TRACK OF THE DAY
This blog has been going for a month now, and my turntable has been broken for all of that time - I've been relying on friends ripping vinyl for me, on CDs, and on old fileshares from pre-blog days. But today, I got the new Numark turntable set up, and things are going to change :)
As a starter, here's a great track from what is generally regarded as a lesser Aretha Franklin album , "La Diva" from 1979. True, producer Van McCoy doesn't seem to know who he's got in the room for most of the album, so Aretha is constantly fighting through the flaccid disco bombardment. True, on the cover she looks like she's been kidnapped and forced to audition for the Jodie Foster role in Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" ...
However, in the mass of critical opinion that's been banked up against this album. a lot of people have missed the fact that genius producer Skip Scarborough (Creative Source, EWF) managed to sneak into the studio (during lunchbreak?), push McCoy aside (OK. I'm being dramatic) and co-write and arrange what I personally think is one of her better 70s tracks, "Reasons Why". Besides Scarborough, the other writers are Wanda Hutchinson of the Emotions, and Emotions producer Wayne Vaughn (who together also wrote Earth Wind and Fire's "Let's Groove"). It's got a tight brass arrangement, it fits her vocal style, it's even got a Rhodes in there somewhere ...
Vinyl rip, a touch of remastering and limiting, and now (update) de-crackled.
24 comments:
right on...
I'm a multimeda art prof too, I can relate to you pain!
You are totally right. This is a top tune! Thanks
Thanks guys. I've added a zipped wav version (38mb) in the main post.
Hallo Simon i still hear alot of crisps in this album are you familiar with clickrepair? the best clickremover on the market.
Thanks for the tip Mike.
Have replaced with MP3 with a de-crackled version, and will re-up the wav file later.
hi, do you have Yusef Lateef's The Gentle Giant?
I used to have it on CD, but I can't find it!
I looked for it when I saw someone ask about it at 'my favourite sound', but it's definately not here anymore.
Sorry!
Thanks Simon. Appreciate it.
No probs dreamer, I like seeing you and marvin's face here :)
OK everyone, have now added a de-crackled WAV version as well, see the post.
dayumm Aretha lookin a bit sexy ther yo,,, holla!
hey doc :)
yep, well they said these were her "lean years" lol
foxy laydee, yummm. never thought i'd say that about aretha ...
Great song - great blog! (Just found you through the four brothers.) Great music and great writing. Thanks.
thanks for the comment yemaya
just wondering if you still had any plans to rip the Whole La Diva Album...i would love it if you did...
Hi Moreno Man -
yes I will, thanks for reminding. Have a bit of a backlog here but will get to it.
Just Curious as to whether you were still planning on ripping the La diva LP from Aretha, or was your turntable still broken...
I've just found Your blog, and.. what can i say, great quality of this Aretha's song! I've heard the whole LP, and i like it, but had it only in poor quality, so if You're planning to post the whole rip of record it will be great thing! Cheers!
Like Lukasz before me, I absolutely love this album, but I only have a really bad quality version. I've just listened to what you've done for "Reasons Why" and all I can say is: WOW! Sounds great! So it would be fantastic if you could do that for the entire album and post it here. I think you'd make a lot of people - including myself - very very happy. Thanks!
Hi guys,
Still held up sorry - there's bad skips on a few tracks, I need to give this vinyl a really professional clean ...
Hi Simon,
Any news on this great and very rare album?
Thanks! ;)
Hell yeah! It ain't "Got To Be Real," but it's a real soul song from that period and that's notable enough - nice, Simon!
And thanks for re-upping all this great music!!
Thanks for the great music!
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