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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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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Tracks: 1) Toot, Toot, Tootsie Goodbye; 2)
Sonny Boy; 3) California Here I Come; 4) Keep Smiling At Trouble (Trouble’s A
Bubble); 5) You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want To Do It); 6) My Yiddishe
Momme; 7) Swanee; 8) April Showers; 9) Anniversary Song; 10) Rock-A-Bye Your
Baby With A Dixie Melody; 11) For Me And My Gal; 12) In Our House. |
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REVIEW
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In a way,
though, this album was an inevitability. Tribute LPs to legendary artists
from the previous decades were becoming a standard thing in the early
Sixties, partially due to the first generations of recorded legends beginning
to pass away and partially due to the record industry’s yearning for the
«good old clean days»: nothing could wipe off the scum of rock’n’roll better
than a reappraisal of the comparatively innocent values of grandpa and
grandma music. From LaVern Baker to Sam Cooke, everybody on the R&B
circuit was doing these — and for Jackie Wilson, Al Jolson probably seemed
like the perfect choice: The King Of Black Entertainment paying homage to The
King Of Blackface Entertainment. The only problem was that for both artists,
«entertainment» meant the visual aspect almost as much as the aural; to
complete the comparison, people should not only hear both artists, but see them as well, and you didn’t
really get to do that in 1961. My own problem
with Al Jolson, of course, lies not in the blackface department (it is almost
undignified to hold lengthy ethical debates on whether we should condemn
hundred year old practices), but rather in the fact that Al Jolson arrived on
the American pop scene too early to make his presence properly redeemable.
The love people had for the guy was the same kind of love people show toward
Luciano Pavarotti singing O sole mio
or, at best, Nessun dorma — it’s
all about those immensely amplified F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S, inflated to the size of
800cc silicone mammaries — and there was never any space for subtlety or
emotional sophistication out there because that was simply not what the fans needed.
Probably more than anyone else out there in the Radio Age, Al Jolson was the
champion of the «give the people what they want» approach, and if not for the
unfortunate practice of blackface (which is, after all, what the people also
wanted), Al Jolson should have
become the perpetual mascot of the pop market, more relevant in that role
today than he’d ever been. But at least
one thing you cannot take away from Al Jolson is that, in his heyday, he was
cutting edge — at least, in taking the combination of those bombastically
orchestrated folk ballads with those soaring melodramatic Yiddishe vocals
into the studio and spreading it all over the country. On the other hand,
having Jackie Wilson — who, for a very brief while, may also have been cutting edge in his R&B showmanship — try
to put his own early Sixties stamp on a set of Al Jolson’s classics feels
almost like an artistic surrender. At his best, with songs like ‘Reet Petite’
or ‘Lonely Teardrops’, Wilson was carrying on Jolson’s torch, but it was
fueled by a whole other approach to making music; here, he is simply content
with reusing what is left of the old stocks of musical oil, so the whole
thing feels decidedly regressive
rather than progressive. Of course, the
world has moved on. Better recording equipment, tighter backing bands, louder
and more bombastic production values — and a powerhouse singer with one of the
best throats in the business, making poor old Al with his old-timey crooning
feel like a homeless schmuck by comparison. But even if you are a big fan of
both Al Jolson (which I am not) and Jackie Wilson (which I am, but strictly
limited to the good stuff), I am
not entirely sure that You Ain’t Heard
Nothin’ Yet shall properly justify its title for you. 1920’s vaudeville
remade as early 1960’s orchestrated soul-pop simply may not have been that great an idea. A song like
‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goo’ Bye!’, for instance, works fine as an ass-kickin’
flapper anthem for the Jazz Age — and it can even maintain its slightly
hooliganish flavor when remade as contemporary pop-rock by the likes of Brenda Lee. But when
Jackie decides to open it with a slow, suspenseful soul intro ("I’m telling you baby I’ve gotta leave you
now...!"), he sets our expectations up for something completely
different — and then launches into the very same vaudeville mood of 1922.
It’s a crude transition, and since it is right there at the start of the LP,
it symbolically tells us that this whole thing probably won’t work. It’s all
just a meaningless nostalgia trip. Now I won’t be
taking any real cheap shots, for
instance, guffawing at the idea of a black boy from Highland Park, Michigan,
trying to put his imprint on a song like ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ — considering
that the song is placed on a tribute album to a Jewish popular artist who
spent half his life performing in blackface, the joke would be on me anyway.
(Fun fact, though: apparently, Jolson himself never performed or recorded ‘My
Yiddishe Momme’ — the song is rather associated with Sophie Tucker — so I
guess Wilson just put it here as a symbolic nod to Jolson’s ethnic and cultural
heritage). Much has been written about the mutual empathy and elements of
«cultural symbiosis» between Jewish and Black
populations in pre-war America (let my
people go and all that), making the gesture feel very reasonable. But it
would have felt much more reasonable on the part of somebody like Paul Robeson, the
freedom fighter, than Jackie Wilson, the entertainer. The problem is that throughout the album, Jackie really, really wants to
be Al Jolson, the Al Jolson of the Jazz Singer era, but only on those
early Sixties’ vocal and instrumental steroids. For sure, he is in peak vocal
form, way too peak for my tastes,
groveling and worshipping at the altar of these old vaudeville tunes rather
than taking them the same way we should be taking them today, or our grandparents should have been
taking them in 1961 — that is, with a sparkle of irony, perhaps acknowledging
their musical merits but chuckling at their emotional innocence and unabashed
sentimentality. Quite the opposite: he seems to be taking all of this with
far more seriousness than Jolson did himself, and all that bombast which could have, for instance, be
successfully applied to a truly modern soul sound (just imagine Jackie Wilson
taking on, say, Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ three years later!), is
ultimately wasted on corny old-timey trifles with corny old-timey titles like
‘Keep Smiling At Trouble (Trouble’s A Bubble)’. There are no individual comments I can make on any of these songs: you
either appreciate the idea of the album, in which case you’ll sympathize with
all of them, fast or slow, danceable or sentimental — or you find it crass
and mismatched, in which case the album (unlike Al Jolson’s original
recordings) will hardly trigger even historical interest: what sort of music
history buff might get excited at the perspective of one fluffy pop
entertainer paying tribute to another one? At least Jackie had the good sense
not to put out any of these covers as singles. But there is hardly a single
gesture in his career more symbolic than this one — or more telling whenever
we begin to wonder about the exact reasons why Jackie Wilson, ruler supreme
of the R&B charts for at least half a decade, has been all but forgotten
by critical history when so many of his less commercially successful peers
have remained far above footnote status in the same history books. |
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Tracks: 1) Cry; 2) My Heart Belongs To
Only You; 3) Stormy Weather (Keeps Rainin’ All The Time); 4) Tenderly; 5)
Lonely Life; 6) The Way I Am; 7) Try A Little Tenderness; 8) Mood Indigo; 9)
You Belong To My Heart (Solamente Un Vez); 10) Indian Love Call; 11) One More
Time; 12) I’m Comin’ On Back To You. |
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REVIEW
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The first of
the new singles was also the best: ‘I’m Comin’ On Back To You’, written by Al
Kasha and Horace Ott, is an almost impeccable Isley Brothers-style dance-soul
number — well, you could accuse it of not being particularly inventive in the
melody department, resting largely on stock chords and key changes from the
well-worn shelves of the business, but the arrangement is downright glorious
from the start, with keyboards, strings, horns, backing vocals, and Jackie’s
own falsetto lead-in providing a massively joyful adrenaline punch. Honestly,
the song is all but made by its first twelve seconds — we put those strings
in a rocket ship, we blast them off into the stratosphere, and as they fly
higher than any man (or any violin) has flown before, bursting with pride and
all, they get there only to discover that Mr. Wilson has beaten them to the
punch with his upper range. It is totally exhilarating, and it is clear why
it is so short — such tension and excitement could not be sustained for much
longer than two minutes. The B-side, ‘Lonely Life’, also written by Al Kasha,
was not too bad, either: a slightly unusual mash-up of R&B and
spaghetti-western musical elements, smoothly switching tempos and featuring
Jackie’s pathetically-tragic delivery well on top of the backing vocal seabed.
Nice bit of drama — should have actually been the A-side from a conceptual
point of view, since ‘I’m Comin’ On Back To You’ is essentially the happy
ending to the romantic torment of ‘Lonely Life’. The follow-up,
‘Years From Now’, actually did not make it onto the album, for whatever
reason (it certainly wasn’t the least successful of his singles’ run for
1961); perhaps because it is fairly standard mid-tempo R&B with
comparatively little to latch on to, as is the B-side ‘You Don’t Know What It
Means’, a piece of slow soulful Vegasy blues-de-luxe that might just as well
be encountered on a B. B. King record with electric guitar instead of
strings. I respect how Jackie is giving his all to bring the songs to life,
so fans of his voice shouldn’t miss out on these numbers, but the backing
tracks never live up to his stamina in both of these cases, unlike with ‘I’m
Comin’ On’. The next choice
(which does appear on By Special
Request) was even more corny: ‘My Heart Belongs To Only You’, a glamorous
saccharine ballad originally done by Bette McLaurin and June Christy back in
1952. This may not be quite the level of Al Jolson antiquity, but the base
principle is the same: maudlin stuff from days gone by, brought up to speed
with louder and more bombastic instrumentation and louder and more bombastic
vocals. Leave this one off the list and trade it for the B-side, ‘The Way I
Am’, a more recent composition that attempts (a little less successfully) to
emulate the energetic exuberance of ‘I’m Comin’ On’ — apart from being melodically
fun and danceable, it’s got a proto-‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ lyrical vibe to it
("don’t try to change my beat,
babe, I ain’t your Sunday hat" is actually a fabulous lyrical
twist!), and I’m all for anything
mischievously demolishing the corniness of ‘My Heart Belongs To Only You’, so
bring it on! Unfortunately,
the rest of By Special Request was
once again padded out with old standards: ‘Stormy Weather’, ‘Try A Little
Tenderness’, ‘Tenderly’ — only Duke Ellington’s ‘Mood Indigo’ stands out as a
classier choice, except that vocal versions of ‘Mood Indigo’ tend to ruin or
completely forsake the musical appeal of the original instrumental, and
Jackie’s version is no exception. As usual, Jackie is more interesting when
he selects at least relatively more
recent material, such as Churchill Kohlman’s ‘Cry’, which opens the record —
a song originally recorded in 1951 by Little Donna Hightower, but one that
had apparently acquired a second life of its own in the early Sixties: my
current collection alone includes cover versions by Sam Cooke (off Hits Of The 50s), Roy Orbison (off Sings Lonely And Blue), and Brenda
Lee (off Emotions), all released
within one and the same year of 1960. Brenda basically copied Roy’s
country-pop arrangement, but Cooke’s version was different — a little more
jazzy than poppy — while Jackie steers the song into a more soul-blues
direction. In this four-way battle of giants, Roy should be awarded top prize
(he’s really the only one who milks the song for all of its broken-hearted
melancholy potential), but at least Jackie is not guilty for stealing anybody
else’s vision of it (like Brenda is, though we probably shouldn’t judge her
too harshly for her good intentions). Overall, By Special Request is certainly a
more rewarding listen than the Al Jolson tribute; but the only song I would
like to whisk off it for my best-of Jackie Wilson collection is ‘I’m Comin’
On Back To You’ (maybe with ‘The Way I Am’ as a supporting bonus track if
there’s enough digital space). Clearly, Jackie’s biggest problem at the time
— much the same way it was with Elvis as his white-boy reflection — was
relying on inferior songwriters, and then on dusty stock material when even
inferior songwriters were unavailable. Considering that he was still at the
peak of his vocal powers, one can only imagine what he could have done with
material from the likes of, say, Leiber & Stoller, or Goffin & King.
Then again, maybe not — with his notoriously «clean» and «glitzy» image, he
would probably end up stripping Leiber & Stoller songs of their humor and
irony, and Goffin & King tunes from their raw emotionality. |
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