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RIP Latimore

Latimore’s “Let’s Straighten It Out” is one of my favourite soul records of the ’70s. Or any time, come to that. Largely because of how it sounds, but also because of its difference.

Most deep-soul ballads are written from a solipsistic perspective: the singer is concentrating on him- or herself, bemoaning his or her loss and the consequent heartbreak. That’s understandable enough. Such a song enables the listener to make a very direct identification with the message, whether it’s “The Tracks of My Tears” or “Stay With Me, Baby”, or even something with a slightly more complicated narrative, such as “Any Day Now” or “Go Now”. But “Let’s Straighten It Out” does something different.

Sit yourself down, girl, and talk to me / Tell me what’s on your mind / Don’t keep on telling me everything’s okay / Cause if it was then you wouldn’t be crying…

The singer knows that something is badly amiss with his lover and he wants to know what it is. For five nights she’s been tossing and turning, crying in her sleep, not even saying good night. His entreaties are insistent but gentle and compassionate. The only concession to orthodoxy is the suggestion that “Instead of crying your eyes out, honey / You and me ought to be getting it on.” He just wants to know the truth, and where he stands within it, and he’s taking care to control whatever incipient anger that truth might provoke. It’s more like the approach a country music writer might take.

The death of Benny Lattimore, as he was born in Charleston, Tennessee, was announced in the New York Times‘s obituaries section yesterday. He was a couple of weeks short of his 87th birthday. If he never regained the peak of “Let’s Straighten It Our”, an R&B No 1 hit in 1974, he had a solid career as a singer and keyboard player, appearing — for example — on half a dozen tracks of Joss Stone’s debut album in 2003.

“Let’s Straighten It Out” was recorded for Henry Stone’s Glades label in Miami, Florida. The producer was Steve Alaimo, using the TK Records studio and some of its house musicians: the bass guitarist Ron Bogdan and the drummer Robert Fergusen, who play beautifully while staying out of the way.

You need to hear the five-minute album version rather than the 45 edit (or the subsequent Malaco remake) because Latimore prefaces the song with a lengthy and most beautiful electric piano reverie, creating a mood on a D minor / G minor vamp that sets up the first verse with a pause and a cleverly signalled shift to the G minor for the opening lines. His voicing of the chords is matched by the growl of the Fender Rhodes keyboard and the brilliantly subtle hiss of Fergusen’s hi-hat, opened on the AND of “one-AND” at the start of every other bar.

When I called my old friend Pete Wingfield to check a couple of musical points, he observed that it was a record embodying the “take your time” philosophy — something almost extinct in today’s music scene. It’s a relaxed record because the mood in the studio was relaxed, and the musicians were allowed to get on with doing their thing. Other examples might be Aretha’s “I Never Loved a Man”, Don Covay’s “It’s Better to Have (and Don’t Need)”, Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You” or Bill Withers’ first album.

Latimore’s singing on “Let’s Straighten It Out” might be that of a younger Jimmy Witherspoon. His voice is a manly southern baritone with plenty of nuanced passion but none of the post-Redding clichés. Everything is understated, even the jamming on the fade. You believe every word, every note. He’s gone now, but his song is immortal.