This song came to me yesterday morning, Labor Day Sunday 2023. Was it because it was a Sunday and I was feeling past church vibes? Probably. Most likely with lyrics like, “let us pray that tomorrow/let the birds in the trees/we gonna sing glory hallelujah so the whole wide world can hear..” will get you up and into that mentality when you have a jukebox brain like I have.
Back in those college days in the early 1970s, we looked at Soul Train as “our” American Bandstand, and that was okay!
To mentally stumble upon The O’Jays’ “Put Your Hands Together” via my jukebox mind in the morning of this 2023 September and then by the same late night again, is to trip into this performance, with full band on Don Cornelius’ “Soul Train”, and truly excite and blows my disc jockey mind. Whatta great performance!! Eddie Lavert and Walter Williams are quite the succinct tandem rockin the house!
But look past the three guys singing, if you will, and you’ll appreciate the many players who put this production together. The guitar and bass guy behind them; the camera pans right so we can see the concert master orchestrating the accents and crescendo!
**This post should REALLY be on my satellite, musik-ONLY blog site, www.https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/ so please patiently indulge me to move it there because blogging has proved time-consuming without any monetary rewards through the years since 2009, when someone I used to know tricked me into thinking I could make lucre doing this. It is nothin’ more than this writer jacking off.
Seldom does “Friday the thirteenth” and the June full lunar moon coincide as it does this year into what they call a “Full Honey Moon”. I just had a glimpse of it as I prepared the trash in the alley,stopping by to check on my eighty-nine year old mother!
Having resisted the melancholy all of this torrential rainy, humid day after a treacherous work week, it has finally gotten the best of me and I have to express some of “Who I Am” visa v one of my favorite and legendary Rhythm and Blues groups, The O’Jays. I have written about them elsewhere herein my blog, but never included this obscure one [song] and wonder now, fondly, with all of us getting older, if they even are a performing group anymore? I pray so while knowing that “Father Time” lectures over our skills as his clock ticks. So the “full honey moon” means that we have the best chance now to all be gone soon according to prophecies!
So “Who Am I?” To question or feel insecure or maybe on the cusp of declaration?
Like Popeye The Sailorman, “I am what I am, and that’s all that I am.”
I just was strong,
Then I became weakened by loneliness.
Emboldened by prayer and faith,
I reclaimed that I am aware;
The unseen realm working in-favor of my goals,
Frustration notwithstanding,
Strong declarations demanding.
Who are YOU?
These days, do you enjoy common sense?
Can you stand the test – of time?
I know of one who is sublime;
Reaching deeply into your soul,
I pray that you find someone and who you are,
Before your bones grow too old.
This lunar conjunction has not occurred in over one century;
Therefore calls into question whether we will ever fulfill our destinies.
Music is the only thing that can make this right while she is so far away from me.
Tears near both my eyes…
Here I am again in this mean old town
And you’re so far away from me
And where are you when the sun goes down
You’re so far away from me
So far away from me
So far I just can’t see
So far away from me
You’re so far away from me
I’m tired of being in love and being all alone
When you’re so far away from me
I’m tired of making out on the telephone
And you’re so far away from me
So far away from me
So far I just can’t see
So far away from me
You’re so far away from me
I get so tired when I have to explain
When you’re so far away from me
See you been in the sun and I’ve been in the rain
And you’re so far away from me
So far away from me
So far I just can’t see
So far away from me
You’re so far away from me
Forever,
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,600 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 75 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 91 posts. There were 44 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 4mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was December 6th with 78 views. The most popular post that day was My Vinyl – The O’Jays.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were en.wordpress.com, mail.yahoo.com, help.automattic.com, WordPress Dashboard, and translate.google.com.ua.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for farve penis, quicksand sinking, achilliad, old fashioned thermometer, and al goodman.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
**Thank U WordPress! JUST when I was thinking about giving up this waste of my time for no pay, you give me encouragement! lol I guess the skinny kid’s done good for a change, eh? Now I have to come up with some more stuff! As for 2010 personally? A wide range of emotions and events, from the FLOODS here… my newest true friend, Rodney Irvin suddenly dying at only 45 yrs old…getting suddenly terminated by citadel radio…meeting my true soulmate via overseas online site I posted a profile to…discovering Skype(!)…going on freakin’ food stamps for a while…doin’ the “man Friday” thing…finally publishing my first poetry book…holding eviction at-bay (for now at least)…litigating and end to a nightmare albatross (as soon as my advocate receives the receipt)…and words written…so MANY words…Thank you again for the stats and encouragement that I will try to live up to, humbly and with an eye towards coaching us all UP and not dumbing us further down. Happy New Year! I pray, may I finally get some needed $$ in early 2011 so I can get my documents to go overseas to connect with my soon-to-be beautiful inside and out, “other half” and continue to create and increase awareness that clean water will be the next “oil crisis” unless we pay strict attention to insuring that it says that way.
I don’t want to wait until one of the members of this group dies or something similar to do this one.
I have avoided most R&B music ever since having a traumatic termination experience at the last R&B radio outlet I diligently performed on, and tirelessly worked for getting exceptional “ratings”, when I was literally “fired” as the individual who hired me, (the GM) used a load gun in-hand while he dismissed me. Seemy book, “He’s In A Meeting…” for how it played-out thereafter. However, today I shot a promotional video, where I had creative control, and in one of “those” moments, it came to me that this particular O’Jays song was the perfect background theme song. “As luck would have it”, I have now pulled my whole O’Jays catalog from me library to me desk, Mon. Let us see what we have here….
Hailing from Canton, Ohio, I believe and named after one of my favorite and much-missed radio disc jockey inspirations, the late Eddie O’Jay, these cats have been part of the fabric of my life since their first big album dropped in 1972 as I was a freshman in college. I first listened to Eddie O’Jay on Newark, New Jersey’s WNJR AM where he scatted such cool gibberish as “So cool, docaroo; eh-tu, me and you, sabee-doo!” LOL as part of his daily sign-off the air. For a long time I didn’t connect the group with the radio personality – “Duh??” Just like I didn’t know they were originally a quartet that included Bobby Isles – my parents tried to keep my from what they described as the “gut-bucket music” R&B table; what can I say except, that I broke free in college, rapido-style, in order to catch-up.
Last I paid serious attention, The O’Jays are/were Eddie Lavert, William Powell and Walter Williams. They came to hit status due to the writing prowess of Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble in the early 1970s and to me, their signature is the almost rough and churchy- energetic vamping of lead singer, Mr. Lavert. He is the male standard for “bringing a song home”! He knows how to put the “beg” on the woman in-song, is smooth and soft; or “nice and rough” as Tina Turner once described their “Rolling On The River”. Moreover, do not get it twisted, all three of the O’Jays can carry the lead.
My oldest O’Jays vinyl is “Backstabbers” which featured the classics ‘Love Train”, “Sunshine”, “Time To Get Down”, and of course the title track that became a euphemism for me and my college mates back then when it became known that another man was after “your’ girl – he then dubbed was a “Backstabber (what they do!)”.
Thanks to the promotion people I remember at CBS Records (the “black rock building” like Jackie Thomas, Elaine Valentine and T.C. Tompkins, I own about seventeen O’Jays vinyls. Of course, growing up in music within the sound of Frankie Crocker’s “total Black Experience In Sound, ” WBLS FM radio station did not hurt my O’Jay education nor catalog. I remember him “running” the hit “For The Love Of Money” over and over again! This was an era prior to “remixed versions” that are just part of the music machine fabric nowadays. My second oldest is “The O”Jays in Philadelphia” which includes “‘One Night Affair”, which was my first 45rpm by them from the local record shop on Neptune Records.
Then there is the classic (another one!) “Ship Ahoy”, where in addition to “Money”, I always dug “Put Your Hands Together”, “People Keep Telling Me” and “Now That We Found Love” which the reggae group Third World made a smash out of too! Next is “The O’Jays Live In London” which, when released, was kind of a first. A reverse Beatles moment when an American “soul” group went across the “pond” and “wowed” the Brits! (I couldn’t find any video for that appearance, sadly)
Next are my vinyls: “Family Reunion”, featuring the love classic “You and Me” as well as the sometimes over-played, IMHO, title track, the cool “Living For The Weekend”, McFadden and Whitehead-written “She’s Only A Woman”, and a little ditty called “I Love Music” which became a disco classic upon remixes by the likes of yours truly and other selectors of the day. Positioning that track last on that album was genius! Next I have the “Survival” album featuring “Give The People What They Want” and my personal fave, “How Time Flies”; next 1976’s “Message In The Music” featuring the ultimate dance floor-filler classic of it’s time, “Darlin’ Darlin’ Baby (Sweet, Tender, Love)” – I still have the 12″ versions separate from the rest, LOL. You just heard it here (and I dedicate it to my Ukrainian, Nina, by-the-way).
Following that platinum success the guys were ‘Travelin’ At The Speed Of Thought” (an interlude in their discography) until they discovered they were “So Full Of Love” which included their first real “crossover” sure shot into the mainstream of Pop music, “She Used Ta Be My Girl”. I can name THAT tune in the first several guitar riff notes and it always reminds me of my first commercial radio riff on WFLB AM in 1978. “Identify Yourself” took the stage on Philadelphia International/Mighty Three Music in 1979 where “Forever Mine’ was the star song. In 1982 my collection features the non-descriptive “My Favorite Person” album, which was only saved by the title song and the Womack connection on the first song, “I Just Want To Satisfy You” which played big in New York City radio because of Crocker and Sonny Taylor. Play it again, “Sam”! A rare dud for the group was the vinyl, “When Will I See You Again”, and I knew that they should take a powder for a while after it. Sure enough, the came back in 1984 and 1984 with “Love and More” and did a little bit better on “Love Fever”, but still not up to their previous standards until the album that inspired this post, 1987’s “Let Me Touch You”. This effort showcases all the styles, spectrums and signatures of The O’Jays as exemplified by a Latin-funky “True Love Never Dies” on one song and then a heartfelt “Still Missing” on the next.
So which one is my favorite album or cut? Well, there are way too many to mention! I love “Darlin’ Baby” the same way I dig “Lovin’ You” or “When The World Is At Peace”. I am sure , and at least HOPE that they are still making music and albums/CDs. I am not in the “loop” anymore with their labels like it was easy “back in the day” to keep up, and I want to cry about it.
Not the “Old Jays” as I recently heard some young homies disrespectfully refer to them, but still the O’JOINTS! Ya know, “True love” really “never dies”. We Love you Eddie Lavert!
So what are your favorite O’Jays songs or concert moments? Or had you ever even heard of them until you read this?
I don’t want to wait until one of the members of this group dies or something similar to do this one. 
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