Have some good old white boys appropriating a Black song and making a southern fried hit out of it.
(One version of the original, if you’re curious.)
Music
Eleven months
Eleven months to the day since Sandra died. Time flies even when you’re not having fun. I thougt I’d keep it light today by just sharing some of the songs that would always cheer her up.
Sandra had always been a Paul Weller fan, but never more so than during his Style Council days.
From the Style Council’s Long Hot Summer it’s only a short step to Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves the Sunshine:
Roy Ayers is one of those jazz/funk crossover artists that made the seventies such an interesting musical decade. The Crusaders are another example; their greatest hit Streetlife being not quite like their other work… Here they are at Montreux in 2003, with Randy Crawford:
I’ve talked about how much Sandra liked the Brothers Johnson’s version of Strawberry Letter 23 before, but here’s Shuggie Otis’ original version:
As for the Brothers Johnson, another favourite was Land of Ladies, which always reminded her of driving through France on a family holiday with the album on which this song appeared the only cassette available and hence being played over and over.
Stevie Wonder was another huge favourite of Sandra’s. Y’all know what this is.
Not quite as sophisticated as Stevie Wonder, but certainly as funky was Johnny “Guitar” Watson, who had had a long career already before he reinvented himself in the seventies. Here he is on Soul Train:
Speaking of funk and reinvention, Chaka Khan got her start with this lot, Rufus, long before she became an eighties pop diva:
Let’s leave with another summer song by another favourite, The Isley Brothers’ Summer Breeze:
Girlschool
Anonymous — the music video
CPL 593H
I’m slightly too young to have known Roxy Music as anything else but that band wot did “Avalon” or not think of Bryan Ferry as an aging creepster, but Sandra had been just the right age for glam rock in general and Roxy in particular. Roxy was the first great band of her generation, some years before punk, coming from but not actually having been a part of the whole hippie/psychedalic rock movement. Did you realise they’re forty years old this year?
Yes, I know. A couple of decades and all those small differences between rock movements aren’t all that important anymore but to music nerds, which Sandra never was. That sort of obsessive compulsiveness cataloging and categorising is usually more of a male pursuit anyway (certainly was in our hosuehold). She just liked the music that she liked, had a keen sense of why she liked certain bands or genres, but no desire to become all stamp collecting about it…
And this was her favourite Roxy Music song.