Special occasions and bad situations
Millie Jackson became notorious for her dirty mouth, featured in albums with titles like Live and Uncensored and EST (Extra Sexual Persuasion), which was a shame because throughout the 1970s she also produced a series of compelling ballad performances that deserve a high place in the rankings of the sub-genre which the disc jockey and writer Dave Godin named Deep Soul. Jackson was born in Georgia, the daughter of a sharecropping family, and most of her recording for the Spring label was done in Muscle Shoals, Alabama; her music was steeped in the sound of the South.
Now Ace Records have compiled a selection of her finest Spring ballads into a single album, The Moods of Millie Jackson, which amply demonstrates what a powerful singer she could be. The best known tracks probably come from the two outstanding albums in which she explored the theme of infidelity: Caught Up (1974) and Still Caught Up (1975). Among the highlights of that pair is her version of Tom Jans’ “Loving Arms”, with its devastating line about “looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains”. Her early singles “A Child of God” and “It Hurts So Good” will also be familiar to many. But some of the lesser known tracks are equally cherishable: the beautiful “A Love of Your Own”, co-written by Hamish Stuart of the Average White Band with Ned Doheny, the aching “Solitary Love Affair” from the pens of Billy Kennedy and Gus McKinney, Sam Dees’ gorgeous “Special Occasion” and, maybe most of all, the slow-burning but ultimately volcanic “Making the Best of a Bad Situation”, by Richard Kerr and Gary Osborne, one of those songs that make you realise for the millionth time the huge role played by the emotional triggers of gospel music in the evolution of pop.
For all these things, it’s easy to forgive Millie her manifold trespasses across boundaries of taste and discretion, even the album cover for which she posed while seated on the lavatory. As far as I’m concerned, The Moods of Millie Jackson is an indispensable album.
thebluemoment.com 
I really wanted to comment on your Millie Jackson piece, but the comment routing has taken me to your Richie Havens piece instead. I hadn’t realised that he had passed away, and I’m really sorry to hear this sad news. He’s not represented in my record collection but he is always a welcome presence when his material appears on the radio.
Millie Jackson – agree with everything you say, and I will certainly buy the new Kent compliation. But I do hope they haven’t separated ‘Loving Arms’ and ‘Making the Best of a Bad Situation’; the sequencing of these 2 fabulous songs at the start of side 1 of the vinyl version of ‘Still Caught Up’, and the seamless transition from one to the other, is amongst the greatest moments in all of soul music, I think.
No gap between those two; an imperceptible track number change will flicker on the CD player but nowt else. A very specific request from compiler Sean Hampsey. In fact there are very small gaps all the way through as Sean wanted it to flow like one of her concept albums.
I think your right, as ever. Ordered the other day. Easier than trudging through the vinyl. Who would have thunk it?
Her dignified air of resignation on Bobby Womack’s “I’m through tryind to prove my love to you” is my personal favourite. Great drumming from Roger Hawkins too.
True, true. But I’ll take “Leftovers”, too. Her HUGE presence and humor can almost (well, not really) make you not notice the musicality of her razor-sharp phrasing.
Thank you for this very nice promo talk about Millie J.
Millie j is on every album she did really really giving her all she really deserves the best and needs to get her name back into the mainstream again because …. she is the queen!
check this page for her it’s on facebook with great pictures —-> MillieJackson4FansOnly