John Legend and The Roots are doing their thing publicizing their new album Wake Up!, which dropped a week ago tomorrow. That included streaming a live show at Terminal 5 in NYC over YouTube last Thursday, and having Spike Lee shoot it. It also included going on NPR's "World Cafe" the next day.
And as Legend tells the NPR host, "It's an album that's really made to be played live." The thing is, as he explains, Legend may not be able to tour with The Roots, who have jobs getting down daily on a Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, amidst other gigs. So these were as good an opportunity to hear the tracks live as you can get.
Now, if you're shaking your head and thinking, 'Damn, I missed it,' steady yourself. All the Thursday night videos are available online here, along with some of its own interviews too, and the NPR performance is here.
The sound quality on both (and the video quality on YouTube) are solid — just make sure you use some headphones or some speakers other than those on your computer.
Bill Withers met a man. He was a soldier in Vietnam who had lost his right arm at war. He met this man and, to write a song, he became him:
"I can't write left-handed. Would you please write a letter-write a letter to my mother? Tell her to tell — tell her to tell the family lawyer. Trying to get a deferment for my younger brother. Tell the Rev. Harris to pray for me. Lord, lord, lord. I aint gonna live — I don't believe I'm going to live to get much older. Strange little man over here in Vietnam I aint never seen, bless his heart, aint never done nothing to, he done shot me in my shoulder.
Boot camp we had classes. You know we talked about fighting — fighting everyday. And looking through rosy colored glasses, I must admit it seemed exciting anyway. Oh, but someone that day overlooked to tell me bullets look better, I must say — brother — when they're coming at you than going out the other way And please call up the Rev. Harris. Tell him to ask the Lord to do some good things for me. Tell him I aint gonna live — I aint gonna live to get much older.
Whoa, Lord. Strange little man over here in Vietnam I aint never seen - bless his heart— I aint never done nothing to, he done shot me in my shoulder."
The John Legend and The Roots album, Wake Up!, which dropped yesterday, is a slew of covers of both well- and lesser-known political songs from the days: from Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy” and Donny Hathaway’s “Little Ghetto Boy” to Baby Huey’s “Hard Times.” The idea is to inspire people to act on modern struggles that parallel those that the 60s and 70s artists scribed in song.
The point of a cover should be to change something in the song — to reach into its innards and pluck on a new nerve. That happens on “Left Handed.”
In Withers’ version, the storied man sets you down in a church pew and tells you it straight, like an adult, but on both knees. He holds you down in that melancholy, your head sways back and forth.
Legend and The Roots’ start in the church too, but you’re not listening to him. You are him (if you let it happen to you). You went. And now that you’re back, it won’t leave you. You don’t just beg someone to write a letter to your mother — you rip in and out of PTSD flashbacks; the snares march; people scream; war's poetic chaos snarls at you. And when you think you've outlived its memory, it pulls you back.
On his upcoming album, Good Things, Aloe Blacc sounds just like his biography: a So-Cal hip-hop era man with some soul sense.
You can check out the work at NPR now — and all week — before it drops on the 28th. (The accompanying article does well enough with the full bio if you want; repeating it ’d just crowd the sound.)
Stones Throw is also doling out a download of “You Make Me Smile,” a track off the album, for free (right-click and then “Save Link As…”).
There seems to be a wide range of musical stylings on the album, but little range of the man’s supremely smooth voice. Check “Hey Brother” in the stream to see how relentlessly he sticks with the mid-range vocals.
Lee Fields never grew up after 1971. His slicked hair may have thinned and the bags beneath his eyes may have puckered, but that southern soul sound still rattles up from the toes in his well-shined shoes out through the vocal chords that haven’t stopped crooning since they started.
On a parallel planet, James Brown was called “Little L.F.” as a kid and is carrying the native North Carolinian’s legacy around on his suit shoulders. But in this world, the reverse is reality. And while the gods may not have blessed Fields with the Godfather’s life of fame and fortune, they’ve given many of us who didn’t grow up in the web of southern soul radio that excited jolt of finding something that has been unfairly hidden for too many years.
On Fields’ 2009 release from Truth and Soul Records, My World—his fifteenth album since his 1979 debut—he cries and croaks, purrs and pleads, mostly over love, including a cover of The Supremes’ “My World is Empty Without You.” His band, the Expressions, groove in a smooth melancholy, often channeling the gang who backed Curtis Mayfield on Superfly.
The record “Love Comes and Goes” off the album has been the song most of those who know of Fields play first for their friends. But try the cut “Ladies” instead. By the end of the track’s chorus, Fields is left almost breathless as he professes the powers of a sultry summertime woman. His rasp seems to strain into his stomach, like it won’t survive another word. But, luckily for us, it does and he has.
