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Aug 16

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The return of P.P. Arnold

PP Arnold 2

At a lunch in Barnes a few weeks ago P.P. Arnold got up from her seat — next to Linda Thompson, as it happened — and walked to the other end of the room to sing Cat Stevens’ “The First Cut Is the Deepest”, accompanied by an acoustic guitarist and three backing singers. The gathering of music people rose to acclaim her. Whatever it is, I thought to myself, she’s still got it.

But I knew that already. A couple of years ago I’d gone to Cadogan Hall to see the Manfreds, appearing with two guest singers. One was the irrepressible Zoot Money. The other was Ms Arnold, who had half the audience surreptitiously wiping an eye as she delivered another of the songs with which she is associated in the minds of British audiences, Chip Taylor’s “Angel of the Morning”.

When she first arrived in Britain, in the autumn of 1966, the LA-born Pat Arnold was on the road with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, as a member of the Ikettes. During that tour they turned up at the Beachcomber Club in Nottingham, a basement space that probably held 300 people. “River Deep — Mountain High” had been one of the hits of the summer, and plenty of the mods in the audience had “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” and “A Fool in Love” in their collections. So it was packed. But not as packed as the small stage, which contained an eight-piece band, the three Ikettes, a warm-up singer named Albert Akens, and Ike and Tina. As part of the preliminaries to Tina’s appearance, the gorgeous Pat Arnold had stepped forward to deliver a rousing version of “Dancing in the Street”.

It was a great show, and afterwards, in my capacity as a diligent 19-year-old reporter for the local evening paper, I went to the dressing room to try and get the names of the musicians. When I knocked on the door, there was a response that sounded like “Come in.” So I did, to be confronted by a flash of black skin and white underwear: the Ikettes were getting changed. I mumbled something apologetic and stumbled backwards, closing the door behind me. Somehow I managed to get the names I wanted, and the report in the paper mentioned the veteran tenorist Clifford Solomon, the trumpeter Jabe Fleming, and the very fine drummer Soko Richardson, as well as Arnold. I didn’t include the glimpse through the dressing room door.

Now there’s a new release called The New Adventures of P.P. Arnold, which I’ve been playing with great enjoyment. She and her producer, Steve Cradock of Ocean Colour Scene, present her familiar voice in new lights, making reference to the way her records sounded in the past without descending to pastiche. There’s no better example than the opening track, “Baby Blue”, written by Cradock with Steve Grizzell: a great pop-soul song which would have been snapped up by Dusty Springfield or Amy Winehouse; it suits Arnold’s delivery perfectly, her heavy vibrato surrounded by lush strings and female backing vocals as she delivers the hook.

The 15-song running order is full of imaginative choices, including outstanding covers of Mike Nesmith’s “Different Drum” (quite different from the versions by Linda Ronstadt with the Stone Poneys or Susanna Hoffs with Matthew Sweet) and Sandy Denny’s “I’m a Dreamer”. A new version of Arnold’s own “Though It Hurts Me Badly”, a beautifully formed ballad first recorded in 1968 on her debut album,  and “I Believe”, co-written with Fuzzy Samuels, the ex-CSN&Y bassist and her former partner, are beauties (you can listen to the latter on the home page of http://www.pparnold.com). So is the intense, gospelly “I Finally Found My Way Back Home”, co-written with Cradock, on which the singer engages in a dialogue with herself. Paul Weller contributes “Shoot the Dove” and “When I Was Part of Your Picture”, on which oboe and strings lightly evoke the decorous neo-baroque mood of late-’60s English psych-pop, as do the string quartet intro and brass fills on Cradock’s “The Magic Hour”. A real highlight is the warm strum-along reading of the lovely “Daltry Street” by Jake Fletcher, formerly of Manchester’s Gramotones: one of those songs in which verse and chorus are so beautifully interlinked that it seems it’s never going to stop, and neither do you want it to.

As if all that were not enough, Arnold and Cradock finish up with two strokes of brilliance. The first is “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie”, the long poem Bob Dylan recited at New York’s Town in April 1963, and which, after circulating among collectors, appeared on the first volume of the Bootleg Series in 1991. Arnold handles the extended recitative well, her voice riding on a one-chord jam powered by chattering congas and punctuated by a shifting array of brass and reed interjections, like a meeting of Fela Kuti and Sun Ra in Norman Whitfield’s studio, gathering power as it goes. The finale is Arnold’s “I’ll Always Remember You”, a ballad dedicated to her late daughter, Debbie, recorded in Exeter Cathedral with the cathedral organ and choir, plus cello and harp: a bravura performance, deeply felt, never overwrought, and the perfect finale.

* The Further Adventures of P.P. Arnold is out now on the e.a.r music label as a double vinyl album or a single CD.

Aug 12

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Ornithology, Murakami-style

Bird Bossa

Supernatural visitations are a regular feature of the novels and short stories of Haruki Murakami, many of which also benefit from a well chosen musical soundtrack. He combines the two in an unusually intimate way in a new short story titled “Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova”, published in the latest edition of Granta, the literary quarterly.

It begins with a student exercise in which the tale’s protagonist writes a review of an imaginary album, recorded in 1963, in which Charlie Parker — who has not, after all, died in 1955 — is accompanied by the piano of Antonio Carlos Jobim, the bass of Jimmy Garrison and the drums of Roy Haynes. The repertoire consists of well known Jobim tunes, including “Insensatez” and “Chega de Saudade”, and bossafied versions of a couple of Bird’s own classics, for which Hank Jones replaces the Brazilian at the keyboard.

The essay has been long forgotten when, after many years, its writer wanders into a small New York record store and, while browsing the racks, comes across what appears to be a bootleg version of the very album created by his own imagination. Later, while pondering on this mystery, he receives a visit from Parker himself.

Not wanting to spoil the reader’s pleasure, I’ll add only that it’s a delightful invention which reaffirms Murakami’s deep love of music — as lightly worn as ever, even when it provides the essence of the story. And the accompanying illustration, by Jon Gray, is perfect.

* Granta 148, a summer fiction special, is out now.

Aug 5

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Down Here Praying

Pure Heart Travelers

Apart from anything else, the release of Amazing Grace, the long-buried film of Aretha Franklin singing gospel songs in 1972, reminded us of the debt we all owe to the black church. African American gospel music explored and mapped the fastest route to the deepest emotions, whether in raw vocal inflections, heart-lifting harmonic changes or ecstatic choral vamping.

There are many fine gospel compilations, but few that I’ve found as fascinating and rewarding as Sacred Sounds, a new anthology of material recorded with various artists by the Detroit-based producer Dave Hamilton for his own labels between 1969 and 1974. Its two dozen tracks, selected by Ady Croasdell and Adam Stanfel, offer a cross-section of approaches to the idiom at a time when its performers were borrowing from R&B and pre-disco soul music.

Hamilton arrived in the Motor City from Savannah, Georgia in the 1940s and quickly established himself as a guitarist and vibraharpist on the local scene. A friend of Marvin Gaye, he played on “Stubborn Kind of Fellow”; his recordings for various labels under his own name included an album called Blue Vibrations for Berry Gordy’s Workshop Jazz label, an early Motown subsidiary (here’s the single, “Late Freight”, co-written with Clarence Paul). As a producer, his vast output yielded many tracks, such as Little Ann’s “Deep Shadows” and James Carpenter’s “(Marriage Is Only) A State of Mind”, which emerged from obscurity only decades later.

There’s a fair chance you won’t have heard any of these gospel tracks, or be familiar with such groups as the Sensational Sunset Paraders, the Detroit Silvertones, the Soul Inspirers and the National Independent Singers. All you need to know is that in other circumstances many of these singers could have turned into Motown superstars. The opening “Jesus Is With Me Pt 1” by Little Stevie and the Reynolds Singers sets the tone: had the Jackson 5 cut a gospel track in 1969 rather than “I Want You Back”, this is how it might have turned out. It’s followed by the Scott Singers’ “I’m Not Ready to Die”, with a house-wrecking female voice leading the group over lightly strummed rhythm guitar, walking bass and a woodblock on the backbeat.

The Reverend Samuel Barbee’s “(This Is) My Plea” opens with a heartfelt sermon on repentance over sepulchral organ, joined by a soulful guitar when the song kicks in and Barbee shows off his Sam Cooke chops. The Sensational Angelettes’ “I Heard a Voice Pt 1”, cheerfully borrows the melody of “Ain’t No Sunshine” for something that sounds like it belongs on one of Dave Godin’s old Deep Soul compilations. Mr Bo’s “Saviour on the Throne” is a genial altered blues in the B. B. King manner, while “Wrapped, Tied, Tangled Up in Jesus” shows the singer and guitarist Mary Ellen George to have been a spiritual cousin of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The Soul Inspirers’ “Grown Old and Feeble” sound like a natural for a Ry Cooder cover, the Detroit Silvertones’ “Down Here Praying” is a wild shout-up, and the rocking vamp of “I Need Your Power” suggests how compelling the Pure Heart Travelers — that’s them in the photograph at the top — must have been in their prime.

Hamilton built his own studio and subjected his gospel artists to the minimum of interference and no sweetening, aiming to do nothing more or less than capture the singers and musicians au naturel. The result is a vibrant authenticity that leaps out of the grooves.

* Sacred Sounds: Dave Hamilton’s Raw Detroit Gospel 1969-74 is released on the Kent label. His secular productions are available in three volumes of Dave Hamilton’s Detroit Dancers and one each of Dave Hamilton’s Detroit Soul, Dave Hamilton’s Detroit City Grooves and Dave Hamilton’s Detroit Funk.