My new, best of all times and currently far-flung girl loves the month of September because the weather is moderate in her part of the world, and after a record-breaking hot summer, the relief has finally arrived. I accept that, and although I think of September with a certain sadness that this summer has passed with our goals unrealized and ocean shores not reached (her country of Ukraine), I guess that is my personal problem (“Money, Money, Money” – Abba). It will change for the better.
This month also reminds me of Barry White’s song of the same name, which has three notes from the outset, that if you ever were into his music, you would be able to identify immediately.
Please bring back the TV game show, “Name That Tune”!! I’ll clean-up within this category (which is why Chuck Berris will never bring it back, if he is still alive).
Takin' it home over the bridge with the repetitious and groovy deep bass drop-off-of-the-graph groove is classic! As my DJ mind recalls it, Barry and his "thing" had been aloof for a moment, and then THIS album came about in 1978 on 20th Century-Fox Records who really, like so many others scared-off by the "internet", should get back into the record-producing business. This song re-captured the unnecessarily mercurial meanderings of White and suddenly, the ladies known as "Love Unlimited" and the "Love Unlimited Orchestra" were again jamming at full-tilt, led by the chart-topping "Your Sweetness Is My Weakness" which was not even close to the best cut on the album, but was the timeliest. This album, "The Man", even featured a great/fantastically original interpretation/cover of Billy Joel' s "Just The Way You Are", where Barry put his signature trademark, the brief, opening monologue upon it, prior to the "sing" or “sang” as he would say, and to our generation’s amusement at the time, plus the “three-beat-pulse” down the stretch which was on-par with the first Barry White albums, and cuts I heard on the new “total black experience in sound” radio in the early to mid 1970s. Don’t get it twisted, Barry White carried a tune on this album better than on the previous ones – he was progressing from just moaning and groaning sexy stuff all the while back then and his albums always gave us a little latin flavor as well as on “Early Years” and “It’s Only Love Doing Its Thing”.
“September” is an unsung classic, and Barry was another who “went” too soon for my tastes like Jimi Hendrix, et. al. He was also popularized by dint of an assist from the late, great radio Program Director Frankie Crocker in New York City, on WBLS back the “day” or we would never have heard of him.
Ok, now go back to the video, and focus on those first three piano key notes!
barry, da man!!!! how could one ever ever forget cant get enough of your love baby. mmmmmm many a sexy lady . hubba hubba
That was one of White’s first huge hits. Yes!
Nice piece that shows why music is SO important as it adds a Soundtrack to life and if done right helps us accomplish in our minds before real life. After all, Success is actually a state of mind. I’d love to hear a bit more about Barry and his contribution to music, the population (ha, ha)… and maybe his musical growth. He came in out of the blue and immediately was compared to Isaac, then differentiated himself and we enjoyed both. What kind of relationship did they actually have? One would think (hip hop style), there might have been a beef between them but their music didn’t suggest that; it seemed Barry learned.
Those are good research topics and food for thought for my book, maybe. In keeping with the “classiness” of those times, if he and “Ike” did have a “beef” it never played-out in public, Mr. Tate. I kind of remember in an interview one of them saying that the other’s “competition” was actually mutually beneficial.
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