FEBRUARY PLAYLIST

1.  The Sinceres – ‘Please Don’t Cheat On Me’ (1961)

Prolonged exposure to doowop can make me feel like I’m trapped in an episode of Happy Days with only Ralph and Potsie as company but it’s worth slinging a dime in Arnold’s jukebox occasionally. 

2.  The Emperor’s – ‘I Want My Woman’ (1965)

The Emperor’s what? Sore throat? This growling garage prototype stalks menacingly for two and half minutes while said woman presumably hides in a cave.

3.  The Grass Roots – ‘Heaven Knows’ (1969)

Difficult to not sing parts of the Box Tops’ ‘Soul Deep’ through this equally infectious ray of sunshine.

4.  Manfred Mann Chapter Three – ‘One Way Glass’ (1969)

Anyone encountering Manfred Mann Chapter Three on a night out expecting to hear ‘Pretty Flamingo’ would’ve been in a rude awakening. Mann and Mike Hugg led this line-up down a progressive jazz route and there are plenty of freaky, squalling moments on their eponymous debut LP. The trippy, horn laden ‘One Way Glass’ isn’t at the extreme end and makes for an ideal psych club tune. Both their albums worth investigating.

5.  Grant Green – ‘Jan Jan’ (1971)

Blue Note had so many Grant Green recordings they ended up with a backlog of stuff that either never got released or had to wait many years, as in the case of Live At Club Mozambique. Recorded in January 1971, but only issued in 2006, Houston Person (tenor), Clarence Thomas (tenor/soprano), Ronnie Foster (organ) and Idris Muhammad (drums) join guitarist Green (pictured above) for a thrilling club set.

6. Richard Caiton – ‘I Like To Get Near You’ (1969)

Sweeping soul out of New Orleans from local lad Caiton.

7.  Frederick Hymes III – ‘Time Ain’t Gonna Do Me No Favor’ (1970)

Only available from Hymes at his gigs this super-collectable 45 is a gem. ‘Tighten Up’ style guitars, funky drumming, punchy horns and a fantastic vocal.

8.  El Michels Affair featuring The Shacks – ‘Strange Boy’ (2016)

Wow! Love this collaboration between two acts on New York’s Big Crown Records: the instrumental funk band El Michels Affair and the breathy boy-girl duo The Shacks. Absolutely gorgeous and more than a touch of Camera Obscura about it.

9.  Paul Orwell – ‘Loaded Street Syrup’ (2017)

I presume the four tracks on Paul Orwell Presents Hard Shakes were leftovers from Paul’s Organized Blues phase. Like the tracks on that LP these are short, in-your-face, fuzz and Farfisa instrumental nibbles. All good fun but merely a tasty snack before the more substantial offerings of Paul’s The Shoots project – coming soon - and his second ‘proper’ solo album. Trust me, I’ve had sneaky preview, these are gonna be the real deal.

10.  Pasapogas Hammond Quartet – ‘Modern Hall’ (2017)

Pasapogas Hammond Quartet are Ángel Soriano - Hammond Organ, Jero Colomina - guitar, Santiago Vilella - drums, Riard Chumillas - tenor sax and flute, J.M. Maldo – percussion, and what these Spaniards lack in arithmetic they make up for in slick soul-jazz. With three very stylish EPs to their name (check the artwork), Modern Hall the lead track from their latest. Fans of JTQ and even early Style Council form a queue.

BETTY HARRIS at the 100 CLUB, LONDON

“It’s taken a long time, a real long time, but we made it.” When Betty Harris retired from performing in 1970 she could have had no inkling nearly 50 years later she’d be headlining a sell-out London show.

Buoyed by the upturn in interest since last year’s Soul Jazz Records’ The Lost Queen of New Orleans Soul, which gathered 17 tracks issued between 1965 and 1969 for Sansu under the direction of the legendary Allen Toussaint, Betty was afforded one of those hero receptions UK soul audiences are renown for.

As that collection showed, Betty was equally adept at R&B dancers, soul ballads and the lolloping New Orleans rhythms intrinsic to music from Louisiana’s Crescent City. Although despite Soul Jazz’s crown, Betty was not from nor ever lived in New Orleans, she was flown in from Florida to record. But that's splitting a beignet.

Shaky opening numbers ‘Mean Man’ and ’12 Red Roses’ indicated this might be a gig where fans were simply glad to be in the rare presence of someone whose records they’ve enjoyed over the years. As Betty told us, these were songs she recorded when she was 19-20 (born in 1939 she was older but you didn't hear that from me) and hasn’t sung some since, but come the third song, a rollicking ‘I Don’t Wanna Hear It’, Betty loosened up, that soulful rasp was to the fore, and we were cooking from there on in.

Backed by the Disposable Breaks, doing their best attempt at hitting the funk of the Meters, ‘Trouble With My Lover’, ‘Bad Luck’ and ‘Close To Me’ caught a groove and Betty’s slower take on Solomon Burke’s ‘Cry To Me’ – the closest she came to a real hit in 1963 – carried real emotion and experience.

Whilst fans were there to give something back, Betty, resplendent in glamourous gown and wearing her best hair, also had her own giving to do. Of her three backing singers, two were young teenage girls who’d not had the best start in life but had been offered a chance to come to the UK and sing. Betty acknowledged they found her intimidating but countered nobody was there to help guide her early in her career. Apologies for not catching the girls’ names but they should be proud of the job they did especially when handed the entire lead for ‘Can’t Last Much Longer’. The baton was passed.

Few people recorded a better version of ‘Ride Your Pony’ and after that irresistible mover Betty was brought back for a well-earned encore with the heavy funk bomb ‘There’s A Break In The Road’.

A cackling, engaging presence throughout, it was a joy to spend an hour in Betty’s company and this gig was everything, if not more, anyone could’ve hoped for. Betty was correct, it did take a long time but she made it.

THE LIMBOOS - "I DON'T BUY IT" (2017)

Contenders for coolest band on the planet, Spain’s The Limboos, have a new album, Limbootica! out on 31 March. Here’s the super stylish video for ‘I Don’t Buy It’. Album to be released on Penniman Records. They might not buy it but I will.

And for good measure here’s ‘Big Chef’ from their 2014 album Space Mambo.

IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR: THE LIFE & SOUL OF WILSON PICKETT by TONY FLETCHER (2017)

Wilson Pickett was one the biggest soul stars of the 60s yet is often overlooked and taken for granted. I’ve a bunch of his singles, from early sides on Double L (‘Baby Call On Me’) and Verve (‘Let Me Be Your Boy’) to the humongous hits for Atlantic (you know the ones) but rarely pay him much mind. There’s probably an element of unconscious soul snobbery at work here; Wilson wasn’t an obscure and underappreciated talent and he didn’t die with early promise unfulfilled; instead, he worked his way up, hit it big then floundered through the decades with decreasing artistic reward. Pickett also inadvertently provided fodder for karaoke nights and wedding bands everywhere and while ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ still packs an almighty punch I never want to hear ‘Mustang Sally’ again.

Tony Fletcher’s new biography, In The Midnight Hour, succeeds in turning the spotlight back to Wilson Pickett y’all. Although the first Pickett biography his story reads a familiar one as with unerring predictability his life plays out as the archetypal 60s soul star. If reads like a work of unoriginal fiction and a cliché, it was Pickett, more than most, who established it as he walked toe-to-toe with the progression of black American music during a sizable chunk of the second half of the 20^th century.

From growing up poor in Prattville, Alabama, to Pickett’s father moving to work in the motor trade in Detroit, to young Wilson singing gospel, joining the more R&B-focussed Falcons in Detroit, recording in New York, sessions at Stax in Memphis and Muscle Shoals back in Alabama, huge success with the trappings that bought, to helping switch attention to the soul of Philadelphia, to performing in Africa, Pickett carried the flame. Then came the downward spiral. Pickett struggled to find a place in the music business when soul shifted from hitting hard in the guts and deep in the heart to the disco era, skittering across emotions and dancefloors.

As Pickett’s star waned his descent into drink, drugs and increased violence escalated alarmingly and stays in prison beckoned. “It’s very difficult to get somebody who’s been to the top of mountain to accept that they’ve living on the hillside,” offers Jon Tiven who attempted to help get Pickett back on track in the 90s. 

As always with Tony Fletcher, he put the miles in to interview as many associates as possible to compile a thorough account of his subject. There are plenty of anecdotes telling of Pickett’s greatness: his dynamic stage presence, the way he commanded the studio, his artistry, charisma and humour. And, of course, that voice and that scream. Jerry Wexler said James Brown screamed but Wilson Pickett screamed in tune.

On the other side of the coin was The Wicked Pickett, a nickname earned from pinching the mini-skirted behinds of secretaries in the Atlantic Records offices. If we recoil at such practices nowadays it was small fry compared to what was to come. Fletcher asserts “for most southern blacks of the era, harsh physical discipline was accepted as a rite of passage” and harsh physical discipline was something Pickett took from his childhood and delivered in adult life. It makes grim reading and when added to beating women and his children, pulling a gun on his brother, serving up a saucer of cocaine to his 14-year-old son and a bunch of other assholery it’s hard not to feel when his bass player rips a towel rail off a wall to smash Pickett in the head, breaking the bone behind his left eye, that he didn’t have it coming. If this was a movie a little cheer may've gone up in the cinema.

If such passages make uncomfortable reading, Fletcher’s analysis and descriptions of Pickett’s music are enthralling and redress the balance. Such is Fletcher’s enthusiasm he does what any good music biographer should, and sends the reader back to the records. For my part I bought the first five Wilson Pickett albums (check out the Original Album Series, five CDs for little more than a tenner) and have listened with fresh, excited ears. I like him more now and although still not the biggest fan of that sock-it-to-me chuggy-chugging brand of soul, gems aplenty have surfaced. ‘Jealous Love’ and ‘I’ve Come A Long Way’ alone from 1967’s excellent I’m In Love are new favourites and have, at last, given me a fuller and fairer assessment of the Wicked (sometimes very wicked) Pickett. Oh yeah, he also turned 'Hey Jude' into a decent record so he definitely wasn't all bad.

In The Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett by Tony Fletcher is out now, published by Oxford University Press.

DIANA RIGG GOES FOR A WALK

Apologies for lack of posts recently, should have a couple to go this week. In the meantime, as a thank you for popping by, here's Diana Rigg walking in the park (looks like Embankment Gardens to me). See ya soon.

MONKEY'S WANDERING WIRELESS SHOW - SUNDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2017

Hold tight comrades, Monkey’s Wandering Wireless Show returns for an hour this Sunday on Fusion.

If you’ve not listened before it’s simply me playing records and intermittently interrupting them to provide information and half-truths. If you’ve never listening before, give it a go – Fusion only broadcasts for one hour a week and whoever is in the chair makes it an unmissable part of the weekend – and if you have, don’t let that put you off, I’m hopefully slowly getting the hang of this broadcasting lark. The music will cover a few bases but if you’re a reader of Monkey Picks you’ll dig it.

You can join up to Mixlr.com to chat and comment throughout the show, or just sit back and tune in. Either way, hope to catch you there, it'll be fun. Honest. The station crackles into life at 8.30pm prompt.

Now available to catch-up on the Fusion Showreel: Monkey's Wandering Wireless Show.