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| MEMPHIS SELECTION FROM THE WALL OF SOUND |
The recent book on the Cultureberg bedside table was Warren Zanes 33 and 1/3 study of Dusty in Memphis. In it he goes a bit Greil Marcus about The South and Memphis in particular. "It seemed that mythic place gave him something inestimable, something underpinning his very sense of self. On some level I've come to believe that we all need such places, that we go to these places to act out the possibilities within us that might otherwise lie dormant, untapped." This sliding down to Memphis may be understandable to the former lead singer of The Del-Fuegos (No, me neither), but the questions in the Cultureberg Cranium were about the others who made a similar pilgrimage, for that is what it was, at about the same time......
We'll come to Elvis later, but let's start with Dusty Springfield. (I'd commend the book to you, though not as much as I'd commend the LP). The book's thrust, reduced by a thousand percent in volume and persuasiveness, is that Dusty's love of black soul music, and her need to inhabit a persona which could contain her otherness, was fulfilled and emboldened by this record. She had just signed to Atlantic . with the proviso that Jerry Wexler be involved to guide the transition, a role he was happy to take on. Dusty in Memphis one of those records which improve and deepen over time and with subsequent listens, its uniqueness becoming more apparent. Why is this?,
Primarily I put this down to the choice of songs, which are not the obvious choice for a performer frozen by standing where Aretha and Wilson Picket once stood. They are not covers of Atlantic
classics or new songs by Memphis songwriters. Dusty had recorded songs by Randy Newman, Goffin-King, Bacharach-David and Mann-Weill before, and she did not eschew Songs From The Movies, but this time she had the American Studios house band and the production and arrangements of Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd. They blend a stately glide beneath a soulful penumbra which gives the record its singular character. Contrary to the myths of The South as a home of Primitivism, the playing is just the opposite, it is sophisticated and responsive whilst still being alive and arresting.
The basic tracks were recorded late summer 1968; Arif Mardin says with guide vocals by Dusty, Wexler says without. The final vocals were added in New York later, Dusty both unused to the way the backing tracks were laid down in Memphis and unable to transcend her anxieties. There is no sense of dislocation - would you ever know? - and the settings are so snug and sympathetic the vocalists' full involvement is almost guaranteed by the results. The vocals are breathy and intimate, knowing and vulnerable. The resulting album is a hybrid which Tom Dowd describes as " a strange fusion of artist and material and the concepts that Jerry, Arif and I had." They enable Dusty to sideline showbiz and approach Authenticity on her own terms, with songs of unimpeachable quality.
Few of the songs would be mistaken for a Stax session - maybe Son of a Preacher Man and Breakfast in Bed have that funk, but the others are of a different type. Dusty also cut another single with the same team in 1969, a less well known gem that is the equal of the album, a cover of Tony Joe White's Willie and Laura Mae Jones. It is fanciful to see this song, in which a white couple and a black couple who live as neighbours grow apart after crops fail, as presaging the divisions which would re-emerge in the south over the succeeding years. Whatever, it is a towering performance, both downhome and elegiac. That was another place and another time.
Though Dusty in Memphis only reached No.99 in the US album charts, its influence outweighed that then, and its status has grown over the years. If imitation is sincere flattery - and, of course, it can be many other things - there are a number of subsequent projects by English and American artists going down south in search of their soul, in search of an authentic place to be more of themselves. Lets consider Petula Clark's 1970 album Memphis.
Cultureberg would like to be able to report that this LP, recorded also at American Studios in Memphis with Chips Moman and the same musicians (largely), is a lost classic, an overlooked sister to Dusty in Memphis. Sadly it is not, it's a pale shadow of the classic. The first problem, for me, is that the songs are still too wedded to the Showbiz mainstream that Dusty, Cilla, Pet, Lulu were all linked to - they all had their own TV series' at one time or other. There is a patina of anodyne rainbow psychedelia and limp protest, which sometimes can work, but here sees the musicians nearing Broadway. Take opener I Wanna See Morning With Him, essentially the sentiments of The Beach Boys Wouldn't It Be Nice. It's a clear attempt to mimic Just A Little Lovin (Dusty in Memphis' opener) or Breakfast in Bed, but whereas Dusty's performance inhabits the scenario and pulls you in, Pet's performance leaves you thinking "So what?
Petula Clark has a clear, pure voice with dead-on phrasing, and maybe that's part of the problem (It may have been less difficult for the listener in 1970.) Even when the song is propelled by handclaps and rolling rhythm, it's all a bit New Generation. Where Dusty managed to fuse the big ballads and Brill Building numbers with Atlantic soul, Petula's still struggling with the imposed song choices and the show tunes. She covers The Boxtops Neon Rainbow, but it is a trite song and she can't transform it.
It's by no means all bad. Her version of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready which closes the album is churchy and feels inhabited. A demo of It's So Easy (a bonus track on a reissue) has cutting lead guitar and a spontaneous vocal that hints at what could have been. Miss Clark has since written a song about Memphis and her love for the place, where she has returned many times, and clearly she experienced many connections to the south, It's an opportunity missed on this record, which perhaps is more to do with the business restrictions placed upon her at that time than a reflection of any artistic choices.
Moving from Memphis to Muscle Shoals, let's consider New Routes, the 1969 album Lulu cut with Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd and the house band in Alabama, which included Duane Allman at that time. Lulu was married to The Bee Gee's Maurice Gibb and Wexler had been impressed for a while with her soulful voice and zesty persona, and signing her to Atco he booked her into the Alabama studio. It's a perfect fit. Her vocals are gritty and gruff and overflowing with joie de vivre. She even sounds authentic talking about a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged, doubtless no stranger to the concept. The up-tempo tracks work best, the highlight being her version of Dave Mason's Feelin' Alright. It's frequently anthologised and is marked by a typically exuberant vocal. Perhaps Lulu was less in thrall of Showbiz, maybe her Glasgow persona allowed her to inhabit these songs easier and with less expectations being put on her by outsiders. Song choice can be examined - there are Bee Gee songs on this album and it's successor (Marley Purt Drive and Melody Fair), but at this point the Bee Gees were writing songs which would grow in interpretations by Al Green, Nina Simone and others. They were tailor made for Southern Soul. Lulu seems to have had the wherewithal to make good choices on this album and it's follow up.
Melody Fair, her second album for Atco, was recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami with The Dixie Flyers,veterans from Muscle Shoals relocated to Florida, with Wexler, Mardin and Dowd in charge again. For me, this is an even better record. (Don't Go) Please Stay would slide on to any compilation of Southern Soul; it is a Bacharach tune, originally a hit for The Drifters. We can see that even when mining the Brill Building songbook, Lulu is choosing the more soulful songs. Move to My Rhythm is pure Wilson Pickett in the horn section and To The Other Woman (I'm the Other Woman) is a classic soul/country hybrid from Jerry Williams. Perhaps the most innovative song is one of Randy Newman's, though the choice is Vine Street, which was on Van Dyke Park's Song Cycle, and is a nostalgic evocation of music making. It is not one of the other, earlier Newman songs covered by Dusty or Alan Price on his debut solo album.Instead of the psychedelic ragtime of its early incarnation Lulu prefaces the song with a funky workout.(Randy never released his own version until a later box set; the only other versions are by Nilsson and Harper's Bizarre, both who have close links to Parks and Newman), It's not avant-garde but it is adventurous. We can see that she will take working with Bowie in her stride. That Vine Street isn't an aberration on Melody Fair is testament to both the vocalist and to the musicians and production team. Neither of these albums were commercially successful, (New Routes reached No88 in the States) but in the view of Cultureberg and The Lulu Massive they are career highlights. Of the three British female vocalists, it is perhaps Lulu that comes closest to replicating her influences whilst Dusty is the artist that transcended them and alchemised something new.
Not only the British were goin' down south around 1969 and 1970. Cultureberg will cover a few albums which are tucked snugly into the Wall of Sound. A favourite is Cher's 1969 album 3614 Jackson Highway (the address of Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield Alabama). The cover shows Mrs Bono outside the unimposing studio with the musicians and production crew, providing an objective correlative of the feel of the record. Cher's earlier records, both with or without Sonny, are solid efforts, but 3614 has a funky, relaxed feel pervading it like a heat-haze. Again the choice of songs is key.
There are three Dylan covers, all from recently released Nashville Skyline, included Lay, Baby Lay, where Cher luxuriates in a way that its author does not. The opener, Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth, accents the rhythm and Cher's sonorous vocal fits perfectly. There are a couple of Dan Penn songs - Cry Like a Baby, Do Right Woman - an Eddie Hinton song and a cover of Dock of the Bay; all are essayed sensitively without grandstanding.
Cultureberg has a theory that any album with a cover of Dr John's Walk On Gilded Splinters is ipso facto worth a spin. This applies to Marsha Hunt's version as much as Humble Pie's, and is especially true of Johnny Jenkins' version, which features Duane Allman on slide. Dr John's Gris Gris album was recorded in studio time at gold Star originally booked for Sonny and Cher, so that this track being a highlight is entirely apposite.
Did Muscle Shoals fill the same need for Cher as for Dusty and Lulu? Her career was at that point moving toward the wilderness (a recent cabaret season had been a washout) so an injection of Southern authenticity will have been both sound commercial and artistic sense. There were still the show tunes and film songs considered - the bonus tracks include a creditable attempt to inject Danny Boy with soul and a take of I Believe, the lounge staple - but the original album is a cohesive and natural listen, breathing and inhabiting its mileu. Where Lulu immersed herself (at least to her knees -see the album cover) in the muddy river at Muscle Shoals, Cher seems to be content to respond to the music oozing from Mr Hood, Mr Beckett, Mr Hawkins, Mr Johnson and colleagues. Like many of the albums on this list, 3614 failed to set the charts alight - it reached no. 164 in the states - but today is the hipsters Cher album of choice.
Brenda Lee's Memphis Portrait is in some senses the most natural fit. Little Miss Dynamite belts out an album packed with soul classics - Proud Mary, - and some tracks with a country provenance _ Leaving on a Jet Plane - but the album as whole does not take off, for me. Chips Moman has nothing but positive memories of Miss Lee, and no stretching in needed to imagine her settling into the studio with an easy bonhomie. I particularly like the two Joe South songs - Games People Play and Walk a Mile In My Shoes - but I miss the frisson of someone twisting a song till it signifies something new.
Paul Revere and the Raider's Goin' To Memphis started life as vocalist Mark Lindsay's solo album. It is Mr Lindsay backed by the American Studio musicians. Sadly, and in a different way to Miss Clark, Mr Lindsay's voice is the key here. Eminently suited to the garage rock which was the Raiders stock in trade, the vocalist sounds laboured when attempting Memphis soul. Though gruff and emotive, he lacks, for example, the relaxed poise of Alex Chilton's vocals with The Box Tops at this time. There are six of Mr Lindsay's compositions on the album; they are competent but not alluring. The cover of Soul Man is marinated in horns, but lacks piquancy. Only on the single Peace of Mind, where the Raiders return to their Stonesy strut, do we hear the record barrel out of the speakers like the runaway train on the album's cover. Chips Moman co-produced the record with Raiders champion Terry Melcher (who is featured in an up and coming piece on Canyon Noir on this site...) but significantly Mr Melcher exited after the album failed to sashay up the charts. Sometimes it doesn't work.
An occasion when American Studios assuredly did work is on the historic recording sessions with Elvis Presley in January and February of 1969. This nearly did not happen, as many within Elvis' orbit felt a return to Nashville was the way ahead., safe, dependable. (Parenthetically, can I refer you to the appropriate section of Peter Guralnick's Careless Love which is informative on the sessions and the surrounding politics). Elvis chose or was directed - who can know for sure ? - to record at American Studios, Memphis. This allowed him to stay at Gracelands and to return home, to the wellspring of his creativity. This is where he deviates from those considered elsewhere in this piece. It allowed him to revisit and re-engage with his art and to downgrade the artifice. It allowed him to operate with an autonomy from The Colonel and to make the sort of strong song choices in cahoots with Chips Moman that Dusty made with Jerry Wexler. Mr Guralnick says of In The Ghetto, "You can hear a kind of tenderness in the early takes that most recalls the Elvis who first entered Sam Phillips' Sun Studios, offering equal parts yearning and social compassion."
Elvis had already recorded songs by Mac Davis, whose The Vicious Circle became In The Ghetto, but the subject matter was deeper and potentially more controversial than Davis' A Little Less Conversation. Instincts were followed, were vindicated. Mr Moman was keen that Suspicious Minds, written by staffer Mark James, whose earlier version had failed to hit, be given to Elvis. It was the last number one in Elvis' lifetime, and if one plays the two versions for comparison, there is a kinetic urgency and resonant echo in the Elvis version missing in the blueprint.
There are no more accomplished blends of commitment and technique, engagement and raw ability, than Stranger in My Own Hometown, Kentucky Rain, Any Day Now, Long Black Limousine, Only The Strong Survive. When Cultureberg listened to the earlier, un-dubbed masters, collected as The Memphis Sessions, it was akin to eavesdropping on a moment of pure creation. What was most awe-inspiring was Elvis' vocals, neither hidden behind nor bolstered by strings and horns, soaring with a purity of control and focus, that was transcendental.
No-one works at that level continually, and the sessions can veer from at times schlocky, and others relaxed and lewd. In an early take of Stranger, Elvis considers returning to driving "That motherfucking truck", before entertainingly continuing the profanity that someone relaxed and comfortable will indulge in. He had returned to a mileu where he could be, wanted to be, truer to his art and his talent to a greater extent and for a more concerted period of time than at any point for a decade (Comeback Special notwithstanding). He would never be in that point for as long again (of course there are isolated moments) In the next 7 years or so he would only engage in 11 recording sessions and never would again fully inhabit the place that so intimidated Dusty Springfield.
So was Warren Zane right about the mythopoetic pull of the south and Memphis in particular? And does Memphis and the south still have that same pull? Let me quote from the sleevenotes from jazz singer Barb Jungr's 2012 album From Stockport to Memphis. Miss Jungr has made a number of excellent albums where she injects lilt and shimmer into songs by Dylan , Cohen and others, and though this record is not her very best, it may inform us. "Barb Jungr has never been to Memphis. But as a teenage girl in 1960s Stock[port she nurtured a longing for what it represented, the sweet soul music she danced to in clubs at night and its sense of a bigger more beautiful world than the Lancashire industrial town she couldn't wait to leave." That doesn't sound too different to Dusty.
The songs are loosely linked, about leaving home, finding your true self, not uncommon themes. Miss Jungr pens a few songs, but it seems telling that the covers sound like truer autobiographical statements than some of her own. The act of imagining oneself into a song magnifies its meaning. When she sings in Sam Cooke's overexposed A Change Is Gonna Come, "I go to the movie and I go downtown, Somebody keep tellin me don't hang around" this is more accurately the experience of the singer than the more straightforward (and you could almost write it yourself) first person memoir New Life. The act of interpretation is more authentic. That doesn't sound so different to Dusty.
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