On this episode, we take a journey through the rich history of Stax Records, the iconic label that defined Southern Soul music, and I play some of my favorite Stax tracks from their earliest years– 1959 to 1963.

Stax produced some of the most unforgettable songs in music history. Join us as I spin up some of my personal favorites, featuring legends like Booker T. and the MGs, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, The Mar-Keys and Carla Thomas. Learn about the unique sound of Stax, the community that fostered it, and the incredible music that continues to resonate today.

Save 15% off t-shirts & merch from your favorite bands by using our discount code lovethatsong at OldGlory.com!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hold on, I’m coming– it’s the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast. My name is Brad Page, here on the Pantheon Podcast Network with another edition of the show.

If you’re familiar with this podcast, then you know what we usually do here is to take a song and examine it, looking at the structure, performance and production elements that go into making a great song. But on this episode, we’re going to do something a little different. This is something we’ve never done before.

We’ve looked at specific songs, specific artists, individual albums, and music that came out during certain key years. But this time, we’re going to take a look at the releases from one particular record label– one of the most important record labels in the history of popular music: Stax Records.

I love the music that came out on Stax Records from their humble studios in Memphis, Tennessee, in my opinion, some of the greatest music ever made. So much great music that there’s no way I could cover it all in just one episode. So, this is going to be the first in an occasional series. Well come back to it now and then over the next few years. Today, we begin our exploration of Stax with a look at my favorite Stax singles from 1959 through 1963.

I imagine most people are familiar with Motown– the “Sound of Young America”, as they used to say. It was fresh, urban; the sound coming from the black communities in the northern cities. The sound coming from Stax, well, that was different. It was more raw, more sweat, the sound of southern soul music.  Where Motown aspired to be uptown, Stax was down home.

It probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: This was music made primarily by, and for, Black Americans. But music this infectious, this good, couldn’t be contained. It made America a better place, and it caught the ear of people all around the world. But this is music born from segregated communities.. though it would not have been possible without black and white artists, black and white executives, working together, creating something together that was magical. But let’s be honest, it wasn’t always Kumbaya and rainbows. There were conflicts and challenges, and the limitations of integration at the time… I will leave that to the experts, the historians and the scholars. There are some fantastic books on the history of Stax, and there’s a fantastic documentary on HBO Max that I highly recommend.

The story of Stax is, like so many of our greatest stories, a story of triumph and tragedy, of serendipity and bad luck, of dreaming big and overreaching, of success and failure… and most importantly, the story of the music that has survived and outlasted it all.

And it all began in 1959 with Jim Stewart and his sister, Estelle Axton. Jim and Estelle were white, and they both worked in banking; Jim for First Tennessee, and Estelle for Union Planters Bank. But Jim’s real love was playing fiddle, which he did semi-professionally for a while. When Elvis Presley hit the big time with the records he made at Sun Studios in Memphis, well, that got Jim interested in recording. He made a few recordings, rockabilly and country stuff that didn’t really go anywhere.

But his sister Estelle mortgaged her House to buy an Ampex mono tape recorder, and she became an equal partner in the recording business. They set up their first studio, which they called “Satellite”, in Brunswick, Tennessee.

Jim Stewart didn’t really know anything about Rhythm & Blues, but somehow he got connected with a black vocal group named The Veltones, and they recorded a song at Satellite called “Fool In Love” in 1959. I don’t think it’s a particularly great song, it’s most memorable for its vibrato guitar sounds.

But that track was snatched up by Mercury Records and distributed nationally. It also brought Stewart in contact with Rufus Thomas, a singer and DJ on WDIA, the biggest black station in the area.

By now, Jim and Estelle had moved the studio into Memphis, setting up shop in an old movie theater at 926 Macklemore Avenue, in the heart of a black neighborhood. Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla Thomas came into the studio on Macklemore Ave– in fact, they were the first act to record there– and laid down the track called “Cause I Love You”. Released in August 1960, it became a hit, and set the course for the future.

“Cause I Love You” featured a 16-year-old kid named Booker T. Jones on baritone sax. Though he would soon become known as a legendary keyboard player, Booker T was part of the Stax family from the very first record cut in Memphis.

The success of “Cause I Love You” caught the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records. He reached out to Jim Stewart and made a deal for Atlantic to distribute Stax’ records. Of course, Stax wasn’t even called Stax yet; that would come later. They were still using the name Satellite.

While Jim ran the studio in the back, Estelle ran the Satellite Record Shop out front. The neighborhood kids shopped and hung out there, and Estelle would use them as a test audience for the latest single recorded out back in the studio.

With the success of “Cause I Love You, they cut a solo Carla Thomas single, a song she had written when she was 16: “Gee Whiz”.

That was the record that really put Stax (or Satellite) on the map. It reached number five on the R&B chart and number ten on the Pop chart. In retrospect, it doesn’t really sound like a Stax record. They hadn’t really discovered that sound yet. That would come about a year later with the release of an instrumental by The Mar-Keys called “Last Night”.

Released in June 1961, The Mar-Keys started out as an all white band called, ironically enough, the Royal Spades. The band included guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, trumpeter Wayne Jackson, and tenor sax player Charles “Packy” Axton, who was Estelle’s son.

When they recorded “Last Night” in the studio, they were joined by some black session players: Louis Steinberg, Curtis Green, Floyd Newman, maybe some others, making this the first integrated band at Stax. In its own way, it’s a milestone. It’s also a milestone in terms of the sound: heavy on the horns, powerful drum sound, the organ up front, and that groove.

There is no guitar on this track; Steve Cropper is actually playing keyboards along with Smoochie Smith, who takes the organ lead.

“Last Night” made it to number two on the R&B chart and number three on the Pop chart.

Around the time they were creating the sound that would become the Stax sound, they also created the Stax name. Not exactly by choice; there was another record label out in California that used the “Satellite” name first. To avoid legal trouble, they changed the name of the company. They took the first two letters from Stewart’s name (ST) and the first two letters from Estelle Axton’s last name, (AX) and created “Stax”.

One of the other producers working at Stax besides Jim Stewart was Chips Moman. He would go on to have a long, successful career as a producer, but it was these early years at Stax where he first made his mark. He signed a young singer named William Bell. Bell was also a great songwriter, and his first single for Stax was a song he wrote called “You Don’t Miss Your Water, released in November 1961. It’s a ballad in 12/8 time. If you want a deeper understanding of what 12/8 time is, go back and listen to our episode on “Somebody To Love” by Queen– we covered that time signature in detail there.

“You Don’t Miss Your Water” didn’t make much of an impact on the charts, but I think it was Stax first great soul ballad, and it’s now considered a classic.

Not every song released by Stax was a hit, and not every artist had a lasting career. Many of them, you can’t even call them “one hit wonders” because they didn’t have any hits. There were some forgettable records. Barbara Stevens recorded three singles for Stax between 1961 and 62. None of them hit, but I’ve always had a soft spot for one of them, a track called “Wait A Minute”, a fun song with a lively little vocal from Barbara. After those three singles, Barbara Stevens faded into obscurity.

Now, in 1961, Stax created a sister label, a subsidiary label called “Volt”. Radio stations could be reluctant to play too many records from one label, so it was common practice for many labels to create offshoots to get around that. So Stax had Volt. Most of the singles were released on the Stax labels, with occasional singles released on Volt. The only single released on both the Stax and the Volt labels was a little track by Booker T. And the MG’s called “Green Onions”.

One day, while waiting for another artist to show up at the studio, Booker T, Steve Cropper, Louis Steinberg, and Al Jackson Jr. started jamming on a slow blues riff, and Jim Stewart happened to record it. When they played it back, they thought it sounded pretty good. They called it “Behave Yourself” and decided it was good enough to release.  Now they needed something for the other side of the single, so they took another riff that they’d been noodling around with and turned that into “Green Onions”. It was originally released August 1962 on the Volt label. Once it started selling, they reissued it on the Stax label, and it went on to hit number one on the R&B chart and number three on the Pop chart.

Booker T and his crew were really just studio cats and backing musicians, but after “Green Onions” became a smash hit, they became a band on their own. They would release several more hit records as Booker T and the MGs, as well as continue to be the backing band for many of the Stax’s artists.

Around the same time as “Green Onions” was burning up the charts, William Bell released his second single, “Any Other Way”. It never became a big hit, but stay tuned, because this song, um, will show up again on this podcast sometime next year.

Another artist who found his way to Stax in 1962 was Otis Redding. He was working with Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, and he was actually just driving Jenkins to the session at Stax– he wasn’t even supposed to sing. But when the Jenkins session hit a dead end, they let Otis sing a couple of numbers… and one of them was “These Arms Of Mine”, and they were blown away. Jim Stewart signed Otis right away, and “These Arms Of Mine” was released on Volt in October 1962.

In January of 1963, Rufus Thomas released “The Dog”. You know when you see Rufus Thomas’ name on a record, you’re in for a good time.

Deanie Parker was a local teenage girl in a band called The Valadors. When they came in first place in a Memphis talent contest, they won an audition at Stax. They didn’t have any original songs, so Deanie went home and wrote her very first song, “My Imaginary Guy”, which became her first single. Though she never had any big hits as a singer, she continued to write songs for Stax artists like William Bell, Albert King, and Carla Thomas, and remained a Stax employee all the way until the very end. Here’s Deanie with her very first song, “My Imaginary Guy”.

May 1963, guitarist and harmonica player Eddie Kirkland, who had been a member of Otis Redding’s touring band, released a single on his own called “The Hog”, featuring Kirkland on harp. For some reason, they shortened his name to Eddie Kirk for this record. But either way, this song smokes.

Booker T and the MGs continue to release instrumental singles, including one of their best– or at least it’s one of my favorites—“Chinese Checkers” in June 1963. This one features Booker T on electric piano.

In September, Rufus Thomas was back with another “dog” song. This time it’s “Walking The Dog”. This one’s an all-time classic and would go on to be covered by many artists, including Aerosmith. But here’s the original, the one and only Rufus Thomas with “Walking The Dog”.

I love that one. And as 1963 wound down in November, Carla Thomas released “Gee Whiz, It’s Christmas”, the first, but not the last, Christmas-themed single for Stax.

And that’s where we’ll leave it for this episode. But we’ll revisit Stax again next year, because I love these songs and I love the chance to share them with you.

I want to thank Rob Bowman; he’s the guy that wrote the extensive liner notes for the Stax box sets, and that was my primary source for all the information presented in this here episode. I couldn’t have done it without him. So thanks, Mr. Bowman, for your incredible work documenting this music.

I hope this episode inspires some of you to seek out these Stax artists. It’s really great stuff, and I think an important part of American history.

Thanks for joining me for this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast. If you’d like to support the show, why don’t you head over to oldglory.com and buy yourself a t-shirt or two? They have stock on all of our favorite artists, and when you use our discount code lovethatsong, you’ll get 15% off, and we get a little kickback. So you’ll end up with some cool merch and you’ll be supporting this show. Such a deal! That’s oldglory.com and the discount code is lovethatsong.

I’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. In the meantime, you can catch up on all of our previous episodes on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com and you can check in with us on Facebook. If you’d like to find more podcasts like this, be sure to check out the Pantheon Podcast Network, its home to our show and a ton of other great music-related podcasts. As always, I thank you for being part of this show and thanks for listening to this episode featuring my favorite tracks from Stax.

REFERENCES:

Stax Records
https://staxrecords.com/

HBO Max Documentary on Stax Records
Stax: Soulsville USA | Official Website for the HBO Series | HBO.com

Booker T. and the MGs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._%26_the_M.G.%27s

Otis Redding
https://otisredding.com/

Rufus Thomas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Thomas

Carla Thomas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Thomas

Rob Bowman
https://www.rob-bowman.com/

Satellite Records
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Records

Introducing a new segment of the podcast – “Creation & Evolution“, where we explore songs that travelled a long & winding road before they reached their final version. In this episode, we trace the history of a song that started from a phone call with Farrah Fawcett and ended up as Gladys Knight’s biggest hit.

“Midnight Train To Georgia” (Jim Weatherly) Copyright 1971, 1973 Universal-PolyGram International Publishing, Inc

TRANSCRIPT:

There’s the telltale theme music… it means it must be time for another episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on the Pantheon Podcast Network.  My name is Brad Page, and I’m your musical tour guide, your geologist of another sort, as we explore the rock that made history.

This time, I’m introducing a new segment I’m calling “Creation and Evolution”, where we’ll take a look at both the birth and the journey a song takes before it ends up in its final form. Some songs have a rather short path from the writer’s pen to the final release, but some songs take the long way around, and that’s what we’re going to explore here on “Creation and Evolution”.

For example, what do airplanes, Houston Texas, and Farrah Fawcett have to do with “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips? Let’s find out.

Jim Weatherly was a songwriter from Mississippi who had written a few songs for Dean Martin and Peggy Lee. No hits, though he hadn’t really made his mark yet. One day in 1970, Weatherly called his friend, a struggling actor named Lee Majors, who would find fame as TV’s “Six Million Dollar Man”.

Majors wasn’t around, but his girlfriend, a struggling actress named Farah Fawcett, picked up the phone. She, of course, would eventually star in “Charlie’s Angels”.

Farah and Weatherly got to talking, and she told him she was just about to head out of LA to visit her family, leaving on a midnight plane to Houston. That phrase, “midnight plane to Houston”, stuck in his head. And as soon as he got off the phone, he sat down and in about 40 minutes, he wrote a whole song.

He based the song loosely on Fawcett and Majors. It was about a girl who went to LA to make it big, but when it doesn’t work out, she goes back home and her boyfriend follows her back. Weatherly recorded the song and included it on his 1972 solo album called Weatherly.

It’s a pretty modern country song, but the publisher had some faith in it and sent it around, hoping to find other artists to cover it. They even offered it to Gladys Knight.

But at this point, she passed on it.

They pitched it to another artist, singer Sissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mom. She liked the song, but not the title. She said, “my people are from Georgia, and they didn’t take planes to Houston or anywhere else”. They took trains. And this is just a guess, but I think she might have been concerned about some confusion since her name was Houston and the song was about the city of Houston. Either way, Weatherly agreed to change the lyrics to “Midnight Train to Georgia”.

And besides the title change, this version also changes the genders. Now it’s the man who has failed and is going back home, and it’s the woman who follows him.

Sissy Houston released her version in February 1973.

Meanwhile, in 1973, Gladys Knight and the Pips had left Motown Records and signed a deal with Buddha Records, which gave her more freedom to pick her own material. By this time, Gladys had already had a hit with another Jim Weatherly song, “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye” in 1972.

And when Gladys heard Sissy Houston’s version of “Midnight Train to Georgia”, she knew she could make it work.  She envisioned it as an Al green style soul number.

Producer Tony Camillo had worked with everyone from Diane Warwick to Grand Funk Railroad. It was his job to record the instrumental tracks for “Midnight Train” for Gladys. But she wasn’t happy with what he came up with. Too polished, too orchestrated. She wanted something more stripped down. So he cut another version– and she rejected that one, too.

So working with engineer Ed Stasium, who would later become a legendary producer in his own right, working with The Ramones, Talking Heads, Motorhead and Living Color, just to name a few, they put together a small band: Jeff Mirinoff on guitar, Bob Babbitt on bass, Andrew Smith on drums, and Tony Camillo himself on piano. They banged out a simple backing track in an hour and sent it to Gladys, and that was exactly what she was looking for. They overdubbed horns and some strings, but for the most part, they kept it straightforward.

Gladys recorded her vocal in almost one take. No warm up, no run through, no punch-ins. She was well rehearsed and she knew what she wanted. She stepped up to the mic and four minutes later it was almost done. Except for some ad libs at the end, which we’ll get to later.

I love how she’s singing pretty softly there– she’s holding back, but then she lets loose a bit for the next part.

And here’s the first chorus.

Now, notice how the backing vocals by William Guest, Edward Patton, and Bubba Knight, along with Gladys herself, aren’t just singing harmonies or repeating lines from the lead vocal, they’re actually adding commentary. They’re in dialogue with the lead vocal. That’s something that Gladys and The Pips brought to the song. None of the other versions do that.

Here’s the second verse, and let’s bring up the vocals again so we can hear more of that interaction between the lead and the backing vocals.

I love this part.

And check out the backing vocals here.

James Jamerson is the bass player most associated with the Motown sound, and he’s a legend. But Bob Babbitt also played on many Motown classics, too, and he’s a phenomenal player as well. Let’s listen to some of Bob Babbitt’s bass work here.

You gotta love those woo-woos.

Now, I mentioned before how Gladys recorded her vocal in one take, and that’s true, right up until this point in the song. They wanted to have Gladys do some ad-libbing during the final choruses, some of those inspired, energetic interjections that can really add some emotional weight to a song.

The problem was that Gladys didn’t feel like she was a natural at that kind of thing, at least not at this point in her career. She didn’t feel comfortable and kind of froze up at the mic.

Merald Knight, who everyone called “Bubba”, was not only one of the pips, he was also Gladys’ brother.  He took a mic into the control room, and with the backing track playing, he fed Gladys some lines into her headphones, and she sang them back as the tape rolled.

Now picture Bubba Knight in that control room looking at Gladys through the glass, singing these lines to her like, “my world, his world, our world”. And she’s singing them back and putting her own spin on them.

Gladys Knight and the Pips – “Midnight Train To Georgia”.

Buddha Records issued “Midnight Train to Georgia” as a single in August 1973, and eventually it worked its way to number one. It won the Grammy for best R&B vocal performance, and it would become Gladys Knight and The Pips calling card for the rest of their career.

Of the original Pips, Edward Patton passed away in February 2005; William Guest died in December of 2015, but Merald Bubba Knight, Gladys’s brother, is still with us, and Gladys herself, as of this recording, is still alive and well.  She released her last album in 2014.

Jim Weatherly passed away in February 2021. He was 77.

Thank you for joining me for this episode. We’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, you can binge on all of our past episodes, they’re all on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com.

You can find us on Facebook to share your thoughts and feelings, just look for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, and you’ll find us. You can also send me email at lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com.

This show is one of many great podcasts on the Pantheon Podcast Network, so be sure to seek out all those other great shows.

To listen to the song again, complete and uninterrupted, stream it, download it, or buy it and support the music you love. Thanks again for joining me for this “Creation And Evolution” episode on Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia”.

  • Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High”
  • The classic 70’s band Humble Pie
  • Nick Drake
  • New Orleans legend Dr. John
  • Roger Waters from Pink Floyd
  • and then there’s Oasis
  • KLF
  • and Peter Gabriel

Bettye LaVette is the epitome of perseverance. She cut her first record in 1962 at the age of 16, but it took over 40 years before she received the recognition and respect she deserved. In between, she weathered every injustice that the music business threw at her. But she never gave up, she never stopped working, she never stopped singing… in fact, she just got better. Bettye is more than just a singer; she’s an interpreter who can transform any song into something new & special. On this episode, we focus on a track from her 2007 album The Scene of the Crime, and trace the path that brought her to this album– one of my all-time favorites.

“I Still Want To Be Your Baby (Take Me As I Am)” (Eddie Hinton) Copyright Eddie Hinton Music (BMI) 

TRANSCRIPT:

So let me ask you a question: You have your favorite songs, right? What is it about those songs that you love? What makes those songs so great? Well, these are the questions that we try to answer here on the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast.

I’m your host, Brad Page, and each episode I pick one of my favorite songs and we listen to it together trying to understand what goes into creating a great song. No musical knowledge is required here, we don’t delve into music theory or technical jargon. All you need are your ears and just a little bit of curiosity.

If I had to pick just a handful of women’s voices for my desert island collection, it would have to include Aretha Franklin, of course, Mavis Staples… and Bettye LaVette.

Many people don’t know Bettye LaVette, but she’s one of the greatest vocalists I’ve ever heard. On this episode, we’ll be listening to Bettye and a song called “I Still Want to Be Your Baby.”

The story of Bettye LaVette is a story of perseverance, of determination, and survival. Bettye LaVette was born Bettye Jo Haskins in January 1946. She grew up in Detroit, and when she was 16 years old, she recorded her first single, a song called “My Man He’s A Lovin’ Man” in 1962. It made it to the top 10 on the R&B charts.

[Music]

Her next couple of singles didn’t do as well, but she made it back onto the R&B charts in 1965 with “Let Me Down Easy.”

[Music]

She continued to record singles for various small labels. She recorded in Memphis with the Dixie Flyers and the Memphis Horns, and reached number 25 on the R&B charts with a song called “He Made A Woman Out of Me”, despite the fact that it was banned on some stations because it was deemed a little too sexual for some folks. I love this track, though.

[Music]

They were planning a full album for Bettye, but the deal fell apart due to conflicts between the producer and the label. Bettye picked herself up and managed to sign a deal with Atlantic Records in 1972. She headed down to the Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama and finally got to record her first full album with the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section.

That album was going to be called “Child of the 70s.” It was mastered and prepared for release. There was even a publicity tour scheduled. But at the last minute, the album was shelved. The label called Bettye and said, “We’ve decided not to go forward with this project. Please return your plane tickets.”

You can imagine how devastating that must have been. To this day, nobody really knows why the record was shelved. But Bettye picked herself up again and went back to work.

A few more unsuccessful singles were released. In 1978, she recorded a disco single called “Doin the Best I Can,” which actually became a pretty big disco hit, but Bettye had signed away all of her rights to the song so she didn’t make a penny from it.

She wasn’t going to give up, though. She’d find a way to survive. In 1979, she joined the Broadway cast of “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” and she stayed in that production for four years. She kept recording records here and there all through the 80s and 90s, but none of them got much attention.

Then, a record collector in France had been searching for the master tapes of that 1972 album, “Child of the 70s.” In 1999, he found them. He licensed the recordings from Atlantic and released the album himself. 28 years after it was recorded, Bettye’s first album was finally released. And then people started to pay attention.

Between 2000 and 2006, the crowds grew bigger at Bettye’s shows, the records sold more copies, and the critics raved. Then, in 2007, she returned to the Muscle Shull Studio, now 35 years after her last sessions there to record her next album, and it’s a masterpiece.

Her record label reached out to Patterson Hood and asked him if he was interested in producing Bettye’s album. Patterson is a member of the Drive-by-Truckers, and he’s also the son of David Hood, the bass player from that legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section. Patterson jumped at the chance to work with Bettye, and he set up the sessions at Muscle Shoals’ Fame Studios.

Patterson lined up a stellar group of musicians, including the rest of the Drive-by-Truckers, along with some of the original Muscle Shoals players. He even got his dad to come in and play on a few tracks.

They called the album “The Scene of the Crime”, acknowledging that she was returning to the place where her ill-fated child of the 70s album was recorded.

The album opens with this song, “I Still Want to Be Your Baby”. And right off the bat, Bettyee establishes who she is with this track. She’s tough, she is who she is, she’ll love you and stick with you through the good times in the bad– but don’t try to change her.

What makes her version all the more interesting is that this song was written by a man, from a man’s perspective. Eddie Hinton wrote this song. He was another one of the legendary players at Fame Studios; he was their go-to lead guitarist. He was also a songwriter.

Eddie Hinton died in 1995 before this album was recorded, so he wasn’t around to play on the record. Otherwise, I bet he would have been there and would have approved wholeheartedly of Bettyee’s interpretation.

The song opens with two guitars, one in the left channel playing a simple riff, the other is in the middle only playing half of the riff an octave lower.

Both guitars are slathered in reverb. This is not fancy digital studio reverb. This is the sound of a real tube-driven guitar amp with its built-in spring reverb. You can really hear that distinctive spring reverb sound on these guitars. And the guitar in the middle also has some tremolo effect on it, set at a relatively fast speed. Let’s listen.

[Music]

After that four-bar intro, the rest of the band jumps in. There’s a third guitar in the mix, panned a little to the right. There are three guitar players on this album, Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and John Neff, all members of the Drive by Truckers. And I’m not sure who’s playing which parts, but just keep in mind that there are three distinct guitar parts on this song.

The rest of the band includes Shana Tucker on bass and Brad Morgan on drums, also from the Drive by Truckers. So you’ve got the whole Drive by Truckers band backing Bettye on this track. Also on keyboards is none other than Muscle Shoals legend Spooner Oldham.

Let’s pick it back up from the intro.

[Music]

Bettye LaVette was 61 when she made this record. And I think she’s never sung better. This is not the voice of a young diva. This is the voice of a woman, a woman who’s lived, who’s loved, been hurt, and who’s learned.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be interested in hearing a 20-year-old singing this song. “I’ve been this way too long to change now.” That would just sound ridiculous coming out of the mouth of someone that young. Here, Bettye’s singing, it’s pitch perfect, but the ragged edges of her voice adds gravitas. It rings true. Feels real.

Whatever abilities may diminish with age, the experience that comes with growing older can more than make up for it. As great as Bettyee’s performances from the 60s and 70s were, I think she’s an even better singer now. Here’s the first verse.

[Music]

The guitars are playing behind the verses actually pretty atmospheric. Let’s listen to a little bit of that.

[Music]

And that takes us into the next chorus.

[Music]

I love her phrasing on that last line:

[Music]

Here’s the second verse, and this is where Spooner Oldham joins in on the electric piano. Listen for that.

[Music]

This is the closest thing we get to a guitar solo in this song, and I like the interplay between the rhythm guitars here.

[Music]

Let’s bring Bettye’s vocals up in the mix for this last verse.

[Music]

That guitar refrain returns, and Bettye does some improvising.

[Music]

All three guitars begin to play off and around each other:

[Music]

You can really hear that tremolo on the guitar here at the end.

[Music]

Bettyee LaVette – “I Still Want To Be Your Baby”

Bettyee doesn’t play an instrument, and she doesn’t write songs. Bettyee does one thing, and she does it better than almost anyone else: she interprets songs. In 2008, she appeared at the Kennedy Center Honors for The Who, and sang a version of “Love, Reign O’er Me” that brought the house down. It was a show-stopping moment.

Bettyee’s continued to make records, including “Blackbirds” in 2020, where she recorded her version of songs by the great black women artists that inspired her. And just last month, September 2023, she released her latest album, Simply Called “LaVette”, that’s a return to the rootsy, bluesy and Americana sounds of this track. It’s probably my favorite album of the year.

Bettyew is 77 years old, a living legend, and still going strong, doing some of her best work today.

Thanks for checking out this episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. If you’d like to know more, or share your thoughts, find us on Facebook or on Podchaser, where you can leave a review, rate us, and tell us what you think. And don’t forget to follow the show so that you never miss an episode.
We are part of the Pantheon podcast family– lots of great music-related shows to be found there, so check them out.

We’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, go support Bettye LaVette by buying a few of her albums. You will not regret it.

[Music]

On this episode, we pay a little tribute to the great Tina Turner, with an exploration of the song she wrote about her humble beginnings in a little town called Nutbush, TN.  Join us on a journey down Highway 19 to visit “Nutbush City Limits”.

“Nutbush City Limits” (Words & Music by Tina Turner) Copyright 1973 EMI Blackwood Music Inc and EMI Unart Catalog Inc.

— Don’t forget to follow our show, so you never miss an episode!

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. My name is Brad Page, and I’m on a mission to uncover and rediscover my favorite songs, to get a better understanding of what makes them work and why I love them so much. Thanks for joining me on this journey here on the Pantheon Podcast Network. Everyone is welcome here– no musical knowledge or experience is required. If you love music and are even just a little curious about what goes into making a great song, you’re in the right place.

It’s reality that we are all getting older. I don’t care how young or old you are. We are all heading in one direction. And as we age, so do the artists that inspired us, that have moved us and, um, accompanied us through our journeys through life. Inevitably, we will lose these artists to the ravages of time.

The rock stars of my youth are no longer young. And over the last few years, we have lost so many artists that were such a part of our lives. And it’s just a fact that all of you will experience. Again, it doesn’t matter how old you are, or when you grew up… someday Janet Jackson will be an old woman; someday Britney Spears will be old; someday Taylor Swift will be an old woman. And that’s if they’re lucky– that they make it that far. There’s no shame or insult in that. It’s just the way it is. And nothing will shine a light on your own mortality than the death of an artist that you grew up with, that remains young and vibrant whenever you think of them.

This is all to set the tone for this episode because we’re talking about Tina Turner today, who passed away recently in May of 2023. I have been working on this episode off and on for a while. In fact, I first got the idea for this show back in 2017 when, on a road trip, we came near Nutbush, Tennessee. We never actually got to stop in Nutbush, but seeing the name reminded me of the song and that that would be a pretty good subject for a podcast episode.

So it went on my list, which is a pretty long list of podcast ideas. But one good thing about songs is that there’s no shortage of great ones. So this episode has been in the works for a while. It was about 80% done, just waiting for an opportunity for me to finish it up. And then Tina died… which I’m always of two minds about these situations, because I don’t want to take advantage of, or jump on the bandwagon, or be seen as “cashing in” in any way on the death of somebody, especially an artist as important as Tina Turner. And make no mistake, she is an historically important artist, but she should be remembered, she should be paid tribute to and she should be celebrated.

So I’m going to go ahead with this episode. Keep in mind that most of this was recorded before she passed away. It wasn’t originally meant to be a posthumous tribute, but I think it’s still relevant today. S

So, in honor of Tina, let’s take a road trip down to Nutbush, Tennessee, with Ike and Tina Turner, and “Nutbush City Limits”.

[Music]

Ike Turner was a journeyman musician. It was his band, the Kings Of Rhythm, that recorded “Rocket 88”, considered by many to be the first rock and roll song. Though he wasn’t credited for it– it was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, which always ticked Ike off.

[Music]

Ike also worked as kind of a talent scout for Sun Records and Modern Records, and spent some time as a session musician playing piano on records for people like BB King and Howlin’ Wolf.

She ended up in East St Louis, playing with his band, the Kings of Rhythm, and that’s where he met Anna Mae Bullock in 1957. She became a fan of the band when she was 17. She saw them whenever she could, and then she began singing with the Kings of Rhythm. They made their first record together in 1958, a song called “Box Top” with Anna Mae, nicknamed “Little Anne” on backing vocals.

[Music]

They had their first big hit in 1960 with a song called “A Fool In Love”, this time credited to Ike and Tina Turner.

[Music]

Ike was the one who changed her name to Tina. By then, she was already pregnant with their first child. Ike was married to another woman at the time; he had already been married at least four times, maybe six times by then. When she was in the hospital having that baby, Ike hired another woman to pretend to be Tina on stage so he could keep playing gigs and getting paid. When Tina found out, she checked herself out of the hospital, went to the gig and punched out that fake Tina and then finished the gig herself.

In 1962, they got married. She was 23, he was 31, and Ike hadn’t even bothered to divorce any of his previous wives.

The abuse started early. When she told Ike she didn’t want to change her name to Tina, he hit her. That was the first of many. He slept around and abused her all through their relationship, and he worked her to exhaustion.

By 1966, the hits had started to dry up. Producer Phil Specter was also going through a dry patch when he saw Ike & Tina perform on “The Big TNT” show in late 1965. Go check out that performance on YouTube– they were on fire that night.

[Music]

Phil Spector, being the control freak that he was, was not about to work with another control freak like Ike Turner. So, they cut a deal: Spector paid Ike a bunch of money to stay away from the studio, and Phil would make the record without him. Though “River Deep Mountain High” is credited as an “Ike and Tina Turner” release, Ike really had nothing to do with making that record.

Though the song didn’t sell as well as everyone hoped, it’s become a true classic; on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, “River Deep Mountain High” came in at number 33.

[Music]

The Rolling Stones– and this time we’re talking about the band, not the magazine– The Rolling Stones loved this song, and invited Ike and Tina to support them on a British tour. It was the first of a few tours where Tina would open for the Stones, and this exposed her to a whole new, and much bigger, audience.

One of the interesting things about both Tina and Ike is that neither one of them really wanted to be known as R&B performers, even though that’s what paid the bills. Their musical preferences were really elsewhere. So they were perfectly happy to venture further into rock and roll. And that’s where they’d find their biggest hits, with their versions of songs like “Proud Mary”, “Honky Tonk Woman” and “I Want To Take You Higher:.

[Music]

Ike opened his own recording studio and Tina did some session work there, providing vocals, including for tracks by Frank Zappa.

[Music]

As they got more successful behind the scenes, life with Ike was getting worse. More cocaine meant more violence. She had attempted suicide in 1968. It wouldn’t be the last time. Eventually, she left him in 1976. Their divorce was finalized in March 1978.

But back in 1973, they were still together when Tina wrote “Nutbush City Limits”. While Ike was becoming more and more difficult to work with, Tina was finding her own footing. She wrote “Nutbush City Limits”. But after it became a hit, Ike tried to take credit for it. But clearly this is Tina’s song. She wrote it about the town she grew up in.

Unfortunately, there’s no credits on the album, and there doesn’t appear to be much documentation as to who played on the song. Mark Bolan of T Rex may have played guitar on the track; it is confirmed that he played guitar on at least one other Ike & Tina song, so it is possible. It’s also been claimed that James Lewis, a member of Ike & Tina’s backing band, played guitar on the track. They both could be on the track. Who really knows?

The song opens with one guitar, maybe played by Mark Bolan, in the center channel. After a couple of bars, another guitar with a wah-wah pedal appears in the left channel.

Here come the horns on the right. The drums come in there, but it’s just the kick and the snare drum. No hi-hat, no cymbals. And they’re going to hold off on the cymbals for quite a while. The bass is also going to lay back for a while.

[Music]

She’s telling us about her little hometown, but she’s not using full sentences. These are barely even phrases. They’re just impressions. A church house, gin house, schoolhouse, outhouse… but you can see the town taking shape in your head, right?

Highway 19 is a small rural state route that runs through this part of Tennessee, I believe it’s about 43 miles long. And a stretch of Route 19 between Brownsville and Nutbush is officially called Tina Turner Highway.

[Music]

When she hits the end of the chorus, the bass comes in, along with a clavinet. A clavinet is an electric keyboard instrument; it was based on the clavichord, an instrument from the Middle Ages. But the clavinet is a relatively new instrument, developed in 1964. It has a very distinctive sound. It’s almost guitar like, but not quite. It’s really its own thing. Of course, it was Stevie Wonder who really popularized the sound of the clavinet on songs like “Superstition”.  Here, the clavinet is kind of accentuating the bass guitar part. Let’s go back and pick it up right before the bass comes in.

[Music]

“25 was the speed limit, motorcycle not allowed in it.” I love that line, it’s so specific. You can also hear that a low, droning note on a keyboard comes in there.

[Music]

There’s a chime or a bell in the right channel. There’s some interesting choices of percussion in this song, and that bell will continue to pop up in the right channel. And the drummer is finally going to play some hi-hat coming up. Listen for that when the vocal comes back in.

[Music]

Listening to the horn part; at first I thought there might be a synthesizer playing along with them, but now I’m not sure. I think it’s probably just horns, but see what you think.

[Music]

Let’s hear that verse with the vocals.

[Music]

Let’s play that chorus again and listen to her vocal. She does a nice little scream in there. And the way she cracks her voice on the word “city”, that is a Tina trademark right there.

[Music]

Now this is where the song takes a total left turn, I think. There is a synthesizer solo that comes out of nowhere, and it feels totally incongruous to me. I don’t know if this was Ike’s idea, he’s credited as producer on the album. At the time, synthesizers were still pretty new. They probably thought they were doing something innovative or updating their sound. But now, to me at least, this is the thing that sounds the most dated about the song. I guess there’s a lesson in there about relying too much on conspicuous technology.

And there’s also that incessant percussion part in the right channel. And that brings us to the last verse where that synthesizer is going to have a little back and forth with Tina’s vocal.

[Music]

And that last line, “salt pork and molasses is all you get in jail”. Again, so specific. And I love the way she sings that line.

[Music]

And I love the way she phrases that line, “It’s called a quiet little old community”. There’s a long pause she puts in between “it’s called” and “a quiet little old community”. And the way she hits the word “quiet”, it’s just so great.

[Music]

Let’s pick it back up and play it out through the fade. “A one horse town. You have to watch what you’re putting down in old Nutbush.”

[Music]

Ike and Tina Turner, “Nutbush City Limits”.

Nutbush, Tennessee remains a small rural town. There’s a sign over the town grocery store proclaiming it as the “birthplace of Tina Turner”. And then there’s that stretch of Highway 19 that’s named after her, Tina Turner Highway. I’m sure if you go there today, there will be memorials, flowers and tributes laid out in her honor.

There have been memorials and tributes pouring in from every corner of the world, and the internet is full of them. It’s a safe bet that every music-related podcast has discussed Tina in some fashion lately. So, I’m not going to explain all of the ways that she made a difference, all of the barriers she broke down gender, race, age, and how many people she influenced. There are other podcasts that have done that and probably done it better than I can. We’ll never know how many women who, inspired by Tina’s example, escaped an abusive relationship. For that alone, she deserves our respect.

But it will always be the music that she’ll be most remembered for. That will be her lasting impact. Her records leaped out of the grooves with energy and intensity, and as a live performer, she was hard to top. Thanks for everything, Tina.

And thanks to you for listening. The “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast comes your way twice a month, on the first and the 15th of every month, so make sure you follow the show in your favorite podcast app so that you never miss an episode.

We are part of the Pantheon Podcast Network, where you’ll find an endless supply of great podcasts.

Keep on listening and thanks for being here for this episode on Tina Turner and “Nutbush City Limits”

Etta James lived quite a life; some incredible highs and heartbreaking lows throughout her 73 years. From hit songs to heroin addiction, from critical acclaim to violence and bad behavior & jail time, Etta experienced it all. And you could hear every bit of that experience in her voice. I’ve wanted to feature Etta on this podcast for a while; the easy choice would be to pick one of her early classic songs… but instead, let’s listen to an overlooked track from late in her career, when she might have been “past her prime” but more than capable of delivering a heart-wrenching performance.  

“Love’s Been Rough On Me” (Gretchen Peters) Copyright Sony/ATV Tunes LLC dba Cross Keys Publishing/Purple Crayon Music (ASCAP)

— Remember to follow this show, so you never miss an episode.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. Thanks for joining me here on the Pantheon Podcast network. I’m your host, Brad Page, and each episode of this show I pick one of my favorite songs and we explore it together, discovering what makes it a great song.

This episode happens to come out just in time for Valentine’s Day. And as I mentioned on this show before, I am not a fan of these holidays that are really just an excuse to sell greeting cards and merchandise, but it’s also an excuse for me to play a song. So I thought this time we’d listen to, I don’t know, maybe this is an anti-Valentine’s Day song. This one’s by Etta  James. It’s a song called “Love’s Been Rough On Me”.

[Music]

Etta James is a legend. She was born James Etta Hawkins in Los Angeles on January 25, 1938. She was 16 years old when Johnny Otis heard her singing in San Francisco. He asked her if she was 18. She lied. He brought her back to LA, renamed her Etta James, and she cut her first record with him, “The Wallflower”, in 1955.

[Music]

She released a few more singles, but the hits dried up for a while and so did the good paying gigs. To find a new opportunity, she borrowed a few bucks from Jackie Wilson and bought a bus ticket to Chicago to meet with Chess Records. Leonard Chess liked her a lot and signed her up. One of her earliest singles for chess was “All I Could Do Is Cry” in 1960, written by Billy Davis and Barry Gordy Jr. in the days before he started Motown, she recorded this vocal in one take.

[Music]

Chess Records was home to Muddy Waters, Howlin’Wolf and Chuck Berry. There wasn’t much call for strings, but once they started working with Etta, they pictured her as a balladeer as well as a house rocker, and issued quite a few lushly orchestrated ballads, culminating in the universal classic “At Last”.

[Music]

If Etta James had never cut another song, her legacy would be cemented by that track alone. But of course, she cut a lot more records than that. In 1963, she released one of my favorite records of hers, a live album recorded in Nashville called “Etta James Rocks The House”.

[Music]

Hard to believe that’s the same woman who sang “At Last”.

Life was not easy for Etta. She was a heroin addict and would struggle with addiction for the rest of her life. Over the course of her career, she would be arrested more than once. In and out of rehab, she spent 17 months in a psychiatric hospital. Somehow, in the midst of all that, she managed to record some great music, like the classic “Tell Mama” in 1967, recorded in Muscle Shoals Alabama.

[Music]

And the B side of that single was a song just as iconic: “I’d Rather Go Blind”.

[Music]

Though she was no longer hitting the charts by the mid 70’s, and therefore off the general public’s radar, she continued to make records for three more decades. In 1997, she released an album called “Love’s Been Rough On Me”, and this is the title song from that album. The song was written by Gretchen Peters, who’s released a bunch of her own records. But I think this recording by Etta James was the first time the song had been released. I don’t know if Gretchen wrote it specifically for Etta, but she might as well have. Etta delivers it like it was made for her.

This is a song about the real cost of love. Love can give you something amazing, but it can also exact a terrible price. I love this song because it doesn’t sugarcoat the subject. It’s not overly poetic, it’s not trying to be clever with its lyrics. It’s just laying it all out there, honestly.

There are two guitars, very cleanly recorded. One panned more to the left, the other panned hard right, and they’re playing off of each other. There’s a piano and a little bit of what sounds like a pedal steel guitar. It’s all very nicely setting the stage for Etta’s vocal.

[Music]

“They say life goes on… well, I can’t prove it, but I know they’re wrong”. I love that line.

[Music]

That brings us to the first chorus.

[Music]

“I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I don’t seem to be able to get back on my feet.” And with a pretty subtle delivery, Etta makes you believe it.

[Music]

Speaker B: That’s just a nice little guitar fill there.

[Music]

I will admit that I’m not into that distorted guitar part there. I’m all for distorted guitars– big fan. But I don’t think it’s needed here. I think that’s just a reflection of the time. This was recorded in the late 90’s. I think if they were making this record today, they would have gone with a different sound.

At any rate, here’s the next verse… and there’s only two verses in this song. Two verses and two choruses, and that’s it. Three minutes, no fat. But honestly, I could have listened to Etta sing this all day.

[Music]

Let’s bring up her vocal and listen to that verse again.

[Music]

“Love’s Been Rough On Me” – Etta James

Life was rough on Etta James. Along with fighting addiction, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2008, suffered a MRSA infection in 2010, and in 2011 was diagnosed with leukemia, which would eventually take her life on January 20, 2012, just before her 74th birthday. If anybody understood this song, it was Edda James.

So this song is my Valentine’s gift to you. It’s easy for people to say cliches like “it’s better to have loved and lost than never have loved it all”, but this is a song for everyone who’s ever loved and lost and never quite recovered. Have mercy, because love’s been rough on us all.

Thanks, as always, for being part of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. You can post a review or comments on our Facebook page, or on Podchaser, or wherever you listen to the show.

You can find all of our previous episodes on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, as well as on Apple podcasts. Spotify, Google, Amazon, basically anywhere that you can find podcasts, you will find this show. And don’t forget to follow the show so that you never miss any of our new episodes.

We’re part of the Pantheon family of podcasts, where you’ll find a ton of music related shows, so be sure to check them all out.

We’ll be back in two weeks with a new edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. Thanks for listening to this show on Etta James and “Love’s Been Rough On Me”.

Norman Whitfield turned The Temptations from a typical Motown vocal group into Psychedelic Soul pioneers. Their collaboration reached its zenith with “Papa Was A Rolling Stone“, a dark, atmospheric, orchestral showcase for both the Temptations and Whitfield’s genius. This would be the last #1 hit for The Temptations, and they would stop working with Norman Whitfield soon after. But they left behind this monumental masterpiece.

“Papa Was A Rolling Stone” (Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong) Copyright 1972 Stone Diamond Music Corp.

If you enjoyed this episode, here’s a previous episode that featured another classic Temptations song:
lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-temptations-i-cant-get-next-to-you/

— And remember to follow this show, so you never miss an episode.

TRANSCRIPT:

You have managed to find your way to the “I’m In Love With That Song Podcast, one of the many shows on the Pantheon Podcast Network dedicated to bringing you the best music-related podcasts. I’m your host Brad Page, and each episode of this show, I pick one of my favorite songs and we attempt to discover what makes it a great song. Musical knowledge or experience is not a prerequisite here, we don’t get technical. This show is for anybody who loves music.

On this edition, we’re taking a look at one of the most epic songs to ever hit Number One, and probably the most unconventional track that Motown ever released. This is the Temptations with “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”.

Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield were one of Motown’s most successful songwriting teams. Whitfield was also their most adventurous producer. He was the man credited with creating the sound of “psychedelic soul”. Whitfield and Strong wrote “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” sometime in 1971. Whitfield had composed the music and recorded a basic track, and gave the tape to Strong with the suggestion that he come up with some lyrics that were fun. But as Strong listened to the tape over and over, he heard it differently. In particular, he thought that the bass part sounded like someone struggling to make sense out of confusion. He started to think about kids he knew who had been abandoned by their fathers. When they asked their mother what happened to their dad, what would they say? So Strong ran with that idea, finished up the lyrics and presented them to Whitfield, who liked them.

So they completed the song and then set about recording it with a band called The Undisputed Truth. It was this version that was released as a single in early 1972.

[Music]

That’s actually a pretty cool production, but it wasn’t a hit. Whitfield still believed in the song though, and he convinced Barry Gordy to let him have another crack at it. So Whitfield completely reworked the song and went back into the studio with Motown’s legendary Funk brothers and rerecorded it. They turned it into an epic twelve-minute instrumental, a track full of atmosphere. Whitfield brought in Paul Riser to arrange the strings. Riser thought the track was full of mystery and suspense, and he treated his arrangement like he was scoring a movie. The soundtrack to “Shaft” had come out a year before, and Reiser was definitely inspired by that.

Now here’s where the Temptations come in. By 1971, The Temptations had gone through some major changes. Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks had left, leaving Otis Williams, Dennis Edwards and Melvin Franklin to carry on with two new members, Richard Street and Damon Harris.

The Temptations had had quite a few hits with Norman Whitfield producing, including two number ones. One of them, “I Can’t Get Next To You”, we covered here back in episode number 45.

But the Temptations were growing tired of Whitfield’s experimentations, which made the guys feel more like bit-players on their own records. They wanted to return to the romantic numbers like “My Girl” that they used to do. So, when Whitfield brought them into the studio and played them the twelve-minute track to “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”, they said, “No way, we are not doing that”. They argued for about 20 minutes when the group’s leader, Otis Williams, finally said, “Okay, we’ll give it a try”.

So let’s get into the track. Now, usually my preference is to go with the album version rather than the single, but this time we’re going to go with the single. The album version, at twelve minutes long, is a bit much for this podcast, and considering that the single itself is seven minutes, that gives us plenty to work with.

Here’s how the track begins. Just bass and hi-hat. Let’s hear just the bass, because that’s really the heart of the song.

The next thing you hear are the strings arranged by Paul Reiser. They add some real drama to the song. You can hear how Reiser was orchestrating this like a soundtrack to a movie, rather than just a pop song.

Here come the guitars, played by Paul Warren and Wah-Wah Watson. The two guitar parts play off each other and all the other instruments throughout the whole song. They’re always doing something interesting.

Added here, a trumpet played by Maurice Davis. Davis had already finished recording his part and was on his way out when Norman Whitfield called him back into the studio. He wanted to try recording it with a heavy echo on it. So, Davis re-recorded his whole part using the echo, which adds another layer of spookiness to the song.

Hand claps on the off beats. Notice how the hand claps stop there? The wah-wah guitar flutters and then the harp comes back in. All these parts flowing in and out. The wah-wah guitar drops out, the strings build and then drop out, too.

We are 1 minute and 55 seconds into the song, and here is where the vocals finally come in. On the album version, it’s almost four minutes before the vocals come in. You can see why The Temptations felt like they were being sidelined, but that intro really sets a mood, doesn’t it?

We’ll take a look at the vocals in a minute, but first, let’s just listen to what those guitars are doing in the background.

The Motown guitar players were usually relegated to just playing rhythm, but here they get to stretch out a bit.

Now the vocals. The first voice we hear is Dennis Edwards. Edwards and Whitfield clashed from the start about this song. Edwards kept trying to put more into his vocal performance, but Whitfield kept telling him to hold back, to tone it down. Edwards did not like to be restrained, but Whitfield wanted it dialed way down. That was making Edwards pretty mad. But Whitfield got the take he wanted.

Edwards was also upset because he was taking the lyrics a little personally. This verse about the 3rd of September being the day that Daddy died hit a little close to home. Now, the legend has it that Edward’s own father died on September 3, but that’s not actually true. His dad died on October 3. Still, it was close enough for Edwards to be concerned about it. And Whitfield had to convince him that it wasn’t personal. Barrett Strong had only written the lyrics that way because he liked the way it sounded–the date was purely a coincidence.

Let’s hear more of the guitars behind this verse.

Here come those hand claps again.

Maurice Davis’s trumpet, saturated with echo, appears again. The strings are going to take over for a few measures. Let’s hear what they’re doing. Reiser used nine violins, four violas, three cellos, and that harp for the string section.

In classic Temptations fashion, the lead vocals are shared by different singers. This works particularly well on this song, because it sounds like multiple children telling their stories. It’s not just the story of one boy, it’s the voices of all those kids who were let down by their fathers.

This next verse features Richard Street, who replaced Paul Williams in 1971, as well as Melvin Franklin, whose deep bass voice was the foundation for so many great Temptations songs.

I love that part.

Let’s zero in on Richard street’s vocals.

Wah-wah Watson is getting in some licks behind this verse. Let’s hear some of that.

And here’s the second chorus.

I like that guitar lick there. The final verse features Damon Harris, who replaced Eddie Kendricks when he quit in ‘71. Harris was the youngest member of the band, and while Kendrick’s falsetto was one of the Temptation’s trademarks, Damon sounds great here.

Damon gets the last word.

Let’s listen a little more to that backing track.

“Papa Was a Rolling Stone”. During their career, The Temptations had four number one hits on the top 100: “My Girl”, “I Can’t Get Next To You”, “Just My Imagination” and “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”. Three of those four were written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, and produced by Whitfield.

That was a magic combination, but it didn’t last. Within a few years, Whitfield and The Temptations would stop working together, and Whitfield would leave Motown. “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” would be the last number one hit for The Temptations, but it was their crowning achievement.

Thanks for listening to this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. New episodes are released on the 1st and the 15th of every month, so we’ll be back soon with another show. You can find all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, as well as on Spotify, Apple, Podcasts, Google, Amazon, wherever you can find podcasts. And if you’re looking for more music podcasts, check out the other great shows on the Pantheon Network.

Drop us a line on Facebook, Podchaser, or send email to lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com.

Don’t forget to support the artists you love by buying their music. And thanks for joining me for this episode on “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by The Temptations.

Few albums in history have had the cultural impact as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”. Universally loved by music fans around the world, it’s an album like none before it. Few records have captured the zeitgeist and remained as relevant as this album — Marvin’s crowning achievement. On this episode, we take a deep dive into the title cut to discover the elements that make up this masterpiece.

“What’s Going On” (Marvin Gaye, Al Cleveland and Renaldo Benson) Copyright 1970, 1971, 1972 Jobette Music Co, Inc.

If you liked this episode, check out our previous episode featuring the great Marvin Gaye:
lovethatsongpodcast.com/marvin-gaye-i-heard-it-through-the-grapevine/

TRANSCRIPT:

Before you were even born, you were listening. In the womb, you can’t see the world, you can’t smell it or touch it, but you can hear it. Sound is your first connection to the world that awaits you.  My name is Brad Page, and this is the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on the Pantheon Podcast Network. On this show, we use our ears to explore the world of music together, on our mission to discover how songs are put together and what makes a great song work.

On this episode, we’ll explore one of the most important records ever made. There are very few albums you can say that truly changed music history. This is one of them. The title song from Marvin Gaye’s classic album, “What’s Going On”.

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Marvin Gaye seemed like a guy who had it all together. By 1970, he was Motown’s number one male solo artist, the Prince of Motown. He was smooth, he was cool, but underneath that cool exterior, he was a tortured soul. He was racked with self-doubt and shame, raised by a violent, abusive father who was a preacher, a so-called “Man of God” who was a total hypocrite that beat his wife and kids. And Marvin received the worst of the beatings. Thanks to music, Marvin was able to escape from the mistreatment, but I think he always carried some guilt about abandoning the rest of his family.

Marvin’s first taste of success came when he hooked up with Harvey Fuqua from The Moonglows, and Marvin kind of became his protege. But then Fuqua linked up with the Gordy family, and basically sold Marvin’s contract to Barry Gordy and Motown. Marvin was essentially traded for money. That’s a simplification, but you get the gist of it. And that whole experience left Marvin with a sense of disillusionment with the music business, before he even cut his first song for Motown.

But he established himself, had a string of hits as a solo artist, along with duets with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, and most successfully, with Tammi Terrell. The two of them recorded a bunch of classic duets together, including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”.

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And “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing”.

Then on October 14, 1967, Tammi collapsed into Marvin’s arms on-stage during a performance of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”. She was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor; she would die a few years later.

But the Motown machine had to keep churning out those hits, and Marvin was even forced into recording some fake duets with Valerie Simpson pretending to be Tammi Terrell. This just made Marvin even more disillusioned and depressed.

To make matters worse, along the way, Marvin had married Barry Gordy’s sister, Anna, and their marriage was tumultuous, to say the least.

In 1968, Marvin had a huge hit with “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”. We covered that song in-depth, back in episode number 62 of this podcast. If you haven’t heard that one, go check it out. It’s a good one.

“I Heard It Through The Grapevine” was not only a number one smash hit, it also became the biggest selling hit in Motown’s history. And it was a record that Barry Gordy didn’t even want to release. In fact, he fought against it.

In the end, Marvin was ambivalent about his success with “Grapevine”, but one thing it did prove to him was that Barry Gordy and his Motown machine could be wrong. They could make mistakes. Their judgment wasn’t always right. And that empowered Marvin to start making the album that he really wanted to make.

The reverberations from the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were still being felt in 1970, along with the riot at the Democratic National Convention and the ongoing effects of the war in Vietnam.  Tammi Terrell had died in March 1970; Marvin spoke at the funeral very emotionally. Then, in June 1970, Marvin headed into the studio to record “What’s Going On”.

Obie Benson was a member of the Four Tops, and when they were in California in May of ‘69, he had witnessed the police attacking protesters in Berkeley, and that inspired him to start writing “What’s Going On” with his songwriting partner, Al Cleveland. Now, the Four Tops were not interested in recording what they saw as a “protest song”, so Cleveland and Benson brought the song to Marvin, and Marvin refined the melody and added to the lyrics.

Marvin’s brother Frankie had served in Vietnam and brought home some horrific stories that he shared with Marvin. Those emotions work their way into “What’s Going On”. Marvin was able to channel his feelings about his brother’s pain, his own sadness over the loss of Tammi Terrell, and his frustrations over his career. All of it was poured into “What’s Going On”.

Marvin Gaye, Obi Benson and Al Cleveland share writing credit on “What’s Going On”. The musicians on the track include members from the legendary Motown session players called the Funk Brothers, including bass player James Jamerson. But Marvin wanted to mix it up, too, so he brought in some outside musicians. Rather than use the regular Funk Brothers drummers, he brought in a drummer with big band experience, Chet Forrest.

The song opens with the sound of a small crowd, like we’ve just joined some friends at a party.

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Those voices include some of the Funk Brothers and two members of the Detroit Lions, Mel Farr and Lim Barley, friends of Marvin’s, who he invited into Motown Studio, the “Hitsville” studio. The voice you can hear loudly proclaiming, “Hey, man, what’s happening?” Is LG Stover, a Motown employee and a trusted friend of Marvin’s.

Now that saxophone part that opens the song is one of the most recognizable in history. Marvin worked hard with the arranger and the musicians to refine the tracks exactly as he imagined them, but he also knew magic when he heard it. And there are two key features of this song that were completely accidental, but so perfect that Marvin kept them and they became essential elements of the song:

Eli Fontaine was an alto sax player that Marvin brought in to play on the song. Eli listened to the track and then played a little bit on his saxophone just to warm up. Then he told Marvin he was ready to record. Marvin said, “Nope, you can go home. We got what we needed.” What Eli had played for his warm up, just noodling around, was perfect. What was captured on tape and became part of music history isn’t even a first take– it’s a rehearsal. That part is so memorable, it’s one of the main hooks of the song, and that is the only time that that part appears in the song, just right there at the very beginning. Let’s listen to the whole intro again into the first verse.

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OK, let’s spend some time on how these tracks were put together, because there’s a lot of layers here. There are two guitar parts. I’m going to play them together, but pan them left and right so that you can differentiate them, but also see how they work together.

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There’s a few tracks of drums and percussion. Here’s the drum part.

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There’s a conga part

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And also this percussion part.

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There’s a piano part, which I believe was played by Marvin himself.

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And there’s vibes, played by Jack Brokensha

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There’s more saxophone on there, too

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And of course, the bass played by James Jameson.

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There are also background vocals that are present through the whole song

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So now that we’ve heard those parts in isolation, let’s go back and listen to that verse again and see how all those parts come together.

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I’m just curious if any of those parts jump out at you now, now that you know what they sound like individually, let’s hear the second verse.

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I mentioned before that there were two serendipitous events that ended up becoming a big part of the song. One was that saxophone introduction. The other was a mistake by engineer Ken Sands. Marvin had recorded two different takes for the lead vocal, and he wanted to hear them separately and decide which one to keep. But Ken Sands accidentally played them both back at the same time, and when Marvin heard them together, he liked the way that sounded, the way the two parts weaved around each other. And he decided to keep both vocal parts. This multi layered vocal style became a sound that Marvin would return to throughout his career.

[Music]

That multi-layered vocal style became a technique that Marvin would return to on many songs throughout the rest of his career. Now we’re heading towards the chorus and there’s a couple of new elements added here. There are some finger snaps:

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And a string section, arranged by David Van De Pitte, whose arrangements were a critical part of dozens and dozens of Motown hits.

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Let’s listen to it all together now.

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In a song full of great moments, this may be my favorite part. The way Marvin syncopates the phrases “picket lines and picket signs”, the sensitivity in his voice when he sings “don’t punish me with brutality”, something he had plenty of personal experience with. And the way his voice just soars when he hits that chorus, it’s total perfection.

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And barely audible in the mix, you can hear Marvin add this:

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The next section is an instrumental break where you’d normally hear something like a sax solo. But here, Marvin fills the space with his own voice.

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And let’s just take a minute to appreciate the groove that the bass, drums and percussion are laying down behind this party.

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And here’s the last verse.

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Notice right there that Marvin says, “I’ll tell you what’s going on”.

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One small little detail that I actually think is important: most people probably interpret the title of this song as a question “What’s going on?”, question mark. But in the actual song title, there is no question mark. In fact, I’ve heard that in the original lyrics, there was a question mark, but by the time they finished the song, Marvin removed it intentionally. The song, and the album, isn’t phrased as a question. There’s no punctuation. So the song can be read as a question and a statement. Marvin is asking us what’s happening, but he’s also telling you what he’s seeing and feeling. He’s being a reporter, a journalist in song, documenting the world around him.

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And if you ever wondered what the crowd was talking about in the background there, well, here you go.

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At one point, you can hear a voice refer to someone as “Gates”. That was Marvin’s nickname, Gates. Let’s hear that final passage one more time.

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And let’s listen to James Jameson’s bass one more time.

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Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On”

As the legend goes, when Berry Gordy first heard the song, he said it was the worst thing he’d ever heard and refused to release it. Well, Marvin told them that he wouldn’t record a single thing for Motown until they released this song. He even decided that he’d just quit music and play football for the Detroit Lions. He’d never actually played football before, but that didn’t seem to deter him.

Eventually, Marvin won out. There was just too much demand for a new Marvin Gaye single, and Marvin wasn’t going to give them anything else. “What’s Going On” was their only option. So they released it.

By then, Berry Gordy had pretty much relocated to California, so it was easier for other people to get the single out without Gordy’s approval. Story goes that Gordy was furious that they released the song, until he discovered that it had sold a hundred thousand copies on the first day… then he changed his tune.

Both the single and the album have sold millions of copies and they frequently topped the list of greatest songs and greatest albums of all time. But beyond the charts and the stats, this album endures because it touches people, it moves people, it inspires people. It’s bigger than Motown, it’s bigger than Marvin.

Marvin Gaye would lead a troubled life that ended in tragedy. But this album that he created is a singular perfect piece of art. Nobody can do better than that.

I used a number of sources to research this episode, but my main resource was a book called “What’s Going On” by Ben Edmonds. I think it’s out of print now, might be a little tough to find, but it’s a fantastic book. Highly recommended.

Thanks for listening and for being a part of this journey. The adventure continues in two weeks when we’re back with another new episode. Until then, visit us on Facebook or on Podchaser, where you can leave comments and feedback. And if you enjoyed the show, share it with your friends and follow the show so that you never miss an episode.

We are but one show on the Pantheon Podcast network. Be sure to check out some of their other great shows. And remember to support the artists and the music you love.

Only love can conquer hate. That was Marvin Gaye and “What’s Going On”.

After after two years of COVID-19 shutdowns & false starts, live music is beginning to return. Let’s celebrate the power & importance of live music by looking back at a critical moment in history:

April 5, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated the day before. America was on edge and riots were breaking out in cities across the country. But the city of Boston, MA held it together. Why? Because the Godfather Of Soul– James Brown— was in town.

(Above Photo: Thomas Atkins (left) and Kevin White (right) speak with James Brown at the Boston Garden, April 5, 1968. It was one day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Atkins, Brown and White are credited with keeping the city quiet in the aftermath.)

— This show is one of many great music-related podcasts on the Pantheon network. You should check them out! And remember to follow this show, so you never miss an episode.