Category Archives: Soul

Concert Review, First Aid Kit, Øyafestivalen, Soul

Best @ Øyafestivalen 2012 day4

    • CHARLES BRADLEY AND HIS EXTRAORDINAIRES
      This is our third CB concert this summer… all 3 have been GREAT. I would have preferred Vika @ 21:00.. but he nailed it at the Enga stage in the sunlight as well. His “Soul scream” was in perfect shape… setlist was pretty much built around “No Time For Dreamin” & Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”. Lot of Love, Heart, Compassion… and wonderful southern soul groove. What a good band he has with him on this tour!Hugs were available after the concert.. and this time we grabbed the opportunity.
      Best songs: Why is it so Hard,  No Time for Dreaming & Golden Rule.
      The BEST concert at Øyafestivalen 2012.
    • FIRST AID KIT
      Klara & Johanna Söderberg sang their wonderful harmonies in the sunshine…. and everyone (at least as far as I could observe) smiled & sang back.. Lovely Americana with some great songs (Emmylou & The Lion’s Roar). I also really liked the Fever Ray cover, When I Grow Up (Hallgeir).

First Aid Kit:

  • SWEDEN
    In spite of their name they are from Norway and they are good! Strong songs and their own style, not “just another indie band”. Looking forward to follow them.

Sweden:

  • THE WAR ON DRUGS
    Nice concert. TWOD (silly name btw) plays their dreamy, guitar based Americana indie. Adam Granduciel is more of a songwriter & guitar player.. than a great singer in my book (Egil). The Highlight of their concert was Come to the City. They drew a fairly large audience and it was a pleasant early afternoon concert.
  • ODD NORDSTOGA
    I really liked his sweet songs and it was a good start of the last day at the Oyafestival.
  • BEST COAST
    I like Best Coast but this was not a very good concert for them, not bad, but a bit bland, it looked like the band didn’t care and it rubbed off on the audience. Too bad, I was looking forward to their show. I like them much better on record than live, at least if this show represents what Best Coast can do live.

– Egil & Hallgeir @ Øyafestivalen 2012

Music Calendar, Soul

Today: Joe Tex passed away in 1982 – 30 years ago

1 Comment

From Wikipedia:

Birth name Joseph Arrington, Jr.
Also known as Yusuf Hazziez
Born August 8, 1935
Rogers, Texas, United States
Origin Baytown, Texas, United States
Died August 13, 1982 (aged 47)
Navasota, Texas, United States
Genres Rock’n’roll, R&B, soul, southern soul, deep soul, country soul,funk, disco, rap
Occupations Singer-songwriter
Instruments Vocals
Years active 1955-1982
Labels King Records, Ace Records,Dial Records, Atlantic Records,Mercury Records, Epic Records

Joseph Arrington, Jr. (August 8, 1935– August 13, 1982), better known as “Joe Tex“, was an American musician who gained success in the 1960s and 1970s with his brand of Southern soul, which mixed the styles of country, gospel and rhythm and blues.

Born in Rogers, Texas, and raised in Baytown, Tex’s career started after he was signed to King Records in 1955 following four wins at the Apollo Theater. Between that year and 1964, however, Tex struggled to find hits and by the time he finally recorded his first hit, “Hold What You’ve Got“, in 1965, he had recorded thirty prior singles that were deemed failures on the charts. Tex went on to have three million-selling hits, “Hold What You’ve Got” (1965), “Skinny Legs and All” (1967) and “I Gotcha” (1972).

Tex’s style of speaking over the background of his music helped to make him one of the predecessors of the modern style of rap music.

From allmusic (Dave Marsh):

Joe Tex made the first Southern soul record that also hit on the pop charts (“Hold What You’ve Got,” in 1965, made number five in Billboard). His raspy-voiced, jackleg preacher style also laid some of the most important parts of rap’s foundation. He is, arguably, the most underrated of all the ’60s soul performers associated with Atlantic Records, although his records were more likely than those of most soul stars to become crossover hits.

Read more here – allmusic.com

Hold On What You’ve Got @ Shindig in 1965:

I Gotcha:

Album of the day:

 

Other August-13:

Continue reading Today: Joe Tex passed away in 1982 – 30 years ago →

Memphis, Music Calendar, Soul, Stax

Today: William Bell is 73

From Wikipedia:

William Bell (born July 16, 1939) is an American soul singer and songwriter, and one of the architects of the Stax–Volt sound. As a performer, he is probably best known for 1961’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water” (his debut single); 1968’s “Private Number” (a duet with Judy Clay, and a top 10 hit in the UK); and 1976’s “Tryin’ To Love Two”, Bell’s only US top 40 hit, which also hit #1 on the R&B charts. Upon the death of Otis Redding, Bell released the well-received memorial song “A Tribute To A King”.

From Allmusic (Jason Ankeny):

A principal architect of the Stax/Volt sound, singer/composer William Bell remains best known for his classic “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” one of the quintessential soul records to emerge from the Memphis scene. Born William Yarborough on July 16, 1939, he cut his teeth backing Rufus Thomas, and in 1957 recorded his first sides as a member of the Del Rios. After joining the Stax staff as a writer, in 1961 Bell made his solo debut with the self-penned “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” an archetypal slice of country-soul and one of the label’s first big hits. A two-year Armed Forces stint effectively derailed his career, however, and he did not release his first full-length album, The Soul of a Bell, until 1967, generating a Top 20 hit with the single “Everybody Loves a Winner”; that same year, Albert King also scored with another classic Bell composition, the oft-covered “Born Under a Bad Sign.”

You Don’t Miss Your Water:

Album of the day:

Read more about this album here -> Allmusic – The Soul of Bell

 Other July-16:

Continue reading Today: William Bell is 73 →

Jazz, Rock, Singer Songwriter, Soul, Sound, The Best Songs, Tom Waits

Great songs: Tom Taubert’s Blues – Tom Waits

Wikipedia:
“Tom Traubert’s Blues” opens the album Small Change. Jay S. Jacobs has described the song as a “stunning opener [which] sets the tone for what follows.” The refrain is based almost word by word on the 1890 Australian song, “Waltzing Matilda” by A.B. “Banjo” Paterson, although the tune is slightly different.

Old Grey Whistle Test, 1977:

The origin of the song is somewhat ambiguous. The sub-title of the track “Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen” seems to indicate that it is about a time that Waits spent in Copenhagen in 1976 while on a tour. There, he apparently met Danish singer Mathilde Bondo. Indeed, in a 1998 radio interview, she confirmed that she met Waits and that they spent a night on the town together.

Waits himself described the song’s subject during a concert in Sydney Australia in March 1979: “Uh, well I met this girl named Matilda. And uh, I had a little too much to drink that night. This is about throwing up in a foreign country.” In an interview on NPR’s World Cafe, aired December 15, 2006, Waits stated that Tom Traubert was a “friend of a friend” who died in prison.

Bones Howe, the album’s producer, recalls when Waits first came to him with the song:

He said the most wonderful thing about writing that song. He went down and hung around on skid row in L.A. because he wanted to get stimulated for writing this material. He called me up and said, “I went down to skid row … I bought a pint of rye. In a brown paper bag.” I said, “Oh really?.” “Yeah – hunkered down, drank the pint of rye, went home, threw up, and wrote ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ […] Every guy down there … everyone I spoke to, a woman put him there.”

Allmusic Review:

by Thomas Ward
“Tom Traubert’s Blues” is one of Tom Waits’ most popular songs, although this is due in the most part by Rod Stewart’s vastly inferiors cover version. Waits’ original is heartbreakingly beautiful, containing some of the artist’s finest lyrics, especially in the croaking opening “Wasted and wounded/’Taint what the moon did/Got what I paid for now”. The story, essentially a drunken tale, fits the gorgeous, elegiac melody perfectly, and indeed the song is so evocative it’s almost impossible for the listener not to be swept up in the story. Although the arrangement and the use of strings doesn’t take any real risks, it embellishes the melody beautifully. Without doubt, one of Tom Waits’ finest recordings.

Here introduced as Waltzing Matilda at Rockpalast in 1977:

Continue reading Great songs: Tom Taubert’s Blues – Tom Waits →