It was an era when Marvin Gaye wondered ”What`s Goin On” and the O`Jays urged us to climb aboard the ”Love Train.” A time for the Chi-lites to offer a melancholy lover`s prayer, ”Oh Girl,” while the Spinners promised ”I`ll Be Around.”
Billy Paul wrestled with infidelity and desire on ”Me and Mrs. Jones,”
while Al Green declared he was ”Tired of Being Alone.”
And Teddy Pendergrass, then with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, was simply exasperated, admonishing his lover: ”If You Don`t Know Me By Now.”
It was the early `70s, the last great golden age of soul, a style of music rooted in the sacred past (the black gospel church choirs of the South) but concerned with the secular present (sex, sin and human frailty).
Its mixture of raw, emotional singing and funky rhythms had been the voice of black consciousness since the late `50s.
By 1975, it would be eclipsed in popularity by the dawn of disco and, even later, rap.
But `70s kids who are now grown-ups never forgot those songs or that style. And soul music is back-only it`s not being made in America.
Instead, the British are taking the sounds of Philadelphia and Detroit, the lush production values of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Barry White and Marvin Gaye, and making contemporary hit records out of them.
Not only are the British buying it, so are Americans.
It`s not the first time Britons have cashed in on American music, of course. In the mid-`60s, the Beatles and Rolling Stones, among others, gave the early American rock of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Little Richard a British accent, and kids went wild.
Now, a 23-year-old Brit, Lisa Stansfield, is inspiring that reaction again in the States. Her ”Affection” album on Arista has leaped into the Billboard Top 20, and ”All Around the World” is No. 3 on the pop singles chart.
Her success is only the latest achieved in recent months by a line of British acts, both white and black, with a soul-based sound.
Simply Red recently won a Grammy for its slavish cover of ”If You Don`t Know Me By Now” and Soul II Soul collected a pair of Grammys for their ”Keep on a Movin` ” album (Virgin, 1989), which merged the sophisticated sounds of early `70s Gamble-Huff and late-`70s Chic with grittier ”house” and rap rhythms from the `80s.
Recent records by Everything But the Girl, Sade, Ruby Turner, Swing Out Sister and Neneh Cherry all bow at the altar of `70s soul, as well.
And don`t forget George Michael, who demonstrated the commercial viability of Brit-soul in 1987 with his megaplatinum ”Faith” album
(Columbia).
It yielded four No. 1 singles and featured the last hit by a white artist to top the black singles chart-until Stansfield`s ”All Around the World” did so two weeks ago.
”Soul music will always be there, like rock `n` roll,” says Stansfield, in London preparing for a U.S. tour, scheduled to begin in June.
”It`s a tight community-Neneh Cherry, Mick Hucknall (of Simply Red), Jazzie B (of Soul II Soul), they`re all friends of mine.
”It`s exciting to be involved with a movement, to be repopularizing a music we all believe in.”
What has turned Brit-soul from a fad into a profitable trend is that Hucknall, Michael and especially Stansfield can sing in a convincingly
”soulful” manner.
The early soul singers, from Ray Charles to James Brown, were reared on church music, and their voices mixed a gritty earthiness with a pleading, plaintive quality that seemed heaven-sent.
In the same way, Stansfield`s voice is more than just a showpiece instrument, capable of leaping octaves effortlessly, but a vessel for her emotion.
”I tried to take voice lessons, but I couldn`t stand it,” she says.
”My teachers were records, by Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Billie Holliday. When I was 4 or 5 years old, my mom would play the Supremes and I`d sing along. I got it all second-hand.”
Her producers, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, also sound as if they listened to a few of those lush Philly soul records in their boyhood.
With an array of synthesizers, they re-create Gamble and Huff`s MFSB orchestra on cuts such as ”Live Together” and ”When Are You Coming Back?” Strings, layers of percussion, horns, deep bass grooves-it`s 1974 and the No. 1 hit ”TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)” all over again.
It was a sound that Stansfield, Devaney and Morris loved, but they weren`t confident it would sell. Calling themselves Blue Zone, they were enjoying moderate success in England when they released a pop single, which flopped.
But its B side, a soul groove called ”Big Thing,” caught fire.
”When people started buying the record for the B side, it was like a message to us: `This is the music you should be doing,` ” Stansfield said.
The duo of Tracy Thorn and Ben Watt, known as Everything But the Girl, never had any doubts about what kind of music they should be doing, but it took them four albums and five years before they felt compelled to tap into its source.
Last spring, they came to America for the first time to record, with a who`s-who of Los Angeles-area musicians: saxophonists Stan Getz and Michael Brecker, pianist Joe Sample, drummer Omar Hakim.
Helping the duo orchestrate the whole affair was legendary producer Tommy LiPuma, whose credits include Miles Davis, George Benson and David Sanborn.
”We`ve always been influenced by American music, particularly jazz and soul,” Watt says.
”And Tommy had approached us about a record after our first one came out, in 1984. But we were still kids back then, spiced up with a bit of arrogance-that whole punk, do-it-yourself thing.
”We experimented with different styles, we grew up, and we finally started writing songs that would suit an American album.”
The product of the duo`s six-week session in Los Angeles is ”The Language of Life,” which has been selling at a brisk 6,000-records-a-week clip, according to Atlantic Records, and moving up in the Top 100 album chart. A subtle blend of jazz and soul, the album is less an all-star studio session than a showcase for Thorn`s voice and Watt`s melancholy, minor-key compositions.
Whereas Stansfield`s voice is more in the soul-belting tradition of Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight, Thorn`s dusky alto recalls the
sophisticated pop-soul of Dionne Warwick and Dusty Springfield.
”I`ve been frustrated by my voice`s limitations in the past,” Thorn says. ”But I`ve learned to come to terms with not being a shouter.”
Like Stansfield, Everything But the Girl found its true voice in the records of its youth.
No wonder they`re a hit with many teens and young adults in both Britain and America, who heard the likes of the Supremes` ”Baby Love” while still sitting in their high chairs.
”We`re doing this because we like music with a groove to it, because we grew up with this kind of sound,” Stansfield says.
”It`s not about fad or fashion. If it didn`t feel comfortable and natural to us, other people would know it right away.”
