My Vinyl Goodbyes – Geraldine Hunt

Wow, what a time period!!  As I am in a “winter of personal decluttering” and purging paper, vinyl and other “stuff” not essential for the duration, ahead of spring, I find that Father Time is people-paralleling me. 

Every time I look up a long favorite recording artist these days, I “Google” them and see news of their recent death!  OMGosh!  WTF? It began with Irene Cara this past December.   I look in my mirror after a hot shower, feeling strongly renewed and yet the treadmill churns towards all of our eventual oblivion, which is mortality I feel for the first times in my history.     Yet, my secret, which The Creator advises me not to write about here,  keeps me younger than the chronological.

Writing all of this to shake my head that when I decided to rehab my cherished 12″ single of “Can’t Fake The Feeling” by Geraldine Hunt’s jacket and decided to see what she is up to these days, I learned that she too is a recent Reaper musical loss.   https://www.soultracks.com/story-geraldine-hunt-dies

“Can’t Fake The Feeling” is one of my Hall of Fame party music classics from the 1980s where I cut many eye teeth using it as a floor filler on gig nights.  She followed  it up with “Heart Heart”, a slightly less bumping similar track that was definitely not wack.

Both were culled from the  1980 Prism Records album, “No Way” [PLP 1006]; Prism was basically a metro New York City presence, but the promo reps were super cool to DJs like me back then and I give them major props!  Geraldine was streetwise attitude with class like all my similar sistahs from other mistahs of that ilk, and that is one reason I miss and love her.

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Music Reaffirms Affirmation Always

Dateline: January 30, 2023; Richmond Virginia

It is a very rejuvenating time in contemporary music when our beloved icon, Smokey Robinson (remember “Smokey Robinson & The Miracles”?) and The SOS Band (“Baby You Can Do It Take Your Time” – 1980) both have new music out, probably shocking the Billboard music charts back into the reality of the longevity of musical artists creativity, as long as we have breath! So please listen and enjoy..

Pick Hit Suggestion: If you want to continue to live and physically love longer and healthier, don’t tell people how “old” you are and keep working out at the gym. Never let chronological years suppress your energetic creativity, and keep in shape.

As always, please check back to the Mothership blog, www.achilliad.wordpress.com for otherworldly non-musical topics.

Time Tunnel 2022: Kool and the Gang at The Blue Note w/DJ Jimi B

Their first album, 1969

This is the second in my 2022 series of remembered radio interviews which I conducted during my heydays on music radio as a Disc Jockey for forty years.  Jersey City, New Jersey’s Kool & The Gang were, if memory serves me correctly, one of/if not thee first band my parents, who kept a tight reign on me, allowed me to go and see by myself. The timing was late by today’s “standards” but timely in retrospect.  I saw them first at the RKO Alden Theater on Jamaica Avenue and then at the Loews’s Valenca, which was across the street from the Alden.  Shortly thereafter, their first Album, “Kool and the Gang” came out on De-Lite Records in 1969.

Back in the day, my new neighbors wanted to form a band, which was the thing to do if you played a musical instrument back then.  Forced to practice the trumpet, I briefly found an outlet with those like-minded neighbors who moved into the neighborhood and had two sons the same age as I was.  Of course, we emulated Kool and the Gang’s horn-based group (as many of them were in those days – see Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Tower of Power or The Ides Of March) by learning new hits like “Chocolate Buttermilk”, “Let The Music Take Your Mind” and their title track, dance steps included!

“The Frog”

Mostly confined to the R&B/Soul/Urban or Black Music chart of the Billboard, Cashbox and Record World music industry magazines of the day, Kool, et al, would not “cross over” into the mainstream of Top 40 recognition until after “Celebration” came out in 1980.

 “Ladies Night” (1979) also took the band into the mainstream and was a very hot request during my gigs in the 1980s and ‘90s. I ended-up getting all of my early DJ Promo copies of their albums from Mr. Ted Eddy (“Mister Teddy” they called him, affectionately) from De-Lite Records’ office in midtown Manhattan, NYC thought the mid-1980s.

I can’t count how many times “Celebration” was requested at every wedding, graduation, anniversary or birthday party I spun since then – and by folks that I knew had never listened to Kool and the Gang previously! It was amusing.

Sadly, during the past couple of years, two of the founding member of the group died: Dennis “D.T.” Thomas (alto sax) and Ronald Bell (tenor sax, bass, keys), making us all feel just a little bit “older”.  Show business and longevity are not exactly compatible, in most cases.

November, 1976

I wish that the following recorded interview covered what I’ve written above, but alas, in 20/20 retrospect, maybe I was a wee bit awe-struck and I didn’t follow up my questions journalistically, while interviewing such guys as these, who I had idolized.  

 Here, backstage at The Blue Note, New York City, Kool (Robert Bell) talks about a future direction for the bank and we had five minutes of laughs.

Remember, for our non-musical musings swing over to the Mothership blog, https://achilliad.wordpress.com/

Time Tunnel 2022 – Nancy Wilson, Jazz Icon with Jimi B.

Welcome to “On-Location from The Time Tunnel”. A new series of sharing my curating, where I revisit past celebrity interviews I landed, to educate and keep the feeling (and music) alive eternally. Now that my music collection is finally out of storage, I wish to – with apologies to you who were a fan of the “My Vinyls” on my mothership blog, achilliad.wordpress.com – catch up on some of these artists who have been on my mind to share.  Unfortunately, and true to part of the reason that I started writing these tributes, some/many of them are not with us anymore in the physical world.  

One such superstar, who I wish I’d had the ability to get around to while she was alive, is Nancy Wilson, the singer who taught me, the English major, the usage of the word “superfluous” during this interview in 1994! Ms. Wilson recorded over fifty albums on Capitol, Columbia music record labels and even had a television show at one point in her career! It was and still is and honor to have been in her company for this brief talk – so much so that it almost breaks me down to tears as I write these words. Please feel the magic and enjoy because in spite of it all, the best is yet to come. Here are a few of her albums, which I own:

 

To say she could “carry a tune” would be a gross understatement

Ms. Wilson transitioned on December 13, 2018.

Cassette

And now for the interview:

As always, remember to check out “the mothership”, www.achilliad.wordpress.com for recent, non-musical content.

My Vinyl: 45rpm “Fool For You” by The Impressions, 1968

Often in my diary life…I do not need to say or cannot sway, because other composers have said it a better way. About this time or year, 1968, I copped this 45rpm by The Impressions, “Fool For You” on the way home from school in Queens, NYC.

From the first one-two-three drum beats it is a classic and is one of my anthems because of the true lyrics – which you can see at my blog. The drummer on this session really works it OUT and makes the record happen!! This is an EXTENDED remixed version…”Hoo hoo hoo hooI’m a fool for you, ah ha ha ha hoo!!”

“Never liked nobody
That’s been mean to me
I’ve got a heart full of stone
And I hate the misery

Then you came along
Into my life
Destroying me man
Mounting up the toil and strife
But I’m a fool for you
I’m a fool for you
I’m a fool for you
I’m a fool for you
Guess I’ll always be
And I claim it famously
‘Cause I’m a fool for you

It’s a doggone shame
Knowin’ you don’t love me
You go on and use me
So continuously
I don’t know why
I love you like I do
When you’re breaking my heart
And you know it’s true
But I’m a fool for you
I’m a fool for you
I’m a fool for you
I’m a fool for you

Doggin’ me every day
But child, I’m here to stay
‘Cause I’m a fool for you

You don’t want me to stay
But I’m a fool for you
Do me wrong now every day
Child, I’m a fool for you
Ah ha ha ha ha hoo
I’m a fool for you,

Ah ha ha ha ha ha hoo!
Child, I’m a fool for you
Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo Hooo!”

One of My Most Unlikely Favorite Recording Artists – Kenny Rogers

 

I began my musical journey listening to New York AM radio playing Top 40 hits, Soul and Middle of the Road (MOR). There was no FM band back then.

So, maybe its not a total stretch that, after I became a radio DJ myself – mostly on Top 40 stations – that Kenny Rogers ultimately became one of my topmost unlikely to be one of my favorite singers!

Originally, it was “Kenny Rogers and The First Edition”, a group from the 1970s psychedelic era. I think I first heard of them on the first commercials for aluminum cans or The Ed Sullivan show, which my parents never missed.   I didn’t really track that band as I moved in a more “black music” direction – as in Motown.   I just learned that Kenny was part of The New Christie Minstrels in the very early 1960s!

As I recall, the first Kenny Rogers song I played as part of a radio station rotation was “Share Your Love With Me” in 1980. Followed by “She Believes In Me” in ’81.  Correct me if I’m wrong and if I worked with you on the radio, but, if I’m not mistaken, we played that one and “The Gambler” in-rotation simultaneously for a while. “You Decorated My Life” was hot as I joined a Worcester, Massachusetts Top 40, doing overnights.  You gotta remember that, I was seriously into Disco music as a club DJ also during those times, so the two genres clashed in my musical mind! 

Then came “Coward of The County”, a hit I had a hate/love relationship because when it was hot, I’d have to sometimes play it 3 times during my overnight shift!  It lasted long in the early 1980s on the airwaves.  “Through The Years”, those were the days of my initial Country music appreciation classes – little did I know that I’d end-up living and working in the Nashville, Tennessee music radio industry in a score.

I came to happily really appreciate and respect the music and the man, Kenny Rogers.

“Morning Desire” from his 1985 album, “Heart Of The Matter”.  Great vamp-til-fade guitar solo by Stanley Jordan!  I used this song as my opening theme during my brief tries at being a morning disc jockey on WBAU FM, Garden City (now defunct). It describes how I felt on many a night , when I had to leave my lover to go to work on the air.

 

**Please be sure to check out whats popular over at my “mothership blog”, achilliad.wordpress.com!  Thanking you in-advance.

Marvin Gaye Finally Has His Own US Postal Service Stamp! I Wonder What He’d Say…

Would he ask, “What’s Goin On?” Or say, “What’s Happenin’ Brother”?  Maybe he would have suspected this day would come and say “Oh I Heard It Through The Grapevine”… followed by, “I’ll Be Doggone” upon looking at it for the first time!  ‘Did you hear you have your own postage letter stamp, Mr. Gaye!?  Naw Man, I’m “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby”.’

Or, maybe he would not like the likeness of himself and have the “Inner City Blues” (Make Me Wanna Holler)”.  And by-the-way, why didn’t they use a red wool cap on his head like on the “Lets Get It On” album cover?

Or he might say nothing much, like in “Trouble Man” or “T” Plays It Cool…

 If he went to the Post Office and tried to get a mat of them, and the postal worker at the counter didn’t recognize him and asked for “$8.18, please…”, Marvin might go, “Oh, Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)”.     

If they asked him to advertise the stamp, he could say to all of us, “Come Get To This!”, even.

He might be overjoyed and say, “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You”, Postal Service!  Marvin might view the honor with “Joy” and consider it the “Dream Of A Lifetime”. He’d say that you “Got To Give It Up” to the mail carriers and message the Postmaster General, “You’re A Wonderful One”!

 

He might suggest a “Diana & Marvin” stamp to bring the honor “All The Way Around”. “Gates” as we called him, would certainly have thought a stamp dedicated to “Save The Children” would be more appropriate.

The philosophical Marvin might reply to the interview question about how it feels to be honored with a postage stamp with, “That’s The Way Love Is”.

In his soft-spoken way he might advise, if you write a love letter with hopes of getting a little “Sexual Healing”, that you seal the deal by using his stamp on the envelope…

On behalf of Marvin, I thank the USPS Musical Stamp Director for “Your Unchanging Love”.

 

*Remember to check out my mothership blog, achilliad.wordpress.com for more general topics and opinion.  Thanks for reading and commenting!

My Vinyl: James Ingram Impressions

I never, “Just Once”, met nor saw James Ingram “live” in-concert during my on-air disc jockey career travels from radio station-to-station. He wasn’t high on my list because he kind-of never rose to the level of Luther Vandross,, Lionel Richie or Al Green, but I dug his honest, loving sound and liked talking-up or back-announcing his records. He was maybe, too “clean”?

When “One Hundred Ways” came out in 1981, on Quincy Jones’ “The Dude” album (“the black album  cova”), I recall using that song to impress the lady of my desire who I was dating back then as a punctuation to a Valentine’s Day or anniversary day surprise.  It worked!

It is interesting how “Q” (Quincy Jones) always manages to find previously undiscovered voices and bring them to the fore successfully.

James Ingram and another similar R&B crooner, Jeffrey Osborne shared the same era in Urban soul music, competing for chart position in Billboard and other music industry trade magazines and papers of the day in the early 1980s.  I recall waking up to it in the middle of many afternoons when I was an overnight DJ – I was hooked by the soap opera, General Hospital at the time and somehow it became a theme song – I guess it was Luke and Laura’s love song…

 

I can still hear the late Frankie Crocker announce, “Patti Autin…James Ingram…Baby COME to Me….on 107.5,WBLS…” circa 1980.  

I have no special relationship between my vinyls of James Ingram.  They are just tools in his song catalog which, upon opening recall hints of past romance and love for me during that era.

 

 

Who Sang That?!

Its a game I play in my musical DJ mind as songs randomly “play” at any time of the night or day.

So last night as I lay,

In bed trying to fall asleep.

The light was off and the room darkest, when suddenly I heard, “And my feet begin to crumble…”  and couldn’t remember most of the rest except, “And that’s the way, that’s the way its meant to be/Our love will never die…”  Where’d that come from?  I asked myself and then began to play the game, “Who sang that!?”

Trini Lopez came to mind first because I could “hear” the Spanish guitar and rhythms. Often I amaze myself with the accuracy with which I remember blasts-from-the-past!  I knew this song was a hit on Top 40 radio back in my teen days.  Not wanting to get up and re-fire up the computer, I turned on my night light and scribbled what I remembered onto a sticky note pad.

Today, while researching something else on YouTube, it came back to me and I grabbed that note to see if I’d won my contest; went to Ask.com and just typed into the search field, “my feet begin to crumble” and “viola!”, I see the name Eddie Rambeau.  (“Wa,wa waaa”)   Hmmm, that doesn’t look or sound familiar, but I played the video and yes, it’s that song!  And the title?  I could have never guessed in a million tries, “Concrete And Clay”.

I would write more background on Eddie and this record, but this video gives it all to you first-hand.  Click on the YouTube logo in the lower right-hand corner for more 411 from the poster of this legendary tune.  With that, please Listen, Read and En-joy….

 

 

Do you remember it?

The Return of Chaka…

One of my favorite bartenders, who knows I like to write about music from time-to-time, shared with me that he’d recently seen Chaka Khan during a trip to a concert in Florida! Not that she ever went anywhere in my musical mind.  That is especially good to hear since last I heard, rumor had it that she had gone to dry-out in “rehab” or something like that.

I consider her a friendly acquaintance and kindred spirit, since we are of the same age and I’ve followed her career since the ’70s when I was a baby DJ in college.  She even sat on my lap backstage in the dressing room of The Blue Note jazz club in New York City one evening back in the early 1990s, as I was trying to get an interview with her.  She called me “cute”, like a royal Queen would compliment a young squire she might want to toy with and signed my copy of the “Rufusized” album. The late Natalie Cole was also in the room as well as Miki Howard.  One of my all time favorite, wall of fame nights.

It’s strange how I think of songs with my jukebox/DJ mind and then hear about or see that recording artist soon thereafter – if only I could perfect that talent with lottery game numbers!  I’d been thinking of this favorite tune from (what I call) “The Sweet Thing” album recently, “Little Boy Blue” playing in my mind.  Here are the lyrics:

“Time comes down
You got to take it on yourself
You got to give up your past
You got to give up what came last
World goes round
You got to leave it all behind
You got defeated at last

Little boy blue
With the feelin’ in your soul and the gypsy in your eyes
Little boy blue
You got to leave this song behind as it passes by

Yeah, yeah
Life goes on
You got to catch it if you can
You must believe it will last
You can’t remember what went past
Tide comes in

This fog will surely roll away
It can’t leave, it will stay

Little boy blue
Tootin’ on your coke and takin’ a toke
In a lazy haze
Little boy blue
Got to leave this song behind as it passes by”

Chaka was appearing with The Roots apparently.  This is great news and I pray our paths cross again.

What is/are your favorite song[s] from the Rufus featuring Chaka Khan or Chaka Khan as a solo singer era?  Let us know in the “Leave a reply” box please.