I’ll Have Popcorn With That: Eclectic New Compilation Offers Jerry Butler, Eartha Kitt, Johnny Nash, Frankie Laine

What is Popcorn music?

Bob Stanley of the band St. Etienne and the new Croydon Municipal label wants to tell you.  “Popcorn is a genre after the fact, built by curation rather than creation,” the author of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop (soon to be retitled The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyonce for its upcoming U.S. edition) writes in the liner notes to his new release Sweet ‘n’ Salty Popcorn.  “Its narrative was formed by Belgians in the seventies from records made in the fifties and sixties – there was no such thing as a Popcorn artist because no one had set out to make a Popcorn record in the first place.  It was all in the rhythm, which had to suit the unusual ‘slow swing’ dance, and it could be Latin boogaloo, an orchestrated Italian ballad or an early Tamla Motown single.”

Despite sharing that atmospheric, “slow swing,” soulful rhythm, the twenty tracks selected by Stanley to introduce Popcorn to an audience outside of Belgium make for a diverse lot.  Popcorn could emerge from crooners (Tony Martin), theatrical vixens (Eartha Kitt), early rock and rollers (Jo Ann Campbell, Larry Hall), and bona fide soul men (Jerry Butler, Roy Hamilton).  Popcorn songs could hail from the pens of writers Burt Bacharach and Hal’s brother Mack David (Dean Barlow’s “Third Window from the Right”), Phil Spector (Johnny Nash’s “Some of Your Lovin’,” not the Goffin and King tune of the same name), Curtis Mayfield (Butler’s “Find Another Girl”), Billy Sherrill (future evangelist Jackie Weaver’s “The Tingle”) and the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman (the offbeat “River in My Blood” sung by future “I Love New York” jingle writer Steve Karmen).  The earliest days of Motown even were incorporated into the Popcorn sound, as heard on Little Iva and Her Band’s recording of the “Continental Strut” co-written by Brian Holland.  In other words, the Popcorn genre is rather catholic; Stanley counts “gritty R&B…film themes, ska, tango, Spector-esque girl groups and loungey instrumentals” from the fifties and sixties among the tracks you might hear in a Popcorn club.

After the jump, we have more details on Sweet ‘n’ Salty Popcorn as well as the complete track listing and order links!

With You I’m Born Again: SoulMusic Label Revives Motown Duets with Syreeta and Billy Preston, Thelma Houston and Jerry Butler

With two of its latest releases, Cherry Red’s SoulMusic Records imprint has revisited three classic Motown duets albums on two CDs.

Longtime collectors of SoulMusic Records’ releases know that the label frequently jumps back and forth with an artist’s catalogue rather than releasing titles in chronological order.  Such is the case with its latest reissue from Syreeta, born Syreeta Wright.  In recent months, SoulMusic has revisited Motown queen Syreeta’s third and fourth solo albums, 1977’s One to One and 1980’s Syreeta.  In between those LPs, however, Syreeta busied herself with duet projects.  Following Rich Love, Poor Love with The Spinners’ G.C. Cameron, Motown paired Syreeta with keyboard great Billy Preston for the soundtrack of the otherwise-undistinguished film Fast Break.  The decision to team Syreeta and Preston paid off when their duet version of David Shire and Carol Connors’ “With You I’m Born Again” went all the way to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979.  Though Preston appeared on a couple of tracks on Syreeta and a duet single was released of Preston’s “It Will Come in Time,” a full duets album was inevitable.  That LP, 1981’s functionally-titled Billy Preston and Syreeta, has just arrived from SoulMusic, expanded with seven additional cuts.

Billy Preston and Syreeta, like Syreeta, was the work of multiple producers.  Ollie E. Brown, Michael Masser, and the “Born Again” team of Shire and Connors all contributed to the album’s production.  Masser co-wrote all four of his tracks, two with Randy Goodrum and two with Gerry Goffin.  (The album’s closing song “What We Did for Love” is not a duet cover of the Marvin Hamlisch/Ed Kleban composition from A Chorus Line but rather a Masser/Goodrum original.)  Brown penned the album’s opening cuts “Someone Special” and “Searchin’,” and Connors and Shire reunited for the jazzy and playful “It’s So Easy.”  Despite the strong pedigree, Billy Preston and Syreeta was lost in the shuffle of Motown’s distribution shake-up, and the album might have been released too late to capitalize on the success of “Born Again.”  SoulMusic makes a case for the album’s artistic merits, however, and adds seven bonus tracks including four singles from Fast Break (the vocal and instrumental versions of “Born Again,” and 7- and 12-inch singles of Shire and Connors’ disco theme “Go for It”), the interim single release “It Will Come in Time,” and the single versions of Preston’s two duets on Syreeta, “One More Time for Love” and “Please Stay.”  The former was written by Jerry Peters, who produced some of Syreeta, and the latter was another Connors/Shire creation.  SoulMusic’s reissue has been remastered by Alan Wilson, and includes liner notes from Sharon Davis drawing on a new interview with Carol Connors.

After the jump: we’ll take a peek at a two-for-one set from Thelma Houston and Jerry Butler, plus we have full track listings and order links for both releases!

It’s Love That Really Counts: Él Continues Vintage Burt Bacharach Series

In 1962 alone, Burt Bacharach premiered more than 30 new compositions, recorded by a variety of artists from Marlene Dietrich to The Drifters.  It’s even fair to say that ’62 was the year the composer truly came into his own.  While previous years offered their share of hits for the songwriter – “I Wake Up Crying,” “Tower of Strength,” “Baby, It’s You,” “Magic Moments,” “The Story of My Life” – the Bacharach sound hadn’t completely crystallized.  With Jerry Butler’s July 1962 single of Bacharach and Hal David’s “Make It Easy on Yourself,” Bacharach became his own producer.  Vee-Jay’s Calvin Carter turned over the sessions to the songwriter when he realized “he felt the song better than anyone else did.”  The credit on the 45 still just read “Arranged by Burt Bacharach,” but a new chapter was being written.  That landmark song with melody, orchestration and production by Bacharach, gives the title to the third volume in a series of Bacharach collections from Cherry Red’s Él label.  Make It Easy on Yourself 1962 follows First Book of Songs 1954-1958 and Long Ago Last Summer 1959-1961 and compiles 27 of Bacharach’s songs (some in multiple versions) from one pivotal year with outgoing partner Bob Hilliard and incoming partner Hal David.

One of the essential “love triangle” songs in all of pop music, the stirring “Make It Easy on Yourself” was the fullest expression yet of the mature Bacharach style.  Ethereal backing vocals melded with majestic strings and wistful, sighing horns before Butler bleakly intoned, “Breaking up is so very hard to do…” in a way that Neil Sedaka couldn’t have imagined.  Bacharach and David found beauty and poetry in the blues: “And if the way I hold you can’t compare to his caress/No words of consolation will make me miss you less/My darling, if this is goodbye/Oh, I just know I’m gonna cry/So run to him before you start crying, too…”   Bacharach’s orchestration melded the above instruments with roiling drums, chiming percussion, and well-placed guitar licks, adding up to just over 2-1/2 minute of tension in which the music and lyrics were in perfect harmony.

The new compilation also makes room for the sublime original recording of “Any Day Now,” the most successful song penned by Bacharach with Bob Hilliard.  Soul great Chuck Jackson anticipates his lover’s departure (“My wild beautiful bird, you will have flown/Any day now, I’ll be all alone…”) with just enough anguish and pathos, finding the space in the offbeat arrangement which featured Bacharach playing an ashtray (!) as percussion.  (Jackson previously recorded Bacharach’s “I Wake Up Crying” in 1961; you can hear it on Long Ago Last Summer.)  A contemporary, more “pop” cover by Philadelphia’s Dee Dee Sharp is included for contrast’s sake.

Indeed, Bacharach and David were turning out stone-cold classics at quite a clip.  (After the success of “Blue on Blue” in 1963, Bacharach would make his partnership with David an exclusive one.)  Tremolo guitar and tinkling piano notes signify Tommy Hunt’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself,” another unbearably lonely, and unbelievably beautiful, song.  Hal David, as always, put into the words feelings that so many – perhaps everybody – had experienced at one time or another: “Goin’ to a movie only makes me sad/Parties make me feel as bad/When I’m not with you, I just don’t know what to do…”  Bacharach matched David’s words with another eloquent, sophisticated and dramatic melody that ran the gamut of emotions itself, veering from serene to pensive to pained.  It’s no wonder everybody from Elvis Costello to the White Stripes cottoned to the song.

Tommy Hunt is also the (unexpected) voice you’ll hear on “Don’t Make Me Over.”  This was the song that changed the lives of Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David forever, beginning pop’s most successful “triangle marriage.”  But not long after Dionne charted with the defiant powerhouse of a ballad, Scepter reused its backing track for Hunt’s recording which sat on the shelf until 1986.  Much as “Any Day Now” was transformed from male to female, “Don’t Make Me Over” works just fine with a male singer, proving early on the adaptability of Bacharach’s hits.  Another great soul man, Jimmy Radcliffe, has his breakup moment with Bacharach and David’s deliciously offbeat, Latin-flavored “There Goes the Forgotten Man.”  One of the best of the quotient of (relatively) rare tracks here is “Don’t Envy Me,” which only received one other recording, by George Hamilton in 1963.  Both Powers’ vocal and the production by Hugo and Luigi are a touch histrionic, but the song has a killer melody rendered with almost reggae-style percussion, not to mention an amusing lyrical conceit from Hal David: the singer has lots of girls, but none of them love him…so he’s “filled with such misery,” imploring, “don’t envy me!”  Bobby Vee’s teen waltz “Anonymous Phone Call” is another enjoyable find, flecked with a light country sound.

There’s more after the jump, including the complete track listing with discographical annotation!

The Iceman Cometh to Detroit: Jerry Butler’s Motown Albums Arrive On CD

When Jerry Butler joined Motown Records in 1975, hopes naturally ran high.  One of the classiest baritones in R&B was finally appearing on the most successful independent record label of all time.  The Iceman’s time at Motown would turn out to be short, encompassing just four albums in two years.  But thanks to SoulMusic Records, his first two albums for Berry Gordy’s empire can be enjoyed once more on CD.  The label’s reissue of Love’s on the Menu and Suite for the Single Girl (SMCR 25086) finds the soul crooner in peak form.

Butler has the distinction of being the only artist to have recorded for the three most significant African American-owned record labels: Vee-Jay, Motown and Philadelphia International.  At Vee-Jay, he co-wrote and headlined “For Your Precious Love” with The Impressions.  Then he began an illustrious solo career during which he introduced Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Make It Easy on Yourself” and popularized Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s “Moon River” even before Andy Williams made it his signature song.  At Mercury, Butler teamed with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff for a series of memorable recordings including “Only the Strong Survive” and “Hey Western Union Man,” but when Gamble and Huff struck out on their own to form Philadelphia International Records, Butler remained loyal to Mercury.  In the ensuing years, he would form the Butler Music Workshop and play mentor to a group of up-and-coming young songwriters, but when old Vee-Jay pal Ewart Abner invited Butler to join Motown in 1975, he accepted.  Love’s on the Menu, recorded both in Detroit and Butler’s home base of Chicago with a variety of producers, was released in 1976 as the first result of the relationship.

Hit the jump for more!

Presley’s Jukebox: Bob Dylan, Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, Jerry Butler Shine on “Elvis Heard Them Here First”

Though Elvis Presley rose through the ranks of Sun Records alongside artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins (his fellow members of the “Million Dollar Quartet,” if you will), Elvis and Jerry Lee differed from Johnny and Carl in that they primarily leaned upon the songs of others.  Cash and Perkins predated the pop-rock singer/songwriter revolution of the next decade, and in fact, harkened back to an older tradition in country and blues of performing your own material.

Yet by the time the King of Rock and Roll came out of the army, returned from Hollywood and reinvented himself on the concert stage, much had changed.  Armed with their guitars, Bob Dylan and The Beatles had proved that singers didn’t need a cadre of professional writers to craft their songs, whether from New York’s Brill Building or Nashville’s Music Row.  Soon, “singer/songwriter” would enter the lexicon, upping the emotional ante for these “confessional” writers.  “Covers” of existing hits were largely the province of adult-aimed “MOR” singers like Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis.  Where did this leave Elvis Presley?  Ace Records makes a compelling case with the new compilation Elvis Heard Them Here First that Presley simply continued to do what he had done all along: synthesize strains from a wide range of genres and songs into material that was always uniquely “Elvis.”

The 24-track compilation is based on Ace’s You Heard It Here First series, which presents original versions of songs made famous by other interpretive singers.  Producer Tony Rounce acknowledges in his introductory essay that the playing field was rather wide.  Even during those early Sun years, all but three of Elvis’ recordings on the label were of previously-performed songs.  Rather than limiting himself to one era, Rounce collects songs recorded by Elvis between his 1959 return from the Army and his death in 1977.  The disc avoids the overly familiar (Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes,” Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog,” etc.) and offers up a fascinating journey through the records that just might have inspired Elvis to turn in some of his best vocals.

What songs will you hear?  Hit the jump!