WHO AM I, REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS, STORIES, ON THE AIR

Friday, May 10, 2013

BETTYE SWANN "a missing link between Muscle Shoals and Motown"

Born in Shreveport, La., in 1944, Betty Jean Champion was one of 14 children. Growing up in the rural town of Arcadia, her earliest musical memories went hand in hand with the hard life of African-Americans in the pre-civil rights era South.




"I remember being with my mother at times as a young person singing at church," she says. "I remember the work that we did -- the sharecropping, working for the landowners in the cotton field -- I remember singing anything by Sam Cooke, Booker T. and the MG's. And I remember my sisters listening to Little Richard and Chuck Berry. I remember going to see my first movie in Arcadia. My brothers dropped me off at the movie theater so that I could watch Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender. I went up to the balcony; you couldn't go downstairs if you were black. It didn't bother me; I was just a little kid. I sat there all day long. I saw that movie over and over and over again. My brother came back for me, and he couldn't believe that I'd stayed in the theater that long. I didn't know that you were only supposed to watch the movie one time and then leave."

"I left Louisiana in 1963. I was 18 and had just finished high school," she says. "I went to live with a sister, and probably the way I got into show business was that I was always singing something. I wasn't aware all the time that I was singing, but people brought it to my attention. When I first got to L.A., my friend Emma would always say, 'Hey, that sounds good. Why don't you do something?' She introduced me to someone who knew Huey Harris, who wrote some well-known blues songs. That's the person who introduced me to Al Scott [an R&B disc jockey], who had a radio show that was sponsored by Ruth Dolphin, [owner] of [a record store called] Dolphins of Hollywood and Money Records."

She chose the stage name Bettye Swann, because she always thought swans were "lovely." Later on, it would cause tension among her family. "I had a fight with someone in the family over the name Swann. 'What are you trying to do, disown the family?' they said. 'Well,' I said, 'I never thought about it until you said something. Does it bother you?'"

Scott became Swann's manager and quickly got her into the studio with producer Arthur Wright. Wright would go on to create the perfect package for Bettye's music. Whenever I hear the joyous, loping bass line that introduces "Make Me Yours," I'm transported to another place, another time -- specifically, America in the year 1967: Martin Luther King Jr. is still alive and fighting back with nonviolence, and Che Guevara is stone-cold dead. Racial violence threatens to consume Detroit, the home of the Motown sound. China explodes a hydrogen bomb. Sinatra nearly sweeps the Grammys. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, an African-American and the grandson of a slave, is sworn in. The Graduate mocks the word "plastics." The Packers annihilate the Chiefs.

"It had a good beat, a good story," she says. "When I sang ['Don't Wait Too Long'], I was convinced that it was true. Between writing it and recording it, it took about a week, and it was on the radio about a month later."

Wright, who lives in Compton, Calif. today, recalls the sessions for "Don't Wait Too Long" and the other tracks that comprised Swann's debut full-length for Money: "She never sang with a live group. I always overdubbed her voice. We'd get the music done, and she'd finish her vocals in one or two takes. She was a real professional."

There had been other Swann songs ("The Heartache Is Gone," "What Can It Be"), but none of them had traction. "Make Me Yours" was different, though. It has that elusive "fluttering" quality that marks the best of Smokey Robinson, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. It sounds entirely effortless, as if the song had been put together for the sole purpose of brightening our few, precious, remaining days on Earth.


The song is a plea for spiritual and physical possession, for a place in the heart of another: "Now that I've found you/I wanna stay around/So make me yours." It's a minor masterpiece of Southern soul filtered through a brilliant (if somewhat poorly engineered) West Coast arrangement of Wright.

The song perched itself at No. 1 on the R&B charts and was a certified Top-20 pop hit.



To this writer's amazement, Swann says she was paid $7,000 for "Make Me Yours" -- in advance. (Since then, however, she says she has received no royalties.) Things soured soon after, particularly her relationship with Scott. She left L.A. for Athens, Ga., and acquired a new manager, George Barton, an established music promoter in the South.

After Swann's contract with Money expired, Motown Records expressed interest in Swann. She passed on the label and instead hitched her wagon to Capitol Records in 1968. In essence, Swann jumped from the frying pan of a small, independent, Southern soul label with a built-in audience and into the fire of a mainstream record company that now had to sell a new artist to the larger listening public (i.e., white folks).

The results were stellar. The reason was Wayne Schuler, a multi-talented producer/ songwriter/A&R guy from Louisiana and son of Eddie Shuler, a Cajun music producer and founder of Goldband Records. Wayne says he was the only one at Capitol who understood R&B. He was deeply fond of Swann's "Make Me Yours," and he was ambitious. He longed to have Swann sing tunes like "Stand By Your Man," a hit made most famous by Tammy Wynette (but also a smash for another soul singer named Candi Staton). Shuler wanted to make Swann a crossover artist, bridging the gap between country and soul.


That gap has never really been filled, leaving music writers like myself to wonder how the landscape of contemporary pop might look today if Shuler and Swann had succeeded. Now more than ever, it seems, blacks and whites listen to radically different music. But just 40 years ago, we could all agree on a mainstream artist like Presley. Those days are gone, and the worlds of country and R&B have never been further apart.

In any case, Swann had already recorded cowpoke numbers like "I Can't Stop Loving You" for Money. But it was with Shuler that she would record "Stand By Your Man" and Merle Haggard compositions like "Just Because You Can't Be Mine." Yet it was a sultry, down-tempo duet with Buck Owens on the Haggard classic "Today I Started Loving You Again" that thwarted Shuler's plan to catapult Swann into stardom.

According to Shuler, the heads of Capitol blew a gasket when they heard Owens perform a love song with a black woman (even though Owens was all set to book Swann on his TV show "Hee Haw"). The label quickly shelved the single. And then lost it.

"I know they've got [the tape] somewhere," says Shuler, during a recent phone conversation. "They're just not looking hard enough. Hell, I always had to talk Capitol into the country things; they didn't want to do it. It was a work of love. Like so many tasty things, the public wasn't ready for it."

Shuler only has fond memories of working with Swann from her '68-'70 tenure at Capitol. "Bettye had a romantic streak, same as me," says Shuler, "but I never had a problem with her. If she seemed hesitant to try something, I'd just use my friendly persuasion."

Swann, meanwhile, characterizes Shuler as "a wonderful producer," but recalls that she felt a little pressured. "I had the feeling they wanted me to be a black female Charley Pride," she says, laughing.

Of the dozens of songs he recorded with Swann, when asked what his favorite is, Shuler is hesitant to choose. "I loved them all. I mean, which one of your children would you favor? I guess I'll go with the version of 'Today I Started Loving You Again' that she cut with Buck Owens. But I also love 'Words' and 'No Faith, No Love.' I didn't produce many albums, but that's certainly my best work."

British music writer Tim Tooher agrees. To this day he's never heard any other record that sounds quite like those Swann made with Shuler in Los Angeles.

"For me," says Tooher, "they sound like they straddle the Mason-Dixon line sonically, neither having the gravity and roughness of the music of Tennessee and Alabama nor the spring and lightness of Detroit. I think a lot of this has to do with the musicians Wayne used, who were as capable of playing on pure pop records, California country or anything else they were called upon to perform. They weren't a group of musicians who had an instantly identifiable sound, but they were no less effective for that."

Of course, Swann's unique voice is what made things happen. As Tooher and others -- mostly Southern soul enthusiasts in Britain, where American music has traditionally been harder to find -- have already noted, it is Bettye's "inherent optimism," even when singing sad material, that makes her voice stand out.


After leaving Money, Swann made Athens, Ga., her home and a launching pad for what many African-American musicians referred to as "the chitlin circuit." (Chitlins are deep-fried pig intestines.) According to Washington, D.C.-based music journalist Bill Carpenter, whose most recent book is Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia, the chitlin circuit was made up of a bunch of "Delta juke joints where anything goes."

In the old days, poor blacks ate chitlins, because it was the cheapest thing to eat.

"They would cook chitlins at these remote places throughout the South," says Carpenter, "where anything that you could ever imagine went on. But the music was always good. Every black entertainer has had to engage it. You could be on the R&B Top 10 and still have to play the chitlin circuit."




Over the years, music writers have only mentioned the chitlin circuit in passing, and no one has yet to significantly cover the topic. But artists like Swann and Candi Staton spent many days and nights driving up and down the South, performing in less-than-posh places, often on the same bill.

"We'd do shows so far up into the country you'd wonder who lived up there," says Staton, Swann's friend and fellow Southern soul sensation who enjoyed her own success last year with Honest Jons/Astralwerk's reissue of her R&B work. "The sun would set and suddenly -- boom! -- there'd be 2,000 people, the place is all lit up. The shows were billed around the 1st and 15th of each month -- 'Mother's Day.' That's when the welfare checks came in the mail. It was like the Wild Wild West. All of us went through hell. People have since tried to make it pretty, but it wasn't."

Staton has many stories of bedlam on the chitlin circuit, including public sex and straight-up murder. She carried a gun for protection, and to ensure that she got paid after each performance.

"People like me -- a good Christian girl from the country -- had to grow up fast," says Staton. "I had to start cussin' right away. You had to cuss 'em out ... to let 'em know you mean business. That's the only language they understood."





Unlike Staton, Swann denies seeing any orgies or shoot-outs on the chitlin circuit -- though she confesses that her manager George Barton often had to pull a gun on someone in order for Bettye to get paid.

"That's how George got a bad reputation," says Swann. "He was always fighting to get me my money. He stood up for me and protected my interests. I loved him from the beginning for the type of person he was."

Swann married Barton in 1970. By then she had jumped ship to FAME, based in Muscle Shoals, Ala., before switching over to Atlantic. She continued to record music and tour until 1976, when she and Barton moved to Las Vegas into an apartment on Bonanza Road. (Shuler helped her secure a lounge gig at the Mint.)

Swann picked up other gigs at the Town Tavern and Union Plaza, and her last public performance took place in 1980, the year Barton passed away. (He was 20 years her senior.) It was the same year Bettye Swann died, and Betty Barton was reborn as one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Now Swann lives in her home in North Las Vegas, suffering from a degenerative spine condition and collecting disability. She wants to complete her degree in education, but recurring pain keeps her from achieving her goal. She attends services at Kingdom Hall off of Rancho Drive






























































































Friday, March 8, 2013

GEATER DAVIS (Sir Shambing source)





Due to the great double tribute LP recently released by Ubiquity Records, would like to spend some words about one of the underrated soul singer of every time, Mr. Geater Davis.
Geater inhabited the twilight world where southern soul meets the blues, and like every other performer of this musical style he owed a huge debt to Bobby Bland.
But he was much more than a Bland imitator, possessing an anguished and impassioned voice perfectly suited to the songs of loneliness and despair that he wrote so well, often in collaboration with another southern soul hero Reuben Bell.
At the end of the 60s the late Allen Orange, then a staffer for John Richbourg, was knocked out by hearing Davis and Bell perform and arranged for them to record in Birmingham, AL. 
He started his own House Of Orange label for their output and was rewarded with a smash for his first 45 with Geater’s Sweet woman love. A super deep blues ballad, it had all the Davis trademark rasps and growls, and the arrangement, particularly the horn section, gave the result great character. This went to no 45 on the R & B charts in the summer of 1970. 




 Other fine recordings for HOO followed including “I Can Hold My Own”, and an intense cut of “Best Of Luck To You”. His first album, named after the big hit, contained the early 45s and, interestingly too, a couple of Bland covers, “Cry Cry Cry” and the wonderful “St James Infirmary”. It wasn’t a great seller but is now considered a deep soul classic.
Orange closed his label around the start of 1972 and Davis moved to Richbourg for the best series of recordings in his career, many using the brilliant Fame Gang musicians. Tracks like “Long Cold Winter”, “Your Heart Is So Cold” and “A Sad Shade Of Blue” are the epitome of anguished desolation.




The brilliant ListenA Whole Lot Of Man, which not only has the best guitar fills ever from Muscle Shoals but also Geater singing his heart out with some lovely screams in the run out groove is a masterpiece. The tuneful, loping, conga propelled Fame cut ListenDon’t Walk Off And Leave Me is another particular favourite, as is the superbly structured typical Davis “bad times” song “You Made Your Bed So Hard” - but he didn’t make a poor recording during this period. The wonder is that so many of these cuts were unissued at the time.
Davis cut sessions for Ace that produced fine tracks like “Nice And Easy” and “There’s Got To Be Some Changes Made” in the mid 70s, but his later work in the decade suffered from the dreadful disco disease. Tracks like “Disco Music” and “Booty Music” for the revitalised House Of Orange were as bad as they sound. The best cut from this time was a strange one off “Wherever You Are” for ex-Malaco guitarist Jerry Puckett’s Sunbelt label. In the 80s he signed for James Bennett in Jackson, MS who issued several singles and a good LP “Better Days”. Like so much of Bennett’s output some of the tracks were decidedly underproduced but in ListenRight Back For More he got it just right. The song was issued twice and the version with overdubbed horns was to be Davis’ last great release.
Vernon Davis died in September 1984 – he was only 38. His tortured vocals and spine tingling delivery will continue to be held in high regard by all knowledgeable fans.



Discography

ListenSweet woman's love / Don't marry a fool ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE 2401 (1970)
I can hold my own / My love is so strong for you ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE 2402 (1971)
For your precious love / Wrapped up in you ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE 2405 (1971)
Best of luck to you / I know (my baby loves me) ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE 2407 (1972)
I've got to pay the price / I'm gonna change ~ LUNA 801 / 77 136 (1972)
ListenDon't walk off (and leave me) / I don't worry (about Jody) ~ LUNA 804 (1972)
Long cold winter / Why does it hurt so bad ~ 77 124 (1972)
You made your bed so hard / Your heart is so cold ~ 77 130 (1973)
Nice and easy / Strange sensation ~ ACE 3006 (1974)
I’ll play the blues for you / My love is so strong for you ~ ODDS AND ENDS 7600 (1975)
Tired of busting my brain / There's got to be some changes made ~ ACE 3019 (1976)
Cold love / Short version ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE 2410 (1977)
I'll play the blues for you / Disco music ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE 79100 (1979)
Wherever you are / Pt 2 ~ SUN BELT 7179 (1979)
Right back for more / Pt 2 ~ MT 001 (1981)
I'll take care of you / ListenRight back for more ~ MT 002 (1981)
Booty music / Breath taking girl ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE 2615 (1982)
Don't give up / Better days ~ MT 005 (1983)
Baby love / Go your way ~ MT 007 (1983)
Sweet woman’s love ~ HOUSE OF ORANGE LP 6000 (1971)
Baby love ~ MT LP 0001