This is important! Will get back soon as I fulfill my swoon. Just know that if you are younger than forty (40), a slow jam like this and those of this ilk, may have brought you into this world! LOL Yes, this song is almost fifty years ago, but can you not agree that is is still relevant today? Doesn’t the beat and message still stay with you? “Half a love is better than no love at all, baybay…” C’mon, are you kidding me? Lets not forget the soul music of our recent past and make it last.
Yet, and can calm the current one with love. The Chi-Lites were one of many male soul or rhythm & blues categorized groups who competed for our slow jam, close-to-close dances in the clubs, basement parties and socials to possibly connect with that new object of your desire! Do you remember “Oh Girl” from 1972?
Listen to that signature, whispery Eugene Record sound, which still sends romantic thrills through your lonely body spine.
These words belong on my music-only blog, https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/ but I am at my desk after producing this Chi-Lites educational and therefore I shall not shift it there. Stand by though and please add a comment, whether you are young (never heard it) or song-seasoned (my peeps), Okay?
1972 – Any University, metro New York; dormitory:
The Soul music singing group, Black Ivory, better known for the classic, “You And I” and “Don’t Turn Around” is heard in the hallways regularly. However, this is a personal Kraterfullojointzmusik mission I write about tonight. Hauntingly, I share it with thee as it teases me, for your obvious non-judgmental amusement.
The best lyric of all, in my opinion and dominion is the one this post is following. Maybe because I am an elf or maybe due to my status or fungus, but it is, “Now, I’m the loneliest man in town”. None-no-fun, as we used to say back in the day.
I am often that and morosely in-perpetuity. So, what? Need a hot fox to keep me company. One with the bosom of classic actress, Ann Margaret; maybe a red head, like I saw in the supermarket yesterday. Butt (lack of ass) who knows?
They say a supermarket is the best place to meet a chick! Nyet. Please bring your discount card! Didn’t work; couldn’t think up something to say to her. Now (again) “I’m the loneliest man in town”.
And so it comes to me that I am again making new friends and acquaintances in a distant city and where the crutch is the bible belt and the women are not as forthcoming sexually.
Fast-forwardly I, the Master, came to the Carolinas to rid myself of the cold and to be near the ocean, initially. Yet it is not the main reason, because retirement looms.
I am only lonely because [use your imagination or fill in the blank] And If it didn’t, I would fly, marry her according to their rules and bring her back to the USA, so that I would finally have the companion I need to walk up to the sun together with now. Damn…
Nevertheless, Sing, Brothers, Sing! Perform my comfortless burg’s principles!
Hey! lol Stop asking why and how these songs come to my jukebox mind until you understand how you put a dollar in the machine, it sucks it in and then you get to choose your songs.
Oh, nyet, just kidding. That is not how my mind works! Sadly, I do not get paid for my recollections, it is just a function of time, my mind and having been a radio disc jockey across so many genres, especially overnight Top 40 or “CHR” for almost forty years, that tunes actually stuck and play randomly, from a time when music was actually played by musicians and the (new at the time) synthesizers would just dress it up a bit.
Billy J. Kramer (love the hair do) and the Dakotas were part of the Beatles-spirited “British Invasion” of the 1960s. Born Billy Ashton, he was, as you can see from the Shindig video below, one of the most unassuming, neat, mild-mannered performers of those years.
This tune appeared to me last night, without any special reason and as often when I was in bed trying to fall asleep! It is my special type of harmless mental illness and insomnia, I guess. Maybe I need to get laid more. “Little Children” has a kind of banjo sound, don’t you think?
I remember “Little Children” as a kind of obscure tune played on Rick Scklar’s greatest station in the nation at the time, “Music radio 77 WABC“, New York City, mostly leading up to the top of the hour station identification jingle package (that is what short tunes like this are good for from a disc jockey standpoint – timing). it is an interesting tune because he seems to sing to being annoyed by his girlfriend’s little sister busting them when they are making-out. I am not one to judge…“around“…
Do you remember “Shindig” on (ABC TV, I think) and “Hullabaloo” followed to compete on a rival network at that time? There were only seven channels on television back then. What a scene and so much music to be recalled and now, via YouTube, seen again.
I love how the whole band bows with thanks at the end of the last note. It is so classy!
Major props to memories of these carefree daze and my radio Mentor, the late legendary terrestrial radio Program Director, Sonny Taylor, who loved this jam!
It is a CLASSIC theme-song that visits me every so often as a friendly reminder of better days gone by. If this long twelve-inch remixed version doesn’t get you moving, nothing will! Belita Woods on lead vocal really “belitaed it OUT!” lol Yes this is one of my “children” and I pray that I can get it out of storage soon and, along with you – TURN IT UP!
Again, I am late to the Wake. I just learned, via chronicling the unprecidented number of music star and celebrity deaths in 2016, that my friend and sharer of some great stages in metro New York back in the 1980s, Colonel Abrams passed away twenty days ago, on Thanksgiving Day, 2016. Wow. Another one on the list, and as they say on the radio, “And the Hits just keep on coming…!”
I met Colonel Abrams (Colonel was his real name, by-the-way) by dint of getting records as a DJ when I made my rounds, from Michael Halley, then of MCA Records Promotions and because I was a DJ in clubs and mobile parties and on WBLS FM, New York, the WBLS FM Promotions Department, under Janie Washington (“where are they now” candidate) I think, who assigned me as the driver of one of the “Juicemobiles” (promotional vans dressed-up) to dove-tail his appearances in Westchester County’s New Rochelle and a club called “The Palace!”, which must have been a huge account at the time.
The Colonel was a large, tall, strappen Franken kind of a presence. Almost larger than life but not pretentious, he loved the spotlight with a kind of humility that is rare. He was very demonstrative on stage.
Actually, my first Colonel Abrams vinyl is a 45rpm, “Leave A Message Behind The Door” on Streetwise Records. I think I received it while the Program Director of WBAU FM, Garden City, N.Y. – but don’t quote me on it! Somehow it got mixed-in by dint of my many record comapny door-knocks. As a ballad, it went largely unplayed at first on the commercial radio stations. I like it to end my show, “last call”-style, late at night.
This dance track is one of my favorites from him and was a wickedly huge hit record!
Behind the scenes, Colonel Abrams and I plotted to hang out and catch some ladies. Once he asked me to be his Manager but I had no clue as to how to do [it]. He was just a gentle giant with talent of the times in House Music that really fit on stage and over the airwaves. Long, tall and lanky he was party coordinated and positively infectious! The Colonel Abrams I knew is in this Soul Train video from 1986! He became part of the House music party, not a standoffish performer, but one of the most energetic party people of those great ole days of the eighties!
I am really chagrined that I never again got to run into him per chance, and even more deeply shaking my head at the news that he went out homeless, ill and broke. Nobody told me there was a Crowdfunding campaign for him – I am good at that and would have helped. Why do our connections in this physical life become so distant and trite?
2016 has been a very depressing year because of the many superstars we have lost. From David Bowie to Prince, Florence Henderson and Robert Vaughn, to Vanity and another friend, Mr. Billy Paul, this past year is one for the kind of Record Books which we do not want to celebrate.
As you know if you know me (or NOT) I am a House Music junkie and DJ since the Larry Levan days and this next video, “Speculation” (“do-do-do-dooo”) is classic jammin House music from Colonel Abrams:
It is so scary to read of how he ended up because I am only a stones-throw from such a fate, IMO. Those of us who totally committed to show business, no matter it singing, radio, television or other glamour professions, are all at the mercy of “here today, gone tomorrow” because of “How Soon We Forget” [our heroes and stars]. Once your health fails and if you have not saved nor have insurance, one can be on the streets in a heartbeat.
I love the little keyboard-scraping piano or synth intro to that one the best of all of his super jams. I do not understand why he died broke and I pray that MCA Unversal did not rip him off in typical Artist versus big record label with tricky contract-fashion!
I searched him and found this image…is this what he looked like at the end?
Want to know the POWER of Colonel Abrams’ music? Listen to how this track (below) samples his riffs:
“I’m So In Love!” is Colonel Abrams.
‘So sorry we didn’t get to reconnect, my friend. This is yet another fatal blow to my life of missed reconnections. Colonel, I know that you would have smiled, in that genuine way that you always did,we’d have hugged big ole manly bear-hugs upon seeing “Jimi Bruce” again. Your albums and 12″vinyls are cherished classic “children” in da krates, among My Vinyls collection. Cheers.
I had the exceptional honor of interviewing Ms. Leslie Gore, who was born as Leslie Goldstein, in her suite at the Hilton hotel on Avenue Of The Americas in the spring of 1992. She was in town for performances, of course, and I got wind of it and reached out to her. Oh…my..God!, she granted me this talk maybe because I was jocking the seven pm until midnight shft at an oldies station, WXNJ 94.3 in Avalon, New Jersey at the time. It is one of the highlights of my life as a radio on-air talent! I mean, this was a real recorded interview on a cassette tape and if I can ever get my life together again and retrieve it/process and reproduce it, I will share it again with the world via YouTube, maybe!
Known for the smash, “It’s My Party”, Leslie Gore’s body of musical work encompassed many more Top 40 hits with bullets [to number one status]. I didn’t know until recently that she was produced by the legendary Quincy Jones and that she had turned “femenist/gay”. Yet even those personal choices, from her music, it did not sway me. That is rare for me, an “old school G”. Many have been burnt and mischaracterized by that kind of mentality – including family members.
from Wikipedia I read, “The lyrics of “She’s a Fool” tell of a romantic triangle.[5] The singer is upset that the boy she likes is being treated poorly by his current girlfriend.[6]Allmusic critic Richie Unterberger believes that the success of this song was crucial to Gore’s career because it was dissimilar lyrically and musically from the two singles with crying themes that preceded it, and thus she was able to avoid being typecasted”.
Whateva. I had no hint that she was gay. I think she even flirted with me. It is all so silly and confusing with that shit. lol
Leslie was a great interview and I think that if I’d been brave enough to ask her out for a post-interview drink, she would have said “yes!” with enthusiasm. I always hear her music in my mind from time-to-time, or randomly sampled on some commercial, as they do these days in the twenty-first century of media advertising.
I began this post upon the news of her death in February of 2015. I am sorry that I let it lay dormant in my “drafts” until now. Please forgive me, Ms. Gore. When I think of my old transistor radio that I would keep under my pillow, so that my parents could not hear me listening to MusicRadio77 WABC when I should have been asleep on school nights, I cannot help but hear you singing, “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want to…”
It is against the backdrop of the cowardly and horrific Islamist bombing of the Brussels airport that I pen this review of music by a native daughter of that country which bothers no other and I cannot understand why those scum continue to maim innocents instead of fighting a nation’s armed forces face-to-face; such sissies!
Well, on to her important music EP, “Wait 4 It”. I must have met Belgium’s hot foxy female vocalist, Irenka, during my twelve years living in Nashville, Tennessee, right? Or Nyet. I would have remembered such a creative presence, energy as hers! The first sound that I hear on track one “Comme Si” is Irenka clearing her throat. I said, “What??” Listened again; however, quickly those sounds turn into her spittin’ like a Euro human beat-box meeting Soft Cell’s 1981 “Tainted Love” – at least in musical key – as she then croons in French, the lingo most speak in Belgium. The last time I listened to this much lyrical love language was on Dimitri From Paris’ 1998 “Sacre` Francaise” or when I reviewed the various artist Playboy Club remix back in 2009. “Scare Bleu!”
“Dreamland”, track two, is an introspective, somnambulistic ballad where she displays her vocal range for the first time. This and the next selection where she lets her fingers do the singing on track three are perfect for a cloudy day. Irenka is really playing a beautiful classic-style piano solo instrumental! I know because I asked her. Next up and showing an inner versatile similarity to the late Amy Winehouse but with a better voice, or Billy Holiday, she styles on, “I don’t Need No Lover (except to hold me through the night from time-to-time)”. I think that this arrangement reminds me of New Orleans blues-jazz in a street march parade; especially because of the brass accents. At one point I was unsure whether Irenka would hit the climbing high-note – but she did. You will know it when you listen. It is a song that hearkens me back to the days of, “Hubba-hubba!”
Finally, she rocks out with the fourth and last track, “A Reason To Hate Me”.
The video, “Comme Si”, takes us on a musical personal journey and is full of familiar scenes from my twelve years living there in Nashville/
Athletic, isn’t she?
Upon learning of the repulsive, pusillanimous Brussels airport attack, act we communicated and her reply, in great musician style was, “Luckily all family is safe, but it is nonetheless terrible, and it is our duty, we the artists, to bring peace and love to this crazy world!”
The world is not as crazy as some of these recent lunatics who inhabit it and I might have been at first on the fence in limbo about Irenka, but now that I have listened copiously and seen her video, there is no “reason to hate” on Irenka with three-and-a-half hopefully motivating musical stars. This is the last music review here at this varied and long-standing blog since 2009. From now on, you are invited to check out my musical musings at https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/
Just when I had donned my grumpy Scrooge cap and given-up on the increasingly commercial “Christmas spirit”, Martha of So Much Moore Media back in good ole Nashville, Tennessee, sent me this little ditty for my opinion. When I read the title and saw “Santa Baby (You’ll Be Mine)”, I thought it would be another lame take-off on the original Eartha Kitt holiday hit. Boy was I in for a surprise with this mischievously playful, sexy down-home take on Christmas time by Leslie Cours Mather entitled, “Santa Baby (You’ll Be Mine)”.
So, with a “Ho, Ho, Ho and a “jingle, jingle, Jing”, a fresh, funky drum, catchy, surprisingly sassy new holiday song is launched. Leslie’s “Santa Baby” has already caught my attention as the latest, new holiday anthem and is a tune wedgie that I can’t get out of my head, snow or not. I also really dig the organ accompaniment and background singer shout-outs!
Leslie Cours Mather is the daughter of a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army. Born in Singapore, she has lived all over the world and even attended Vanderbilt University in Music City (Nashville) Tennessee. A chance business meeting introduced her to legendary producer / record executive Denny Diante, who put her back in Nashville with the “Wrecking Crew” at Blackbird Studios which is less than a mile from where I used to live there! The result of that meeting is the album, “COUNTRIFIED”, which is due to drop in 2016.
With influences ranging from Linda Ronstadt to Martina McBride and Trisha Yearwood, Mather presents a powerful vocal style that is uniquely her own and from which she sends us this musical Christmas present. Her eyes mesmerize on this ode to Mrs. Claus.
Check it out:
Leslie supports Therapeutic Advances in Childhood Leukemia and Lymphoma (TACL) and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles among other philanthropic endeavors. Season’s Greetings!
I kiss this tune with five mistletoes because I believe it will become the needed, new timeless classic Country music addition to our Christmas music fare.
I played this song while a afternoon fill-in DJ for the late Jerry Bledsoe on WWRL AM 1600 radio, New York City, the original Black American music station in the nation, circa 1983 after doing the 2AM – 6 AM shift on North Haven, Connecticut’s WKCI/KC101FM. I really never knew what this song was about until now – domestic violence, which they did not have a name for back then. Songs come and go sometimes when you are a radio personality. I guess I did not have time to analyze every lyric and message. Sometimes you just like the “sound” of the hook of a hit record, it seems to topically fit your personal experiences and it sticks.
“Too Late” by Junior is on par with and, in my mind, the follow-up to the SMASH hit, “Mama Used to Say”, IMO.
I am humbled and shocked by my naivete` not originally knowing what this song was about. Until a few minutes ago, I thought it was about unrequited love and the breaking up of two lovers! When I heard it in my musical jukebox mind and found it finally on YouTube, it was always about her being “too late” because I have moved-on to another relationship. Yeah, Right! As-if I always had that control, lol.
That was what I was all about in the early 1980s. If I’d really listened to the vamp, “I don’t have to stay with you, I can take the kids and go” I might have gleaned a more clean analysis. Such is life.
I am blown away that this song was so far ahead of its time, preceding the “OJ Simpson trial” and all of the ancillary offshoots that precipitated the lame and unecessary reality television of today that has contributed to the dumbing-down of America that now permeates every aspect of society, from how people drive their cars to our manners and morality. I wonder now, was this Junior’s experience, growing up?
I could/can never tolerate when a nice-looking lady told me her man “beat her up”. How cowardly! And I always say, “Just leave him!” Yet, curiously, in most cases they made excuses not to do so! WTF? If someone I was living with was violent, it would not take me a second heartbeat thought to get the f*** out! Yet, many women seem to think differently regarding this, despite the physical abuse and stay upon a bullshit excuse.
**PICKHITT: This can become an anthem for the “MeToo” movement.
“When he comes home intoxicated from the club
All the kids they go and snuggle up to mom
He starts shoutin’ again, and they start runnin’ again
This ain’t no life for them to lead
In her mind she knows she has to let him go
In the children’s eyes she sees the fear inside
How does she tell him, he won’t take nothin’
This ain’t no life for them to lead
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to go
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to go
In the morning when he wakes up from the couch
Not recallin’ what had happened the night before
He starts askin’ questions, he don’t get no answers
What the hell’s goin’ on in here
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to go
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to go
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to go
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to
She starts saying she can’t take it no more
When he comes home he always beats her to the floor
This old line she’s givin’, hey, about them leavin’
He can’t take it at all
But it’s too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to go
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye (I just got to let you know)
Now’s my time to go (Yeah, yeah)
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye
Now’s my time to go
Too late, too late, baby, bye-bye (Bye-bye)
Now’s my time to
Too late (Too late), too late, baby, bye-bye (Too late, yeah)
Now’s my time to go (I don’t want to be around you)
Too late, too late (I just got to take the kids and go), baby, bye-bye (Oh, no)
Now’s my time to go…”
Yeah, indeed this tune wedgie just came to haunt me as if she really called or emailed me a “letter”…You have heard this one before, right? It is a classic “tune wedgie” from The Box Tops!
“Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter
I don’t care how much money I gotta spend
Got to get back to baby again
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter
Well, she wrote me a letter
Said she couldn’t live without me no more
Listen mister, can’t you see I got to get back
To my baby once-a more
Anyway, yeah!
Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter
Well, she wrote me a letter
Said she couldn’t live without me no more
Listen mister, can’t you see I got to get back
To my baby once-a more
Anyway, yeah!
Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane
Ain’t got time to take a fast train
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter
My baby, just-a wrote me a letter ”
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