Can't ______ ___ _______

Can't Strain My Brain - Sly and the Family Stone, Small Talk (1974)


Can't Find the Judge - Gary Wright, The Dream Weaver (1975)

I Can't Stand the Rain - Eruption, Eruption (1978)

Be Soul Good

Singing, and being a singer, is very often related to being a man or being a woman (whatever the individual case may be). This is pronounced even more so in the love-song filled halls of rhythm and blues. One has got to be a guy in order to sing to a girl. The soul singer's voice becomes infused with that sex-meaning, even when the lyrics stray from love (see everyone's mother melting over her favorite R&B artist's voice). Lady crooners too need to fill up their voices with passion. The difference between the voice of the male singer and the female singer is somewhat ineffable (certainly related to pitch), and not necessarily limited by the actual gender of the singer (uncertainty as to who it is that is hitting those high notes). Even on her first record in 1958, Nina Simone seems to trouble this distinction. But she does so more profoundly than simply shifting into a masculine register, rather her voice falls distinctly outside of sexual categories:

Love Me or Leave Me - Nina Simone, Little Girl Blue (1959)

The timbre of her voice is surprising. There is something metallic about it, and it is, of course, quite eerie. In her rendition of Gershwin's "Porgy", she somehow conveys a sensation beyond the intended emotion of the song. This sensation is apparent from even the first line: "I loves you Porgy..." It is a sorrow beyond concerns of this world. Departing from the tragedy of the dramatic situation (which is what covering a single song from a musical does), she sings the blues, the pure quality of the blues. The Gershwin song is just a vehicle for her tenor:

I Loves You Porgy - Nina Simone, Little Girl Blue (1959)

Conceiving her status as 'artist' proves quite enjoyable. She transcends many typical categories, including, importantly, The Feminine. This, again, is something particularly rare for soul artists. Her genius itself, and the fact that she composed her own music contributes to her transcendence of gender roles. To get a little theoretical: It is not that Simone accesses some status reserved for the male-singer, and it is also not that she becomes some version of male-soul. Furthermore, this is not to say that the woman in soul can do less than the man. Rather that, because she is not the one with the 'power to make soul' (a power reserved for record executives and successful male artists), the woman has the opportunity to become Soul. The man can only use Soul, while the woman can be it. What makes Simone particularly incredible is that when she becomes Soul, she does not become sensuous:



Watching this video I just keep thinking to myself how so cool she is. What I wrote above about her "becoming Soul", I don't care about as much as this feeling that she is doing her own thing in such a fucking serious way.

Ye Olde Remixe

King Tubby - possible first 'producer as artist'.

The meaning of the word 'producer' has expanded over the last few musical eras, it now includes folks such as the remix artist and the DJ-turned-studio-album-creator. The creative status of the producer's work has leaped into prominence with the increased incidence of artist's whose product is music which has as its most defining element the fact that it was produced (rather than played or sung).

While many of these artists can and do recreate their production in live performance (Kid Koala serving a decidedly non-dance remix of "Moon River" on three platters), the point is that they make studio albums which are not constituted by any element of performance (see the extreme example of Girltalk, who watches his laptop as it plays his show for him, thereby relegating himself to the role of observer of his own studio work - his musical status as performer is reduced to knowing what is coming next in the song).

Allen Toussaint jamming.

Previous to the inception of the hip-hop producer, and anterior to even the disco producer, there were plenty of 'producers', but rarely did they play an acknowledged role in the creative brilliance of a given song. My dawg DJ Uncle Jam observed once that in terms of Allen Toussaint's production: "everything dude touched turned to gold". This may well be true, but he was still working with real live musicians, and while that might be considered even more impressive than mixing and programming, it is certainly different.

So, what do we make of the conceptual quality of this Quincy Jones meditation:

What's Going On - Quincy Jones, Smackwater Jack (1971)

Jones is reinterpreting Marvin Gaye's original in a significant way (both came out in the same year). But what he's doing sounds nothing like a jazz interpretation, or an older school soul version, or a funk version. In fact, it sort of just sounds like the original version, but in different order, with different emphasis and timing. The first vocals we hear - "sister, sister, sister, sister" - come from the original version: "picket lines (sister) and picket signs (sister) don't punish me (sister) with brutality (sister)..." But those main vocals are left out. Sounds like a remix to me. Except performed.

This kind of conceptual remixing can be mapped almost exactly to Kid Koala's live/studio version of "Moon River".

Jones plays guitar in another track on the album. To be specific, he samples from the history of guitar blues moving forward in time. It is a cataloging project, much in the same way that Girltalk catalogs contemporary pop:

Guitar Blues Odyssey: From Roots to Fruits - Quincy Jones, Smackwater Jack (1971)


This song is clearly the work of a producer. Production requires some quality of perspective, a wider view than the average artist possesses. Creative production is making music about music. It is from these minds that the most innovative songs and albums emerge (e.g. Thriller).

Note: I've more or less omitted reggae's turn into dub from this discussion, and don't mean to say that Q. Jones was a first, just that he was the rad.