Wednesday December 18 – High & Rising Book Release – Philadelphia, PA Breakbeat Tuesday – Ticket To The Moon
Last January the earth opened up and swallowed part of Port-au-Prince, Haiti and leaving a country and a people in dire straits. The good people over at Soulstrut decided to hold a “Heatrocks For Haiti” campaign, where the members of the site would donate some of their most prized pieces of vinyl for auction, with all the proceeds going towards several different charitable foundations. We had done the same thing for our folks in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and both times we raised a massive amount of money, helped people, and shared our love of music and vinyl in the process.
We all went on a furious bidding war to grab records but there was one in particular that basically smacked me over the head and that I was determined to grab. I WANT IT NOW. And so I bid and I upped my bid and I upped it a little more. Once it got into the 3 figures price range I was pretty sure that I was coasting towards victory, but at the very last moment (as too often is the case) someone snuck by me and came out on the other side, victorious. Thwarted, I vowed that one day I would own that record. That record is the Karen Records version of Betty (Bettye) Lavette’s “Let Me Down Easy” B/W “Ticket To The Moon” – and to use some of the most apt (yet absurd) vernacular to describe this record, “shit is hard body as a motherfucker.” Especially the flipside, “Ticket…” just reeks of nastiness.
The Bettye Lavette story is quite interesting. Basically a detroit girl, she started her singing career very young, performing with a variety of artists including the James Brown review as well as a young up and coming soul singer from Georgie, Otis Redding. Having enjoyed a relatively healthy career touring and recording all throughout the 60s, it was during this time she recorded what many soul music aficionados refer to as “one of the greatest soul recordings of all time,” the original 1965 Calla Records version of “Let Me Down Easy.” I know at least one hip-hop producer agreed with how ill the song is, but I can’t remember who that was at the moment (feel free to chime in, folks.)
In the early 70s she signed with Atlantic / Atco and went down to Alabama to record an album (“Child Of The Seventies”) at the legendary Muscle Shoals. For reasons still unexplained, the project was cancelled and, other than 1 single, the album was shelved. Disillusioned, she continued on with her career releasing a few disco records and even singing on Broadway until 1999 when a French record collector found the master tapes for “Child Of The Seventies” and released it on his own imprint (under the new title “Souvenirs.”) This began an upsurge in her popularity and, coupled with a gang of newly recorded material over the past decade, Bettye is as popular than ever, having won awards and selling records like crazy. Don’t call it a comeback!
A couple months after I lost that bid for the record, I found another copy on eBay and was determined to get this one. Don’t ask me how much it cost but for sure it was a pretty penny. You know I was psyched when I got the 7″ package in my mailbox and opened it up, finally having this banger. One of the first things that I noticed when I looked at the label was the words “Arranged By Dale Warren.” Now I honestly do not know the back story on how all of this went down, as I’m not really as deep in the digging game as a lot of other dudes, but I figured it had to be the only other Dale Warren that I had heard about in the soul music scene at that time. Dale Warren was a musician and arranger for Motown in the 60s, and he’s the man behind the original arrangement of “Let Me Down Easy.” Being the classically trained violinist it makes sense, as the OG version’s pizzicato is so powerful. In the early 70s Warren moved over to the Stax label to join up with Isaac Hayes as the label’s in-house arranger. In 1973 he released a concept album dealing with the effects of American poverty. That album is “Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth” by 24 Carat Black, a magnum opus that, while it didn’t sell well at the time, is considered a masterpiece and touchstone in soul and funk music.
That album is dark and gritty and brooding… and booming. There’s really nothing quite like it. And listening to the 45 I had just got, one can hear that it was the direction that he was moving towards. Desperation funk. Combined with the unmatched intensity of Bettye’s voice and the longing and pain in it, it’s rawer than almost anything. That’s HARD BODY. For my money, when it comes to describing something as “hardcore” I will put this A and B side doubleshot up against any record by Slayer or M.O.P. It sounded like it was recorded somewhere in a cave in Hades. Unbelievably powerful and moving. And YES, both sides have drums, hence this record being a no-brainer for Breakbeat Tuesdays. I hope you enjoy it, as I have the A-Side as a Youtube clip so you can hear it, and the B-Side as the WMD. Peace!
