Make it last forever…

Okay it was a phase, but it was one I remem­ber with some warmth and — more — it’s nei­ther a guilty plea­sure nor one that the wash of tacky synths that accom­pa­nies many of these records can demol­ish. I’m talk­ing about the era of the great electric-soul men.

Their styl­is­tic god­fa­ther was Teddy Pen­der­grass, both with Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes and solo on the still bliss­fully time­less Philade­phia Inter­na­tional label — and I’ll get to that — but it was Luther (do a I need a sur­name? I still remem­ber large groups of white sox and loafer clad lads roam­ing Lon­don in the mid 1980s chant­ing ‘Loofa.. Loofa..’) who her­alded the arrival of the clas­sic 1980s styled big soul men, men whose pro­duc­ers melded together big, soar­ing male soul voices, post-disco funk and bur­geon­ing stu­dio elec­tron­ica. It was Luther who made it accept­able for so-called hard men to break down to the huge emo­tional soul bal­lads and epic synth-filled anthems that defined a big part of the edge of the 1980s.

He also had Mar­cus Miller - and oth­ers, like Doc Pow­ell (pic­tured above). That helped. It was to Luther’s bands that Miles Davis turned in the mid­dle of the decade.

In Auck­land at least, it bought together a gen­er­a­tion of white kids rolling away from the tail of the post-punk era and a whole new gen­er­a­tion of South Auck­land Poly­ne­sian kids who both grabbed it as cen­tral their to soundtrack.

By the end of 1982 the hip­per clubs were filled with men — of all skin tones — dressed in dou­ble breasted suits, some immac­u­late, some sim­ply gar­ish ¹

It was both fun, and it offered a happy respite from the stan­dard male club uni­form of denim and (T) shirt. Looking onto a dance­floor around 1986 one saw a sea of style — even if we laugh at those suits and shoul­ders now.

And yes, many of the the lyrics — romance, sex, fast cars, expen­sive any­thing and so on — made us all gri­mace as much then as we do now. But it was, to bor­row, about the vibe.… and the voice. And nobody gri­maced to Luther. Nobody.

We swooned to the music, and — more — Luther and the rest changed the way we sang and con­structed vocal tracks in the much of the music we made there­after, such being the nature of urban sound­tracks, whether we knew it or not at the time. The stylised soul vocal had really made lit­tle impact in New Zealand before the 1980s — we hadn’t really bought large quan­ti­ties of the deeper styled male soul in the years since the end of the 1960s and even then the expe­ri­ence was largely blues or pop-soul (Motown). I well remem­ber Philly albums sit­ting unloved and unwanted in the 50c bins in the mid to late 1970s. Bobby Wom­ack? Who?

Luther and the soul men played a big part in chang­ing that.

And then Luther died — quite some years after the scene was gone — but, still, I had one mes­sage from an old friend who sim­ply said “He really was why, wasn’t he?” And he kinda was, and — more — the broad cul­tural rever­ber­a­tions that Luther and the soul men bought to the city I was a part of when they bought us all together still remain largely unrecog­nised. There’s more to this — much more — and it’s one of the cru­cial ele­ments of Pasi­fika as it fused with Aotea that still remains unex­plored. It was about the music.

This isn’t the time to pur­sue that, but for no other rea­son that I had a Luther an extended Luther YouTube flash­back today I thought I’d throw up a few videos for and of the eight­ies soul men.….

Tashan recorded a cou­ple of albums for Def Jam in the mid­dle part of the decade, when Rus­sell Sim­mons decided that if Rick could sign metal, he could sign soul.

The first album was the one, and this, the title track from it, Chas­ing a Dream, is a bonafide lost 80s classic.

From the same album, Got The Right Attitude.

There was a time when the name Lillo Thomas was almost whis­pered. He was the man — and true soul­boys sim­ply nod­ded in quiet agree­ment when records like I’m In Love were talked of. Never a big star, his records were hugely sought, but none more than:

Down­town. If you didn’t get this — or even know of this — you weren’t a true mem­ber of the clan. The 12″ was semi-sacred and awfully hard to get hold of. This, sadly, ain’t it, but it’s still a mon­ster of the genre in any format.

Will Down­ing man­aged one lis­ten­able album before head­ing off into 90’s schlock but here, with a vocal rework­ing of Coltrane’s Love Supreme, he’s quite something.

This is obscure as hell, and opens with a ridicu­lously tacky  “Sweet and ten­der lady” line before mov­ing into a vocal that owes a hefty debt to Al Green. Will King came out of the same sta­ble as the mighty Gap Band and you can hear that too here.

I’m not sure if he really belongs in this post, given that I have no idea what or who he was beyond that, but it has the oblig­a­tory vocal swoops half way through and for that rea­son it stays.

Eugene Wilde arrived with a cou­ple of dance­floor hits (as Sim­p­li­cious) before releas­ing this song, Gotta Get You Home Tonight — a tune that was almost inescapable around ’85. Lyri­cal ref­er­ences to Dom Perignon gave it extra soulboy credentials.

I love Alexan­der O’Neal. To quote one of the won­der­fully ridicu­lous inter­ludes from his sec­ond album ‘Alex, baby, Alex’ was sec­ond only to Luther in the peck­ing order.

A for­mer mem­ber of the same band that pro­duced Prince, his Jam & Lewis pro­duced albums strad­dled Min­neapo­lis funk and deep soul. This tune, from his debut — with Cherelle — is best heard in it’s fab­u­lous eleven minute 12″ mix. But this will have to do…

And another, from the first, self-titled, album. This Soul Train take of What’s Miss­ing is pretty rough, but you get the suit effect — and it’s still a hell of a tune. Alex used a dou­ble bed as a stage prop. You can’t get much more soul­boy than that.

Chuck Stan­ley was Rus­sell Sim­mons’ sec­ond soul sign­ing to Def Jam but large parts of his pretty decent debut album seem to be miss­ing from the ‘net. This video, of a track off that long­player, is worth it for the suit. Nice tune too.

Cur­tis Hair­ston jumped from label to label any never really man­aged any sub­stan­tial com­mer­cial suc­cess — but in down­town Auck­land this song kinda hit briefly and The Morn­ing After became yet another hugely sought after 12″ single.

I loved the first Keith Sweat album, pro­duced by the still-in-his-teens Teddy Riley wun­derkid. This remake of the old Dra­mat­ics tune  In The Rain is still rather special.

To Luther. There are a mil­lion Loofa vids on the net so I chose a cou­ple that reflect lessor known tracks first up. The radio (and 12″ mixes) of The Rush were remixed by David Morales in his clas­sic organic Def Mix style and fea­ture an uncred­ited pianist (maybe Eric Kup­per or Peter Daou).

The 12″ mix of this rocks.

And Heaven Knows, perfectly re-produced by Morales’ legendary part­ner, Frankie Knuck­les, with Terry Bur­rus on piano.

One more, just because I can:  Never Too Much live

Finally, for a bit of fun, a mini doco on the David Bowie and Luther Van­dross connection:

As one of the talk­ing heads points out, Young Amer­i­cans actu­ally sounds like a Luther Van­dross record as much as a Bowie release, and you only have to lis­ten to the Luther ver­sion of Bowie’s Fas­ci­na­tion (from the Young Amer­i­cans album), which Luther wrote and recorded as Funky Music, to get that con­nec­tion even more precisely:

There were oth­ers of course: Freddy Jack­son sold a lot of records but was just too light­weight and his pro­ducer Paul Lau­rence lacked substance.

Since I’m get­ting all watery around the eyes about ret­ro­spec­tive old soul music that sim­ply does it, I might offer a plug for the absolutely incred­i­ble Philadel­phia Inter­na­tional  Re-Edits col­lec­tion, wherein tracks that any rea­son­able age­ing soul purist would insist were sac­ri­lege and untouch­able are suc­cess­fully dis­sected, reworked and reassem­bled by a bunch of rel­a­tive unknowns.

Try the rework­ing of the grossly over­played — it’s become a des­per­a­tion tool for count­less strug­gling bar or party DJs — Ain’t No Stop­ping Us Now (reworked by Noodleman):

Or the the absolutely lovely stroll through Harold Melvin’s Wake Up Every­body as recon­structed by DJ Apt One:

And if that isn’t enough, at the time of writ­ing I’m eagerly check­ing the mail­box daily for the just released 4 disc set of Tom Moul­ton remixes, expand­ing upon the per­fectly named 1977 album, Philadel­phia Clas­sics, itself about as close to per­fec­tion as it’s pos­si­ble to get on dou­ble vinyl.

There go the post-punk credentials…

Tagged with: 1980s • Luther Vandross • music • soul