What the world needs now

Burt Bacharach, who composed the music that was the soundtrack to the lives of people all over the world for generations, is gone. He died yesterday at 94.

The beautiful thing about Burt Bacharach’s songs is that they were so widely heard yet made such intensely personal connections. Which is why, as I list my favorite Burt Bacharach songs and interpreters, someone else might have an entirely different short list of equally great Burt Bacharach songs and interpreters. You just can’t go wrong with his body of work.

My introduction to Burt Bacharach’s songs came on the TV variety shows of the ’60s. Those were regular viewing at our house. I may have known the singer before knowing the composer, but I knew the songs.

“Walk On By” — Dionne Warwick, 1964. Probably the first song by Bacharach (and lyricist Hal David) that I came to know. A year later, the Baja Marimba Band covered it on one of the last albums my dad ever bought. You may not be familiar with this instrumental or this group, but it’s seared into my head. We played the bejeezus out of that record when we were kids. Plus my dad and I heard Dionne Warwick sing it live 15 years ago.

“Walk On By,” the Baja Marimba Band, from “Baja Marimba Band Rides Again,” 1965.

“What’s New Pussycat?” — Tom Jones, 1965. We kids would have had to have heard this on those old TV variety shows. How else would we have learned to sing “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” When we saw Tom Jones in Indianapolis last year, this was the fourth song in his set. He introduced it with a winding and good-natured retelling of the story of how he initially wasn’t impressed with the song, which Bacharach brought to him in 1965. “What’s New Pussycat?” became a sing-along, with Sir Tom directing the choir from his perch on the stage.

“What’s New Pussycat?” Tom Jones, from “What’s New Pussycat?” 1965.

“One Less Bell to Answer” — Keely Smith, 1967. Which is a perfectly fine version. But for me, the definitive version is by Marilyn McCoo with The 5th Dimension in 1970. It starts cool but turns into a scorcher of a torch song. I’d listen to Marilyn McCoo read the phone book. (Oh, yeah, dating myself there.) The 5th Dimension is one of the great (and underrated and underappreciated) singing groups of our time. Just watch them in “Summer of Soul,” the Questlove documentary on the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969.

“One Less Bell to Answer,” The 5th Dimension, from “Portrait,” 1970.

“What the World Needs Now Is Love” — Jackie DeShannon, 1965. That version is great, but the one that sticks with me is the one I heard so often on the radio in 1971 — “What the World Needs Now Is Love/Abraham, Martin and John” — a remix/mashup produced by Los Angeles DJ Tom Clay. Fierce social commentary and a contemporary American history lesson laid over/juxtaposed with Bacharach’s gentle, elegant classic. This version is sung by the Blackberries, the great West Coast trio best known as much-in-demand backup singers — Venetta Fields, Sherlie Matthews and Clydie King.

“(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” — Lou Johnson, 1964. Don’t remember hearing this original soul version, (on which Cissy Houston, Dee Dee Warwick and Doris Troy sing backup) or British pop singer Sandie Shaw’s cover later in 1964, or even R.B. Greaves’ cover in 1970 (which I discovered almost 40 years later). No, I don’t think I came to know this one until it became an MTV-driven synth-pop smash for Naked Eyes in 1983, and that is my definitive version.

“Casino Royale” — Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, 1967. Late to the party on this one, too. Always knew it was a cool instrumental. Never connected the dots to Burt Bacharach, though.

Four, maybe five years ago, my friend Jeff bought my copy of the “Casino Royale” soundtrack. Instant seller’s remorse. Wasn’t too long before I bought it back from him.

Burt Bacharach was married four times, once memorably to Angie Dickinson. They were the super cool, super glamorous couple of their time, the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s. But now Burt is gone and the gorgeous Angie is 91.

Say a little prayer for them both.

Peace, someday, if you want it

The first Christmas wish

Christmas bells, those Christmas bells
Ringing through the land
Bringing peace to all the world
And good will to man

“Snoopy’s Christmas,” the Royal Guardsmen, from “Snoopy and His Friends,” 1967.

In 1965, Charles Schulz started drawing Snoopy as a World War I flying ace battling the Red Baron. But “it reached a point where war just didn’t seem funny,” he told biographer Rheta Grimsley Johnson. Even so, Snoopy and the Red Baron inspired this novelty Christmas song with explosions, gunfire and a message of hope that came as the Vietnam War escalated.

The second Christmas wish

Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime

“Someday at Christmas,” Stevie Wonder, from “Someday at Christmas,” 1967.

My friend Derek reminded me of this one on Christmas Eve morning a couple of years ago. When Stevie sings of “men” throughout this one, songwriter Ron Miller clearly means everyone, of any age.

I have this cut on “A Motown Christmas” from 1973, a comp I’ve had since I was in college in the late ’70s.

The third Christmas wish

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy new year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear

“Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Community Choir, released as a single, 1971.

War is over, if you want it

Merry Christmas, mein friends!

Enjoy your holidays, everyone!

Digging that holiday soul!

As this holiday season arrived, I just couldn’t bring myself to listen to Christmas music. I used to collect it. I’ve heard so much of it. The most popular, most familiar, most mainstream Christmas songs … yeesh.

Then, after Thanksgiving, Sirius XM hijacked Soul Town and dropped Holiday Soul on Channel 49. For the first few days, nope, nope, nope, I’d flip one channel up to The Groove for the ’80s and ’90s R&B played there.

Eventually, though, I’d heard enough drum machines, took a deep breath and flipped it back to Holiday Soul. I stayed with it and found it to be a bit like being in the coolest, classiest Black nightclub, the kind that no longer exists.

Sirius XM describes the Holiday Soul channel this way:

“Classic soul and Motown holiday music from the ’60s and ’70s, along with R&B holiday music from the ’80s and early ’90s, including Aretha Franklin, Temptations, James Brown, Lou Rawls, Smokey Robinson, Dionne Warwick, The Jackson 5, The Four Tops, The Supremes, John Legend, Boyz II Men & many more!”

That is true, but there’s more to it. Motown and Stax are the backbone, of course, but the vibe is jazz and gospel. Because the playlist consists of almost entirely Black artists — many of whom were and are steeped in the gospel tradition — the music seems richer than more mainstream Christmas music.

“This Christmas,” the Donny Hathaway single released in 1970, remains THE Black Christmas standard. As I write this a week out from Christmas Eve, covers of it by Gladys Knight and The Pips, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Stephanie Mills, The Whispers, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis have been played 475 times in the past 30 days, along with Hathaway’s original 79 times.

Back at that nightclub, the one that oozes cool, there’s Nancy Wilson singing “That’s What I Want For Christmas.” There’s Lou Rawls singing “Merry Christmas, Baby” and “Winter Wonderland.” There are the Coles, Nat singing “The Christmas Song,” Natalie singing “My Grown-Up Christmas List.” All no longer with us, a time and a sense of elegance lost.

Pleasant surprises include some cuts from “My Gift To You,” the 1988 LP from R&B singer Alexander O’Neal that’s long been one of my favorites and one I’ve long thought to be underrated and/or underappreciated. Also some cuts from “Christmas is 4 Ever,” the 2006 LP from Parliament-Funkadelic bassist Bootsy Collins, one as funky and quirky as you’d expect, and another of my favorites.

But if there’s one song that’s been a highlight, it’s this one:

“Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” Lou Rawls, from “Merry Christmas Ho! Ho! Ho!,” 1967. Complete with swinging and impeccably classy production by David Axelrod.

Outta sight, indeed.

Harvey Scales: ‘You know how it is’

50 years ago this evening, on Dec. 7, 1972, Milwaukee soul singer Harvey Scales got top billing and a rave review in Warren Gerds’ weekly club music column in the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

“Scales is a dynamo on stage, one of those startling guys who is a constant live wire. At the Sans Souci, the dance floor is his stage. He roams it, putting the microphone through acrobatic stunts, falling to his knees, singing in blazing fashion. When people talk about singers with soul, Scales was one of the originators. He’s always been kinetic. …

“His Seven Sounds, which has been backing him for seven years, is a powerhouse, too. At times, it roars, with the beat pulsating.”

Gerds, then in his late 20s, testified with authority.

“Scales is one of the few cats still around from my college days (in Milwaukee). I remember him still as Twistin’ Harvey. He was a phenomenon on his campus visits.”

Harvey Scales and his Seven Sounds Unlimited were no strangers to Green Bay, two hours north of Milwaukee. In the late ’60s, a young Harvey Scales had played at the 616 Club and the Piccadilly, plus a Riverside Ballroom gig “with Chubby Checker, when he was hot,” he said.

On this visit, the 30-year-old Scales — “Put me down as 29, though. Spare me,” he told Gerds — was riding high, seemingly on the verge of breaking through after playing clubs for 11 years.

Scales had played some tapes for Isaac Hayes while performing in Chicago. Hayes liked them and recommended him to Stax Records, which gave Scales a recording contract and released a single.

“I Wanna Do It,” released in 1972, was a steamy bit of funk that clearly was influenced by Hayes’ style as heard on the “Shaft” soundtrack a year earlier.

“The current record for Scales is being bought by black audiences in Washington, Cleveland and Chicago,” Gerds wrote. “Not many sales here.”

Nope, you likely couldn’t find it — or hear it — in Green Bay unless you were at one of Scales’ shows during his two-week stand at the Sans Souci out on Main Street on the southeast side.

“You know how it is,” Scales told Gerds, acknowledging the realities.

13 years ago, my friend Jameson Harvey — the proprietor of the still-mighty Flea Market Funk blog — came across the 45. His review:

It’s a stone cold groove. This wah wah guitar and drums that are unfuckable with (look that up internet junkies). Scales wants some of that Funky Thang, but when he asks the bass to funk up the place because it ain’t no disgrace, you know the man is serious as a heart attack.

You know how that is.

Decades later, Harvey Scales was still serious as a heart attack, bringing that stone cold groove when he was in his 60s and 70s.

I’m too young to have seen Harvey Scales in his prime, but I was fortunate to see latter-day versions of Harvey Scales and the Seven Sounds at a small outdoor show in 2010 and then in a steamy tent on the Fourth of July in 2013. Kinda felt like I was seeing one of the last of the great soul and R&B revues.

One last note, found while looking for something else: In August 1967, one Harvey L. Scales, 25, of Milwaukee, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Milwaukee for failing to report to his draft board. Can’t find how that turned out, but it doesn’t appear to have slowed his career.

That June, Harvey Scales and the Seven Sounds had released a single, “Love-Itis/Get Down,” on Magic Touch Records. By that October, “Get Down” was in the national charts.

(H/T to my friend Larry Grogan for this rip, presented in more than one of his Funky 16 Corners mixes. Larry also wrote about the A side of the “I Wanna Do It” release — “What’s Good For You (Don’t Have To Be Good To You)” — on his blog in 2016.)

3 timeless Christmas wishes

The first wish

Christmas bells, those Christmas bells
Ringing through the land
Bringing peace to all the world
And good will to man

“Snoopy’s Christmas,” the Royal Guardsmen, from “Snoopy and His Friends,” 1967.

In 1965, Charles Schulz started drawing Snoopy as a World War I flying ace battling the Red Baron. But “it reached a point where war just didn’t seem funny,” he told biographer Rheta Grimsley Johnson. Even so, Snoopy and the Red Baron inspired this novelty Christmas song with explosions, gunfire and a solid message of hope that came as the Vietnam War escalated.

The second wish

Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime

“Someday at Christmas,” Stevie Wonder, from “Someday at Christmas,” 1967.

My friend Derek reminded me of this one on Christmas Eve morning a couple of years ago. When Stevie sings of “men” throughout this one, songwriter Ron Miller clearly means everyone, of any age.

I have this cut on “A Motown Christmas” from 1973, a comp I’ve had since I was in college in the late ’70s. Back then, “A Festival Of Carols In Brass” by the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble from 1967 was the only other Christmas record I had. Probably the next one was “The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album” from 1968 — here’s some of that.

The third wish

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy new year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear

“Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Community Choir, released as a single, 1971. I’d always had it on “Shaved Fish,” the 1975 compilation LP from Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band, until I found the single.

War is over, if you want it

Merry Christmas, mein friends!

Enjoy your holidays, everyone!