Mercury LP, 1978
1 The Man Ain't Ready
2 Native New Yorker
3 You Think Of Him (You Think Of Her)
4 Pie In The Sky
5 S.O.S.
6 There You Go Again(There She Goes Again) Stormy Weather
7 Ms.
8 If I Fall In Love By Morning
Esther Phillips, voc
Harvey Mason, ds; Stephen Beckmeier, Roland Bautista, gtr; Nathaniel Phillips, bs; Bobby Lyle, keys; Victor Feldman, vibes, perc; Pee Wee Ellis, horn arrangements; George del Barrio, string and horn arrangements; Ernie Watts, fl, ts, as; Garnett Brown, trombone; Vance Tenort, congas; misc strings and horns; Jim Gilstrap, Stephanie Spruill, Myrna Matthews, Augie Johnson, BG voc
Produced by Wayne Henderson
This is for Hanimex who requested it in the Requests thread; and appears here thanks to the amazing Mellow, who has produced this pristine rip. This rip is a definite upgrade from the one previously available elsewhere in blogland.
Esther Phillips always strikes me as the saddest woman in r&b. Even though many of her songs were quite upbeat, and though she's always smiling in her photos, there's something deeply desperate and wounded about the persona that shines through them. An R&B teen star, pushed through blues, country and jazz toward the jazzy/funky side of R&B in the seventies via a string of albums on CTI/Kudu, Esther Phillips' penultimate chapter was a string of albums--now lost and unreissued--on Mercury after the end of her Kudu career. It will be remembered that Aretha Franklin won a Grammy award the same year Esther Phillips was up for one, and when Aretha won she handed the award straight to Esther as being the more deserving if unrecognized talent. That was for the Kudu album featuring her cover of Gil Scott-Heron's "Home Is Where The Hatred Is" where her own history of drug use pulls the song into a brutally truthful confession.
On Kudu, r&b/jazz producer Dave Matthews--fresh from his stint with James Brown--and other CTI arrangers took Phillips on a roller-coaster ride through the commercial trends of the seventies trying to fulfill Creed Taylor's slick vision of popular success. The disco moods of some of her adventures with Matthews are occasionally successful but often lifelessly formulaic. Although Matthews would return to produce Phillips' tragically awful final album "A Way To Say Goodbye" in 1984 on Muse, he's replaced here by the Crusaders' mastermind Wayne Henderson. Though Henderson had his own kind of formulas, also eventually marred by excess and sameness, 1978 was probably the zenith of his production talents and this album jolts Phillips' sound back to life with a slick blend of funkily adult r&b and jazz.
The studio musicians are the cream of the LA crop, and while this is certainly a highly produced piece of work, it's fresh sounding and catchy. On the cover of Odyssey's "Native New Yorker" (inferior to the original, it must be said) Phillips is oddly convincing when she sings "I'm no tramp but I'm no lady." Phillips had a voice from the blues, a shout with an edge far far away from, say, Sarah Vaughan's operatic instrument. It's the voice of a fighter, alternatively optimistic and fatalistic about life's trials.
Anyway Esther Phillips left this world too early, and it's a shame that her late seventies work has been ignored. I'm really proud to present this LP here, and please join me in thanking Mellow for his generosity.
link in comments
25 comments:
320 kbps mp3 lp rip by Mellow
http://rapidshare.com/files/247801615/EstherPhillipsAllAbout.rar
Please thank Mellow for his rip and let us know how you like the music.
Be sure to check out The CTI Never Sleeps for Esther Phillips' classic CTI sides.
http://cti-kudu.blogspot.com/search/label/Esther%20Phillips
Many thanks to Mellow for this. And thank you Ish for kindly posting it.
thanks a lot for this album - Esther Phillips is great and highly underrated!
Many thanks to you and Mellow for this superb Esther album!
Big thank u to both of you
!!!
no sooner I wondered about this album than Mellow striked again!
Can't give enough thanks. I hope I can provide other rips in the future. If somebody has a request on french albums, just ask.
NewBell for hanimex3000.
Thanks Ish and thanks Mellow ... I love the lushness of this.
but there isn't any disco tune on this record! pretty surprising.
nice album, thanks for the share!
Sab
Definitely the best of Esther's late seventies albums. Thanks.
Thanks for all the comments, folks.
Simply wonderful!
Thanx.
Great post and big up or the MJ shout. Can you please help me the link reports Error.
Cheers guys,
Rob
Rob, the link works ok. Be sure to grab both lines with no spaces.
Very nice album. Heard all Esther's Kudu stuff and although they all had good tracks on this one is a good all the way through. Cheers Mellow.
Thanks ish, i got it now. I grabbed it from the pop up comments box so 3 letters were missing from then end. Nice lp, funky cover of SOS.
Keep up the great posts
I start to believe that many albums with a 2 stars-rating from AMG tend to be more interesting and sometimes better than those with a "highly recommended" by Yanow and likes. That said "All about Esther" may not be thoroughly satisfying, but there are many really fine songs on this album making it a real discovery. Thanks Mellow & Ish!
Right, Arkadin? It seems very strange to me that a man who clearly enjoys only straight-ahead strictly-by-the-mainstream-jazz playbook music could even be considered to review or rate anything else. It would be like me presenting myself as an heavy-metal reviewer. "This album is very loud," I would write. "The singer yelled a lot and there seems to be a lot of electric guitar playing here, but I didn't find it very interesting because it didn't sound very much like Alice Coltrane." It would be pointless. As is Scott Yanow, and many of AMG's reviews, pointless.
Anyway, thanks for the comments folks!
Many thanks, ish! Appreciate the team effort put in by you, Mellow and Hanimex!I love Esther and have had all her Kudu's since the early 90s. I keep returning to them again and again. However, never came across the Mercury sides.
This is a really solid joint and less affected by musical/studio tech fads than I expected - it incorporates them, they don't drive it. She sounds great on You Think Of Him and Ms. I was prepared for the worst of the late Kudu material mixed with that mess of a Muse album but it's actually much superior to both cases.
As for AMG...well, it's handy but has many factually inaccuracies. But yeah, Yanow strikes me as the jazz equivalent of one of those folkies who never forgave Dylan for plugging in. Get over it or stick to reviewing what you know.
Much thanks to you!
Mellow, Ish, you've given me lots to contemplate, feel and take in this weekend. As a long time Esther Phillips fan, I salute you. Thank you for your generosity.
Have been looking for this! Thanks!
Thanks Mellow!
more esther to discover! Thank You.
A great review. I picked this LP up for $1.50 at a local thrift store today and have really enjoyed it. I would take exception to saying her version of "Native New Yorker" is inferior than Odyssey's. I'd say that it's decidedly different and has the sadness and hurt that you allude to. I think I will always prefer Odyssey's, but Esther puts her own stamp on it.
Post a Comment