This extra February day gives me a chance to showcase one more album from this month in 1976 so why don't we check out Smokey Robinson's fourth solo album, Smokey's Family Robinson? Sounds to these ears like Smokey's been listening to a lot of Marvin Gaye's explorations into funky rhythms. Most of the album works but my interest faded after Side Two's first track, "Open".
After singing back up with Linda Lewis on the Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel chart topping song, "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" and on the 5000 Volts disco hit "I'm On Fire", Tina Charles made a name for herself on this chart topping smash...which may have received some extra attention recently thanks to its appearance on the Netflix show River.
The February 26th issue of Rolling Stone broke the news:
They call their music "crunch" and they serenade their teen fan clubs with such original ditties as "Switchblade Music" and "Cherry Bomb"; Ron Mael of Sparks says "There's nothing subtle about the band; that's why I like them." The group is the Runaways, five girls aged 16 and 17 ( with a 14-year-old lyricist) who are stirring some interest along L.A.'s heavy-metal circuit. Says Kim Fowley, the irrepressible Sunset Strip hustler/hypist; "They're a cross between mid-period Sweet and Free, peak Deep Purple and the Shangri-Las. Every time they open their mouths an an hem comes out." Some of those "anthems" will be released on Mercury Records in late spring.
Singer/songwriting sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle had already been performing in the Montreal folk scene for ten years when their songs found their way onto albums by the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Judy Collins. That's when Warner Brothers invited the sisters to record their debut album, a stunning collection of songs that flow from rock to blues to gospel to a french song with a reggae beat about living outside the Canadian stereotypes.
Despite the presence of some of LA's best session musicians ( Lowell George, Steve Gadd, Tony Levin and Bobby Keys) the Joe Boyd/ Greg Prestopino production showcases the vocals, leading Rolling Stone critic Stephen Holden to proclaim "Not since Carole King's Tapestry has the female voice been recorded with such unblemished intimacy."
A timeless album, this debut received immediate critical acclaim and was voted Rock Album of the Year by London's Melody Maker. It was also listed at #5 on the 1976 Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll and #7 on the NME poll. On a wintry Sunday morning, there may be no better soundtrack.
Teaming up once again with producer Willie Mitchell and the Memphis Horns, Ann Peebles recorded this classic Seventies soul nugget ( with its Supremes "Come See About Me" quote) for the album Tellin It. Released as a single, "Dr Love Power" stalled at #57 in the R and B charts, failing to provide a cure for a rash of disco fever which had already taking the country by storm.
What are the chances anyone would write a song about a Rastafarian trying to buy pork? Now consider the fact that it became a Top 10 UK hit for Pluto Shervington. The mind boggles!
On February 20, 1976 , The Beatles failed to meet a deadline to respond to promoter Bill Sargent's offer to pay them $50 million to reunite. Ringo Starr's lawyer Bruce Grakal told Rolling Stone Ringo didn't reply to the concert guarantee " and I'm sure no one else has. If the four of them ever get together it will be because they want to, not because of dollar offers." Grakal added: "In the three years I've represented Ringo, we've had at least 12 substantial offers. We've not responded to any of them."
In April, producer Lorne Michaels made a tongue on cheek offer to pay the Beatles $3000 to reunite on Saturday Night Live."You divide it anyway you want. If you want to give Ringo less, that’s up to you. I’d rather not get involved.”
Little did he know, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were watching the show in New York City that night. As Lennon would reveal in 1980"(we) almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired. … He and I were just sitting there watching the show, and we went, ‘Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if we went down? But we didn’t.”
On February 19, 1976 Rick Stevens, who sang the Top 40 hit "You're Still a Young Man" with Tower of Power, was arrested for multiple murders committed in a drug deal gone wrong. The confrontation over money lasted just a minute and when it was over three men were dead and Stevens was holding the gun that shot them.
"It was all drug induced," he would tell SFGate 36 years later."They were loaded. We were loaded. I was doing heroin and cocaine - speedballing. It was sheer madness."
Stevens was sentenced to death but after the California Supreme Court declared the mandatory death penalty unconstitutional, his sentence was commuted to life. After 36 years in prison he was paroled in 2012. In January of the following year, he took the stage and performed his best known hit with tears in his eyes.
"I never expected to have the death penalty overturned," Stevens told SFGate. "I had made my peace with my maker...I always kept close to my Psalm 51, and remembered that Moses committed murder and he rose above. Paul used to love to kill people, and he saw the light in prison. I made these people my role models. I patterned my life after them - not that alien lifestyle I was living - and everything changed."
Psalm 51
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. 18 May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
The violent night that ended with Mary Woodson scalding Al Green's bare back with grits before shooting herself left the soul singer --as he put it in his autobiography --“frightened for my very life and crying out to the heavens for a redeemer to come and rescue me from this sinful world.”
1976 is the year Green bought the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, in a Memphis neighborhood just south of Graceland. It reminded him of the little rural churches he visited with his sharecropper father in Arkansas. He preaches there to this day.
1976 is also the year Green continued his subtle pilgrimage from sensual soul music to gospel. Many of the lyrics on Full Of Fire could be read in either light. Producer Willie Mitchell didn't even realize the opening track of the new album, "Glory Glory" was a song of faith. The bouncy closing track, "Let It Shine", has the lines "I'm so glad that I'm free /Lord above would have blessed it on me"
Al Green was two years from walking away from the profane life of a soul singer to concentrate fully on the sacred.
After playing with James Brown's band, the JB's, Bootsy Collins and his brother Catfish threw in with George Clinton's P-Funk. The Brothers Collins shined on albums like Up For the Down Stroke and Mothership Connection. Here --on Bootsy's much sampled debut--they team up with Clinton for some of the funkiest music to come out of '76.
