, light-hearted, and catchy pop song which neither tries to repeat
the inventiveness of ‘Lonely Teardrops’ nor somehow aggrandize the artist;
and the B-side, ‘Love Is All’, is another schmaltzy-bombastic doo-wop ballad
from the standards vault. Much better are a couple of the LP-only tracks:
‘You Better Know It’ is a «soft-rock» number echoing Fats Domino (there are
lyrical and melodical borrowings from ‘All By Myself’) with Wilson at his
most engaging and pleading, and ‘The Joke (Is Not On Me)’ is the only number
on the entire record whose overall playfulness and naughtiness equals the
levels of ‘Etcetera’, ‘Reet Petite’, and ‘It’s So Fine’ — he laughs! he
clowns! there’s a mischievous guitar solo! now that’s entertainment! Finally, there is at least one performance of a slow
waltzing ballad here which manages to transcend mediocrity: ‘Someone To Need
Me’, for some reason not issued as a single, is one of Jackie’s most
powerfully soulful performances of all time. On all the other doo-wop stuff
on this album, he seems to be taking his duties rather professionally, but
with this next offer from Gordy, some special switch seems to have been
triggered, and he takes the song with him to the stratosphere, like Elvis did
with ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’ before him (and like he would do
with ‘If I Can Dream’ a decade later). It is difficult to put in words why
‘We Have Love’ feels like having more Vegasy glitz than substance and why
‘Someone To Need Me’ feels like its substance transcends the orchestral
glitz, but (a) I do feel that way and (b) there is no reason why this should
be impossible, so let’s leave it as a hypothesis which you are all welcome to
test. Ultimately, my countdown is six great-to-good songs
and six mediocre-to-rote songs, which still counts as proof that Jackie
Wilson’s LPs are worth investigating (and certainly do not deserve being
snubbed by Wikipedia, which, as of this moment, still refuses to feature
separate pages on them, even if I’d gladly take Lonely Teardrops over the entire catalogs of hundreds, if not
thousands, of artists with far more dedicated fanbases). And even if they
were not... how could you resist that piercing Rodin-ish stare on the front
cover? He clearly needs you as much as you need him. |
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Album
released: Nov. 1, 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) So Much;
2) I Know I’ll Always Be In Love With You; 3) Happiness; 4) Only You, Only
Me; 5) The Magic Of Love; 6) Wishing Well; 7) Talk That Talk; 8) Ask; 9) I’ll
Be Satisfied; 10) It’s All Part Of Love; 11) Never Go Away; 12) Thrill Of
Love. |
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The
second half of 1959 brought no substantial changes to the first for Jackie,
but continued to secure his impressive commercial status. His finest single
from that era was arguably ‘I’ll Be Satisfied’ – another of Berry Gordy’s
contributions which, this time around, revealed a musical intrigue even
before Jackie got to sing anything: that opening military beat, accompanied
by a lively skating-rink organ pattern, was quite an unusual opening for the
world of pop and R&B. Even so, Wilson is still the main star, brilliantly
exploiting almost all of his entire range in an ecstatic self-whippin’ trip
from the bottom notes of the pleading "just a kiss, just a smile"
to the top notes of the exuberant "that’s all I need and I’ll be
satisfied". The whole thing, like so many others, clearly takes its
musical queues from the then-ubiquitous ‘Hallelujah I Love Her So’, but where
Wilson lacks the soulful depth effect of Ray Charles’ vocals, he still aptly
compensates for it with his youthful enthusiasm (for all of his greatness,
Ray Charles always sounded like he was born a 50-year old man, which gives
him great advantage in some areas while hampering him in others). |
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On a curious note, the B-side to ‘I’ll Be Satisfied’
was ‘Ask’ — the first time ever in his solo career, if I am not mistaken,
that Wilson got to release something gospel-related; musically, the song is
not so much gospel as a straightahead lush pop ballad, but the subject
matter, while totally not new to Jackie (who’d sang with his Ever Ready
Gospel Singers in his teens already), would clearly be new to all the fans
he’d acquired since ‘Reet Petite’ and ‘Lonely Teardrops’. Totally not my cup
of tea, this particular style, but there is no denying the power and the
range on that one — Jackie gave a true tour-de-force before the mike on that
day. The other A-side from 1959, included on this album,
is the relatively less impressive ‘Talk That Talk’, contributed by Sid Wyche;
all I know about him is that he co-wrote ‘A Big Hunk O’ Love’ with Aaron
Schroeder for Elvis, but ‘Talk That Talk’ is a far more relaxed number, and
Dick Jacobs’ orchestrated arrangement is just a standard pop arrangement, not
much to write about. "My baby just
walks that walk, talks that talk for me" — mmm, okay, whatever you
say, Jackie. We know you don’t demand all that much from your woman, but you
were sure more excited about her on ‘I’ll Be Satisfied’. At least the excitement comes back for ‘So Much’
which, I am surprised to say, was not actually a single — last I checked, it
was really just the title track for the LP of the same name, another relative
first for Jackie. It’s all «exuberant pop» formula as usual, but when the
formula works, it’s great formula: here, he RRRRRRReels you in from the
get-go with the opening classic post-alveolar trill, then spends the rest of
the song putting as mmmmuccch vocal pressure on the "so much" bit
that it would be really hard for any woman with a heart to refuse the
gentleman’s urges... particularly since the «song» itself goes on for
something like a minute at best, after which it’s just one spasmodic fit
after another. Classic! Another one in the same vein of «let me stun you with
another of my vocal tricks» is ‘Happiness’, where he tries out a bit of a
«roaring» approach, putting additional pressure on his larynx in an almost
proto-Rob Halford style on the verses, later reverting to a more «clean»
style of singing on the chorus. Again, nothing particularly inventive about
the standard upbeat pop melody, but a great showcase for the «Jackie Wilson
Vocal Theater», showing how much that man could wring out of perfectly
ordinary material if he really wanted to. And again — you don’t have to love it or anything, but you got to
admit that as far as the late 1950s are concerned, Jackie was really doing
for the human voice the same stuff that, let’s say, Les Paul or Link Wray
were doing for the electric guitar. Most of the good singers around were just
content with exploiting what vocal talent Mother Nature had given them at
birth, but to Jackie, Mother Nature had first and foremost given a seemingly
boundless desire to search, investigate, and experiment. Unfortunately, other than ‘So Much’ and ‘Happiness’,
most of the other LP-only tracks here are rather generic ballads where,
sometimes, even the great voice does not really help. For instance, ‘I Know
I’ll Always Be In Love With You’ is a Sam Cooke-style exercise where Jackie
consciously tries to become Sam for two and a half minutes, and it does not
work — Sam can do Sam better than Jackie can do Sam. I mean, Sam Cooke could
never do ‘Reet Petite’, so why should Jackie try to sing in the style of
‘Wonderful World’? And then there are all those ‘Magic Of Love’s, ‘It’s All
Part Of Love’s, ‘Thrill Of Love’s... could these songs have at least been titled with a little more imagination,
so that they wouldn’t get all messed up in my head even despite being
musically different? The only song exclusively credited to Jackie himself
is ‘Wishing Well’, a drawled-out, somewhat shapeless plead that does feel a
bit more intimate and personal than all those generic celebrations of the
magic love, but is not really going anywhere in particular; I think that
Jackie did much better on songs like ‘I’ll Be Satisfied’ that kind of
pinpointed the right way to go for his vocals, whereas here, on his own
creation, he feels a bit lost and meandering. That said, like almost
everything on here, it still sounds good
— nothing that Jackie recorded in his peak years can be written off
decisively, not as long as he was able to contribute 100% in the studio. But
only three of the songs (‘Satisfied’, the title track and ‘Happiness’) would
go on my personal «best-of» compilation, which still, I suppose, puts So Much on a notch below its two
preceding LPs. |
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Album
released: April 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) Please Tell Me Why; 2) Doggin’
Around; 3) New Girl In Town; 4) Nothin’ But The Blues; 5) Passin’ Through; 6)
Excuse Me For Lovin’; 7) She Done Me Wrong; 8) Sazzle Dazzle; 9) Please Stick
Around; 10) Come On And Love Me Baby; 11) Comin’ To Your House; 12) It’s Been
A Long Time. |
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REVIEW Contrary
to the blanket statement on the cover of the album, Jackie does not really sing the blues. It’s somewhat
impressive that they got him to put together a «bluesy» facial expression on
the album cover — the closest to a «damn girl, why ya breakin’ my heart?»
attitude he ever got on one of those — but in 1960, for most people who knew
anything about anything «blues» meant the likes of Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy
Waters, and I can no more imagine a Jackie Wilson successfully interpeting
‘Smokestack Lightning’ or ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ than Ozzy Osbourne trying out
for Rigoletto. But it is
interesting to note how music industry executives actually respected the word
«blues» — just slap it on the cover of your local pop idol’s next LP, and
there’s your aura of critical respectability. Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Ella
Fitzgerald sings the Cole Porter Song Book, and Jackie? Jackie sings the
blues. Like, uh, Perry Como. |
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Naturally, my first gut reaction to the album was
gut level rejection — and boredom. It’s bad enough to get yourself accustomed
to B. B. King’s «Vegasy» take on the blues and slowly, meticulously convince
yourself that just because a man hires himself a big brass band and takes to
wearing bowties and sparkle jackets, this does not necessarily mean the lack of a genuine bluesy heart to go along
with the glitzy paraphernalia. But Jackie Wilson? Not only does he not even
play a mean blues guitar, but his voice, so perfect for doo-wop and
light-hearted R&B, does not have even an ounce of that earthy grit,
required to make any decent blues material come alive. It’s got plenty of
operatic melodrama, for sure, but the blues calls for roughness, not smoothness.
Such a ridiculous genre mismatch. Then, of course, you begin to remember that «blues»
is rather a many-splendored thing, and is — or, at least, used to be,
particularly in the pre-Eric Clapton era — just as often applied to sad and
broken-hearted music in general, regardless of how accurately it follows the
classic 12-bar pattern. And from that point of view, it is definitely true
that there is rather an abundance of «broken-hearted» material on this
particular album — so the title doesn’t really flat-out lie to you — and then you might also notice that almost none of it here actually follows the
classic 12-bar pattern at all. Technically speaking, Jackie Sings The Blues is a mix of doo-wop, «standards-oriented»
pop, classic R&B, and gospel-tinged soul — in other words, more or less
the kind of stuff that Jackie had been doing from the get-go, the only
difference being the conspicuous lack of boppy, catchy, uptempo fun songs
like ‘Reet Petite’ or ‘So Much’... and even those are also represented by at
least one specimen (the appropriately called ‘Sazzle Dazzle’), which even the
(new) liner notes to the album rather embarrassingly admit to having nothing
to do with the blues at all. One other important technical note to make is that
the material is all brand new — unlike, for instance, Sam Cooke, who actually
covered true blues songs like ‘Little Red Rooster’ for his Night Beat album, none of these songs are covers of classic
blues standards. Even more, they’re sort of mystery songs, credited to people with names like «Lena Agree»,
«Joyce Lee», «Scot Steam» and even, get this, «Paul Hack». A little bit of
digging around led to the information that Lena Agree might have been the aunt of Jackie’s manager, Nat Tarnopol, but
I’m not even going to bother about «Paul Hack» or any of the others; I can
only shed a tear of compassion for all those unknown people who have been
swindled out of their well-earned royalties for the financial benefit of Nat
and other members of the music business conspiracy. The bottomline for us
here is they didn’t exactly go to people like Willie Dixon to provide
material for Jackie’s «blues album»; rather, they were commissioning songs
from the usual roster of pop, doo-wop, and R&B songwriters, masking them
with aliases as if to convince the listener of the arrival of a new breed of
expert bluesy tunesmiths. Not that the entire strategy had any sound purpose.
Like any other Jackie Wilson LP, this one failed to chart just as well, and
because of its intentional lack of bouncy-hooky, uplifting, danceable
material, neither did it yield any important chart singles for the man. The
only title vaguely remembered from it was ‘Doggin’ Around’, for being
selected as the B-side to the much more successful ‘Night’ a few months
later, and, perhaps, also for being unexpectedly resurrected more than a
decade later by the young Michael Jackson for his Music & Me album. Interestingly, it is one of the slowest
titles on the album — more doo-wop than blues, and much more intent on
showing how many overtones and undertones the man can go through in one
syllable than on how many different vocal hoops he can jump through over the
course of one verse. It’s quite old-fashioned, really, a good choice for a
dedicated doo-wop fan who wants to get a solid early Fifties’ vibe with
sparkling clean Sixties’ production, but it doesn’t do all that much for me,
unfortunately. I mean, I’m just a simple guy, really: I see a
Jackie Wilson album — I spy a title like ‘Sazzle Dazzle’ first and foremost,
because it’s probably going to be the best song on it. The trick here is to
start the song off in slow and solemn gospel mode, then pick up and turn it
into a worthy successor to ‘It’s So Fine’ and ‘So Much’, with the expected
blitzkrieg attack of screams, falsettos, rolled r’s, and whatever else the Wilsonmacht has placed at its
disposal. A little second-hand, for sure, but the formula had not yet
completely lost its excitement at the time. It’s also amusing to note that the slow-moving
pieces, for all the added depth of feeling, still cannot help but occupy a
minority of the album: besides ‘Doggin’ Around’, there’s also the opening
‘Please Tell Me Why’ (a very
pathetically overblown piece with one of the least believable "black dirt under my feet, storm clouds
over my head" lines I’ve ever heard in my life, really); ‘Nothin’
But The Blues’, a rare straightforward 12-bar number on the album that simply
begs for a B. B. King guest spot; and the closing ‘It’s Been A Long Time’,
which nicks its "daa-doo-day" backing vocals (and the word ‘time’
as well, for that matter) from Ray Charles’ ‘Night Time Is The Right Time’
but cannot hope to nick the same level of energy and excitement. That’s 4 out
of 12 — and you can freely hop, bop, and twist the night away to most of the
rest. Except the rest is just not too memorable, either.
Whether it is because all the «Lena Agrees» and «Paul Hacks» were hired from
the local pool of Decca’s cleaning services, or because there was some
magical mystical belief that using the word ‘blues’ automatically injects
blue blood into your songs, all those boppy numbers boast little more than
their boppy tempos and predictably professional, but hardly inventive
vocalizations from Jackie. It’s all listenable, but nothing will probably
stick around by the time the album’s over, despite Jackie’s invocations for
y’all to ‘Please Stick Around’. The backing band sets up solid grooves, the
backing vocalists serve as reliably resilient pillows for Jackie to launch
himself from them into the stratosphere, but in the end it’s just show
business as usual. Coincidentally, April 1960, when the album was
released, also saw the appearance of the Elvis
Is Back! LP, comparable to this one to a certain extent — it also
featured a couple of «authentic» blues numbers, such as ‘Reconsider Baby’,
yet it was just as unable to establish Elvis as a credible blues singer.
Actually, the reason for this is pretty simple: the one thing that the «black
Elvis» (Jackie) and the «white Elvis» (umm... Elvis?) had in common was the
desire — and ability — to sing perfectly,
bringing the achievements of ideal pitch, phrasing, and breath control to the
worlds of rock and pop music. Blues music, on the contrary, loathes the very
idea of «smooth perfection» and «Apollonic beauty»; even B. B. King, who was
probably the single most successful blues musician to push his musical world
close to those ideals, still had a slight whiff of the cotton fields in his
voice and a sharp sting of the rattlesnake bite in his guitar playing. And
even if this album, as we have established, is not really trying to push that bluesy vibe on you wholesale, it still
feels a bit... malfunctional, I’d say, from the very start. Definitely not the
most stellar of Jackie’s early efforts. |
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A FRIEND |
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Album
released: November 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) A Woman, A Lover, A Friend; 2)
Your One And Only Love; 3) You Cried; 4) The River; 5) When You Add Religion
To Love; 6) One Kiss; 7) Night; 8) (You Were Made For) All My Love; 9) Am I
The Man; 10) Behind The Smile Is A Tear; 11) We Kissed; 12) (So Many) Cute
Little Girls. |
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On
the whole, 1960 must have been the most auspicious year in Jackie Wilson’s
career: the hits just kept coming, both on the R&B and the general
charts, and with more and more national exposure, such as an appearance on
the Ed Sullivan Show, the man seemed well-poised to become the #1 African-American
entertainer in the country. Unfortunately, most of that success came at the
expense of further and further shifting his identity to that of a suave
crooner rather than a suave interpreter of the R&B vibe — and his second LP
from 1960, released at the tail end of that year, is a prime example of the
shift. |
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A large chunk of A Woman, A Lover, A Friend is dedicated to cleaning up shop: the
title track, backed with ‘(You Were Made For) All My Love’, was released as a
single in July 1960, and ‘Night’ came out even earlier, in March — actually,
let us start with that one. Although formally credited to Herb Miller and Johnny
Lehmann, ‘Night’ was really a re-arrangement (with new lyrics) of what was
known in the States as ‘Softly Awakes My Heart’, the English translation of ‘Mon
Cœur S’ouvre A Ta Voix’, Delilah’s aria from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson And Delilah — which, amusingly,
led to some unhappy incidents like, for instance, Australian radio stations
banning the song from airplay due to a general restriction on pop tunes
adapted from classical compositions (ah, those were the days!). US radio
stations were nowhere near as picky, and ‘Night’ ultimately became Jackie’s
biggest ever success on the general Billboard charts (although, not too
surprisingly, it did not manage to reach #1 on the R&B ones). Technically, ‘Night’ is quite a tour-de-force both
for the singer and for Dick Jacobs’ orchestra — which he engages in a series
of monumental (for this kind of music) crescendos, going for Epic Emotional Swell
with two capital E’s. And it has to be admitted that, even if Jackie does not
have a trained opera singer’s voice, the power and impeccable sustained
vibrato of that final high note are exceptional for a pop singer in 1960 —
even something like Elvis’ ‘Surrender’ feels a little feeble in comparison. But
just like Elvis, or any other gifted pop singer going for an operatic vibe, the
end result is ambiguous; people who love their classical music in corny «Three
Tenors» mode will probably swoon all over it — while those who think that
opera should be opera, and soul should be soul, and hybridizing them usually results
in sterility, will probably remain indifferent. Actually, let’s turn that the
other way around, for accuracy’s sake: as a rule, I remain emotionally
indifferent (at best) to this kind of material, which has always made me
seriously doubt that adapting opera for the purposes of pop music could ever
be a winning technique. (Even Andrew Lloyd Webber began to suck when he
started doing that on a regular basis, and what’s to be said of lesser
mortals?) The doo-woppy title track (which, conversely, did
hit #1 on the R&B charts, but stalled at #15 on the general ones), written
by Sid Wyche of Elvis’ ‘A Big Hunk O’ Love’ fame, is a much more comfortable
affair, even if the song is hardly a great feat of songwriting — but, unlike ‘Night’,
it features Jackie in a more approachable and understandable mode. The song
is built on the same old bluesy chord sequence as ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ and
‘Sitting On Top Of The World’, but «upgraded» to the soul-blues department,
meaning that Jackie is neither asking for a quickie here nor trying to act
cool and tough in a blue-balled situation, but putting the right emphasis on
the word "friend" instead.
He does need a woman, he does need a lover, but most importantly, he needs a friend — even if the lyrics
occasionally insinuate that, apparently, friendship comes on a commercial
barter basis ("there must be
somewhere around / that’s looking for someone to give pound for pound"
— where exactly is he searching? around a butchers’ market?). Even with all the strings and choral backing vocals,
a song like ‘A Woman, A Lover, A Friend’ works, because its melody, vocal
delivery, and arrangement are more or less adequately matched in power,
feeling, and ambition; ‘Night’ — for me at least — does not work because its
ambitious goal remains out of its actual reach. The same principle applies to
every other soulful / sentimental ballad on the album. ‘Your One And Only Love’
is an overblown piece of sentimental pop trash. ‘The River’, returning to
doo-wop with echoes of gospel, is a much better proposition. The Guy Lombardo-ish
‘When You Add Religion To Love’ (oh boy, what a title!) is a Vegasy nightmare.
‘Behind The Smile Is A Tear’ is mildly touching, except it is essentially the
same song as ‘A Woman, A Lover, A Friend’. And so on. For all that weeping willow balladry, though, I’m
still aching for at least something more upbeat, and, fortunately, there is
still a small selection to satisfy the fans of Jackie Wilson’s dance moves. ‘You
Cried’ is a sympathetic bit of twisting where Jackie uses the title of the
song to get a little Isley Brothers vibe going between himself and the
backing singers. ‘One Kiss’ is a half-decent pop-rocker with good use of the
stop-and-start structure and, for once, a decent electric guitar melody
following Jackie’s lead rather than the perennial strings. ‘Am I The Man’,
credited to Bob Hamilton and Tom King, is interesting in that its verse
melody largely predicts Sam Cooke’s much more popular and familiar ‘Shake!’
from several years later — although, frankly, I suspect that this was hardly
the first time this melody was featured, either. And Jackie’s own ‘(So Many) Cute
Little Girls’, finishing the album off on a particularly lightweight note, is
a welcome throwback to the good old days of ‘Reet Petite’ and ‘It’s So Fine’,
even if it lacks the attraction of those tunes’ specific vocal gimmicks. Speaking of vocal gimmicks, it should be added that
there are practically none on the
record — while Jackie continues to make good use of his vocal range and «serious»
singing techniques, there is not a single sign of «Jackie Wilson, the Vocal Hooligan»
on the entire record. He does not hiccup, he does not roll his r’s, he does
not emphasize the quiet-to-loud dynamics, and on those few songs where he
actually attempts to stun the audience he does it in a «mature» way, like
that final note on ‘Night’. Certainly, you cannot blame a man for deciding to
erase all the signs of «clown behavior» from his artistry if he feels that
continuing to use them will cheapen his image. The problem is, I am not
exactly sure what it was that cheapened Wilson’s image more — singing "RRRRRRRRReet petite!" or trying
to go all Enrico Caruso on his audience. My personal vote certainly goes for
the latter. |
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