Angelic voices, #5: Prince's "Darling Nikki"

Back in 1984, when Prince was at the height of his commercial stardom with the blockbuster album/movie “Purple Rain,” the song "Darling Nikki" was best known for its lyrics. The opening words about a woman caught masturbating in a hotel lobby turned heads and fed the reactionary, right-wing hysteria that led to the creation of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, congressional hearings, and content labels on records.

Overlooked amid the sound and fury was the potency of the song, including Prince’s vocal.

  

“Nikki” begins with a mischievous keyboard-and-guitar harmony that saunters along with the drumbeat, happy to take its time. The first verse’s spare instrumentation—a lone percussion line—gives Prince’s voice space to breathe and puts the story front and center. Once the lyrics trail off, a balls-out funk riff and crashing drums come in, as if foreshadowing, before quieting back down for the next verse.  

The song upshifts at the conclusion of the fourth verse as Prince lifts his voice into the upper registers, culminating at 2:38 in one of the most spectacular shrieks of ecstasy ever recorded.

Most songwriters would have finished with the hyped up drum-keys-guitar jam outro that follows, but Prince had the compositional chutzpah to go further. Rather than simply fade out, Prince closed the song with a counterintuitive segue into a gospel chorus singing backward over rain and a howling wind, making “Nikki” a symbolic nod to his two favorite subjects, sin and salvation.

                                                   Follow Dan Benbow on Twitter  
                                    
                                      Other "Truth and Beauty" vocalist profiles:

                                        Angelic voices, #4:  Aretha Franklin performs 
                                             before Barack Obama and Carole King 

                        There must be something in the water:  the magic of "Muscle Shoals" 

             A look back at "Strange Fruit" on the 100th anniversary of Billie Holiday's birth

                                     Angelic voices, #1:  Ella sings "Summertime"

                       Angelic voices, #2:  Marvin Gaye sings "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Angelic voices, #3:  Janis Joplin sings "Cry Baby"  

   More music appreciation on "Truth and Beauty":

         Click here for "The Second Coming:  Stevie Ray Vaughan," 
a first-hand account of Vaughan's final concert

here  for "Great Guitar Solos, #10: Prince attacks 'Whole Lotta Love'"

here for "The underappreciated ingenuity of Robbie Krieger"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #8: Freddie King's 'San-Ho-Zay'"

                       
  here for "Link Wray's 'Rumble'"
                  

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #1:  Eddie Hazel (Funkadelic)"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #3:  Hiram Bullock" 

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #5:  Alvin Lee"

 here for "Great Guitar Solos, #6: Neil Young's 'Hey Hey, My My'"

A look back at "Strange Fruit" on the 100th anniversary of Billie Holiday's birth

“People have tried to explain in words what the power of music is—and usually failed. All we know is that sometimes, a short song, taking just a few minutes, can have as much impression on a listener as a whole novel can….You can bounce experiences of your life against it, and it bounces back new meanings.”

-Pete Seeger, musician/activist, on “Strange Fruit”



On August 7, 1930, a heavily-armed white mob broke into the Grant County Courthouse in Marion, Indiana. Inside were three black men (Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, and James Cameron) who were being held as suspects in the murder of a white man and the alleged rape of his girlfriend.

As police officers looked on, Shipp, Smith, and Cameron were dragged from the courthouse and severely beaten. Shipp and Smith were then lynched in front of a crowd of thousands. No charges were filed in their murders.

Seven years later, Abel Meeropol—a public high school teacher and political activist in the Bronx—came into contact with a photo of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith hanging from a tree. Horrified by the image, Meeropol wrote an anti-lynching poem entitled “Bitter Fruit,”

The photo that drove Meeropol
to pen "Strange Fruit"

which he later changed to “Strange Fruit” and set it to music.

The route that Meeropol’s 12-line song traveled from New York political events to Billie Holiday’s famous recording is murky. 

In one account, Meeropol presented the song to Holiday while she was performing at the Café Society—an integrated night club in Greenwich Village—through the café’s owner, Barney Josephson. Others credit Robert Gordon (a Café Society producer who’d been exposed to the song at a Madison Square Garden anti-fascism rally) with introducing the number to Holiday.

The identity of the composer(s) is also a mystery. In her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday claimed that she, Meeropol, and her pianist banged the arrangement out “in three weeks,” but Arthur Herzog, who wrote for Holiday, said “Strange Fruit” was written by blues/jazz arranger Danny Mendelsohn. 

Holiday's label, Columbia, refused to be associated with the song, so she recorded it at the Commodore label's 52nd Street studio on April 20, 1939. With the backing of the Café Society’s house band, "Strange Fruit" was cut in just four hours.

Though the song has forever been associated with Billie Holiday, she doesn’t appear until 71 seconds into the recording. Considering the original arrangement too short (since Commodore charged more than their label competitors for single releases), producer Neil Gabler padded the beginning with two instrumental sections.

A soft horn chorus opens the song, laying the way for the muted trumpet melody of Frankie Newton. Eddie Dougherty’s cymbals fill out the background.

Just when you think the song can’t get any sadder, the trumpet introduction gives on to Lenny White’s improvised piano line. With the other instruments silenced, the isolated piano sounds far away, like a pianist tickling the ivories late at night in an empty piano bar. Fittingly, the song is in B flat minor, a key which often conjures melancholy.

The arrangement maintains its simplicity after Billie Holiday comes in, creating space for the vocal line. Scattered piano and the trumpet continue quietly behind the voice—sometimes

doubling the vocal melody along with the brass accompaniment.

In line with the bare bones arrangement, Holiday’s delivery is understated, heightening the prominence of the lyrics, which are as stark as the arrangement is simple. 

The first couplet contrasts commonly held images of Dixie’s natural serenity with the ugly side of human nature revealed in the South:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

The second couplet fills this contradiction out and makes the point of the lyrics grimly clear:

Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees

Once the thrust of the lyrics has been established, the solitary piano makes a brief re-appearance before the third and fourth couplets, which bring the human suffering inflicted even more clearly into focus:

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh

Holiday’s voice generally keeps a plaintive tone until it rises in pitch at the end of the fifth couplet, letting out bottled up emotion:

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

Rather than returning to the root note of B flat minor at the end like most pop songs, “Strange Fruit” ends on an F chord—an off-note or “unresolved” chord which could be seen to symbolize the incomprehensibility of lynching itself—as Holiday elongates the last word with a flourish.

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

***

“Strange Fruit” was a bold political statement, particularly for a black artist in segregated

America. As Samuel Grafton of the New York Post put it, “[Holiday] reversed the usual relationship between a black entertainer and her white audience: ‘I have been entertaining you,’ she seemed to say, ‘now you can just listen to me.’”

Despite the subject matter and the unwillingness of most radio stations to play “Strange Fruit,” it climbed to #16 on the national charts in July of 1939 and ended up selling a million copies.

In the years since, “Strange Fruit” hasn’t had the staying power with the general public that some of Holiday’s more hummable numbers have had, but it has received the imprimatur of the music community.

The song has been covered by a large variety of artists both in the jazz world (Nina Simone, Cassandra Wilson, Herbie Hancock) and out (Jeff Buckley, Sting, Annie Lennox, Siouxsie and the Banshees). 

It has been listed in the Recording Industry of America’s Songs of the Century and deemed one of “ten songs that actually changed the world” by Q magazine, a British rock publication.

When "Strange Fruit" was originally reviewed under the title “Strange Record” in 1939, a Time critic referred to Holiday as “a roly-poly young colored woman with a hump in her voice” who “does not care enough about her figure to watch her diet, but loves to sing.” The song itself was described as “a prime piece of musical propaganda” for the NAACP. Sixty years later, in 1999, Time named “Strange Fruit” the record of the century, reflecting both its greatness as a work of art and the song's role as a barometer for social progress in America.

Other civil rights writing by Dan Benbow:

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Road to the Mountaintop (about the speech King gave on the last night of his life)

Honest Abe Makes Sausage (a review of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln")

                                 Brown v. Board and Three Dog Night's "Black and White"

                         Actions, Not Words (a life review of Ollie Matson, an Olympic medal 
                         winner, NFL Hall-of-Famer, civil rights trailblazer, and good citizen) 

                                                       Follow Dan Benbow on Twitter                                                           

Angelic voices, #3: Janis Joplin sings "Cry Baby"

One doesn't expect to find transcendence in a Cineplex. 

Eleven years ago I watched the documentary "Festival Express"--about a 1970 rock 'n' roll tour that traveled through Canada by train--in a venue which mainly hosted forgettable big budget movies. 

During the previews the audience was assaulted with A.D.D.-friendly eye and ear candy, formulaic plot giveaways, and swelling strings tugging telegraphed emotions. My companion looked over at me with a raised eyebrow as if to say, "Really?"

But our hyper-commercialized stupor evaporated when "Festival Express" started. Suddenly we were transported to a time when music promoters were willing to take a bath on a venture with spirit and soul that enriched the lives of tens of thousands of concertgoers. 

The movie mixed day-in-the life scenes of rock stars mingling on the train with concert

Pearl

footage which included the Grateful Dead and Buddy Guy. 

One performance soared above the others. When Janis Joplin appeared onscreen, the movie audience perked up. A couple minutes into the song, we stood and cheered, as if we were right there in Toronto 33 years earlier. The only other time I'd experienced such an audience reaction was at a viewing of the incendiary "Jimi Hendrix Live at Monterey." 

Janis would have turned 71 today. As rock 'n' soul fans reflect on this loss, we should also celebrate the heartfelt riches bestowed on each of us by the little lady from Port Arthur, Texas with the larger-than-life voice.

     

Follow Dan Benbow on Twitter  

Other "Truth and Beauty" vocalist profiles:

Angelic voices, #1: Ella sings "Summertime"

Angelic voices, #2: Marvin Gaye sings "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Bing and Bowie sing "The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth"

Keith Moon's golden throat

There must be something in the water: the magic of "Muscle Shoals"

In the early 19th Century, a tribe of Euchee Indians lived contentedly along the Tennessee River, near Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The Euchees considered the Tennessee sacred; they believed that a goddess dwelled there who protected the tribe from harm and sang to them in the whispering tones of the river. 

Forced off their land in the 1830s by the white man, the indigenous Euchees moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma. The new landscape was fallow; with no spiritual connection to the land, the Euchees were unable to perform their rituals. 

Hungering for the singing river, a young Euchee woman (Tehlanay) began a journey back to the Tennessee River which took five years. Tehlanay's spirit lives on in the woods surrounding Muscle Shoals in an arresting stone memorial erected by her great-great grandson, Tom Hendrix, whose masterwork made its way into the Library of Congress.   

This is one of the many stories which feed the mystery at the heart of "Muscle Shoals," a

wondrous new music documentary from first-time director Greg "Freddy" Camalier.  

What is it about certain locations and eras that produces timeless music? 

One expects to find musical history in cosmopolitan hubs like New York, London, or Los Angeles, but how is it that a remote Alabama town of five thousand people contributed a panoply of the most soulful '60s and '70s tracks pressed onto wax?

The mystique of Muscle Shoals is implied with nature documentary-like camera work which is seamlessly woven into a lively mix of interviews and archival footage. At various points the slow-moving camera eye lingers on deep swamp, a purling stream, a bright field of daisies, water washing over riverbed rock. 

The actualization of the Muscle Shoals sound is conveyed through the anecdotes of rock 'n' soul royalty (Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Steve Winwood, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Bono) and the largely unknown studio musicians who backed the stars. 

And then there's Rick Hall - engineer, producer, entrepreneur, protagonist. The son of a mill worker, Hall grew up poor in a

Rick Hall with Otis Redding

shack with a dirt floor and no bathroom; he slept on a bed of straw. Beset by grim personal tragedies that could have come from a Faulkner novel, the resilient Hall dedicated his life to music, the one thing that gave him solace.  

Hall's father taught him that "good isn't good enough." Rick had to be the best at whatever he pursued. 

After being fired from his first studio engineering job  (because he was considered too driven and too serious about his work), Hall opened Fame Recording Studios in a converted tobacco warehouse, in 1959. Hall knew he had to produce hits to keep the studio in business; he first struck it big in 1961 with "You Better Move On" by Arthur Alexander, a local bellhop.

With the money from "You Better Move On," Hall opened a new-and-improved studio which operates to this day. To support the vocalists who recorded at Fame, Hall recruited a group of Muscle Shoals area teenagers--later nicknamed "The Swampers"--as his house band. Hall christened the new studio with "Steal Away," a ballad by local resident Jimmy Hughes which reached #17 on the Billboard charts.  

The notoriety from this hit brought business to Muscle Shoals. In time, Hall became so busy that an overflow studio, Norala Sound Studio, was opened in nearby Sheffield. In 1966, Percy Sledge, an orderly at the Sheffield hospital, recorded "When a Man Loves a Woman" with The Swampers at Norala. After the single was cut, Hall contacted Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, who helped with distribution and marketing, making it a monster hit.

The connection to Wexler and Atlantic brought soul star Wilson Pickett to Muscle Shoals. Upon his arrival at the studio, Pickett was aghast at the sight of cotton fields, a symbol of the contrast between the world outside Fame Sound Studios and the world inside. 

Outside was the Deep South of George Wallace, which was largely hostile to civil rights.

Black and white members of the Fame collective were liable to draw dirty looks when they dined together in public, and as Clarence Carter recounted, African-Americans were expected to address whites as "Mr." or "Ms." 

Inside the studio, where everyone was on a first-name basis, a rhythm section of white country boys supported by a biracial horn accompaniment backed black soul singers. The Muscle Shoals sound was so integrated that Paul Simon called Al Bell and asked to record with the black musicians who'd played on the Bell-penned "I'll Take You There," not knowing that The Swampers had been the backing band. According to the lore, Bell said, "That can happen, but these guys are mighty pale." 

Pickett and The Swampers recorded three big hits ("Land of a 1000 Dances," "Mustang Sally," and "Funky Broadway"). The success of these sessions helped Rick Hall score his next big coup.

At the time, Aretha Franklin had been under contract with Columbia Records, which had wasted her interpretive talents on ill-fitting arrangements and then dropped her from the label. 

Jerry Wexler signed Aretha to Atlantic Records and sent her down to Fame, despite some misgivings about the Muscle Shoals method. At Atlantic's New York studios, arrangements were fully composed in advance and trained studio musicians played off of charts, but in Muscle Shoals the recording process was more of an organic, collaborative effort. Aretha and the backup band had "head sessions." She threw out ideas and the band constructed a song piece by piece, together. As Wilson Pickett said, "They'd find the groove." 

One result of this process was "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Loved You)," a number one hit which launched the Queen of Soul. 

Also recorded with the Swampers were the big hits "Chain of Fools," "Think," "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman," "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," and "Respect." 

***

In 1969, just as Rick Hall was signing a lucrative contract with Capitol Records, the Swampers went into business for themselves, opening the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio across town. This studio went on to incredible success, hosting Bob Dylan, Traffic, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, Boz Scaggs, and the Rolling Stones, who cut three classic tracks there ("Wild Horses," "Brown Sugar," and the nitty gritty "You Gotta Move") in just two days. 

Unbowed, Rick Hall replaced The Swampers with a new group of studio musicians (The Fame Gang) and continued on without a hitch, eventually becoming the Billboard Producer of the Year in 1971.

Among Hall's big finds was Duane Allman. In the beginning, Hall didn't let Allman into the Fame rotation, because he wasn't yet a known quantity. According to Gregg Allman, since they had "all the time in the world," he convinced his brother to go horseback riding. Duane wasn't hot on the idea, but he went along with it, only to fall off the horse and injure his elbow.

Wilson Pickett and Duane Allman

Unable to play guitar, Duane holed up in his apartment and refused to talk to Gregg.

Eager to get back in his older brother's good graces, Gregg left a gift-wrapped copy of the then-new Taj Mahal album (which included crafty slide guitar work from Jesse "Ed" Davis) and a bottle of Coricidin pills on Duane's porch. He rang the bell and fled.

Two hours later, Duane called Gregg up and asked him to come over. When Gregg arrived, he found that Duane had dumped the pills out and begun playing slide guitar with the Coricidin bottle. Within the next couple years Duane would become one of the most renowned rock 'n' blues slide players ever.

Such tales of happenstance inspiration make "Muscle Shoals" a rich and uplifting way to spend 111 minutes. The movie is a big, juicy slice of Americana which reflects the unique power of music to bind us together through our common humanity. Coming soon to a theater near you.

                                                 Other "Truth and Beauty" film reviews:

                                                                         "Inequality for All"

                                                                   "A spoiler-free review of 'Mud'"        

 "Truth is in the Eye of the Interpreter:  a Review of 'Room 237'"

"No!"

"Searching for Sugar Man"

"Honest Abe Makes Sausage" (about "Lincoln")

"First Glance:  'The Master'"

"Errol Morris Strikes Again" (about "Tabloid")

Angelic voices, #2: Marvin Gaye sings "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Marvin Gaye is widely considered one of the greatest male soul singers of all-time, in an elite class with Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and Al Green. In a career that spanned three decades, Gaye generated 37 top-40 singles and one of the best concept albums ever recorded, and earned induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

And that's not all. Though Jimi Hendrix may have recorded the most mind-blowing version of "The Star Spangled Banner," Marvin Gaye's contributions to the national anthem canon were substantial. 

In 1968, not yet 30, Gaye had already produced a big string of hits for Motown:  "Hitch Hike,""Pride and Joy," "Baby Don't You Do It" (later covered by The Band in "The Last Waltz"), "Ain't That Peculiar," and his first number one, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." On October 6 of that year, Gaye sang the national anthem at the World Series. Though better than most, this version is pretty conservative, like Gaye's clean cut, suit-and-tie appearance. It doesn't reflect the range and power of his voice.

Marvin Gaye's work changed dramatically after 1968. In 1971, Gaye broke the Motown hit-machine mold with his magnum opus, "What's Going On," a concept album which contained lyrics about urban poverty, the environment, and the Vietnam War. 

Two years later, Gaye came out with "Let's Get It On"; the title track was his second chart-topper.  (Jack Black would later slay this song at the end of "High Fidelity"). 

Gaye's distance from his early pop continued to grow with 1978's "Here, My Dear," a double album detailing the problems in his failed marriage, so titled because half the royalties from the release went to his ex. The following year, while battling cocaine addiction, Gaye did the national anthem at a heavyweight boxing match between Larry Holmes and Ernie Shavers. 

In contrast to his 1968 rendition, Gaye loosened up this time around. He sported a big collar and a wide tie and crooned with falsetto, more inflection, and a stirring vibrato to close. In Howard Cosell's words, "that man can sing."

Gaye's demons followed him into the new decade despite the career renewal he had with the success of "Sexual Healing" in 1982. In the summer of 1983, as Gaye was deep in the throes of drug addiction and the attendant psychoses, he performed the national anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star game. 

Despite his considerable personal baggage, Gaye delivered the goods with a divine reading that culminated in the audience clapping—as if in a gospel church—then bursting into an enthusiastic ovation. For all the tragedy of his violent death less than a year later, Gaye went out on top in his last public appearance. 

**Click here for Angelic voices, #1:  Ella sings "Summertime"

 here for Angelic voices, #3:  Janis Joplin sings "Cry, Baby"

and  here for "There must me something in the water:  
the magic of Muscle Shoals"  

Angelic voices, #1: Ella sings "Summertime"

On the rare occasions I watch tv, I gravitate toward PBS. Over the years, the local affiliate has run dozens of documentaries about musicians who mattered, including Ella Fitzgerald.

I came to the Ella Fitzgerald documentary from a place of ignorance, as I had a limited familiarity with her catalog. Intuitively I  imagined the First Lady of Song as light (maybe even happy), based on the finger-snapping, swing jazz I associated her with.

That night I discovered the pain and sadness in Ella Fitzgerald's life, from a childhood of privation to homelessness, a wrenching divorce, and an offstage restlessness that kept her on the road until her health would no longer allow it.

The undertow of suffering dovetailed with the most powerful moment of the documentary, the version of "Summertime" below. This performance lay buried in my soul for years until I found it on YouTube recently. It's exquisite on many levels:  the black and white stock; the close-ups (including the single bead of sweat rolling down Ella's cheek); and the simple, understated arrangement, which makes this rendition all about the voice, and gives Lady Ella the space to shine.    

With this post, I'm inaugurating the "angelic voices" series in honor of vocalists who have enriched my life. Suggestions for future posts are welcome.

(Click on box in lower right for full screen)

*Click here for "Angelic voices, #2: Marvin Gaye sings 'The Star-Spangled Banner'"

and here for "Angelic voices, #3:  Janis Joplin sings 'Cry Baby'"