Loose Ends singer Jane Eugene and producer Nick Martinelli talk about 1986’s Zagora
By the mid-’80s, Jane Eugene, Steve Nichol, and Carl McIntosh—collectively known as Loose Ends—established themselves as a formidable R&B group on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. After being discovered by Virgin Records A&R Mick Clark, the trio signed their first recording contract in 1981. Through Clark, they were paired with up-and-coming Philadelphia-based record producer Nick Martinelli. Three years later, Virgin Records released…
August 15, 2016 | Chris Williams | Articles
Before finding international success and stardom with a string of well-known radio hits, Billy Ocean grinded on the U.K. circuit for well over a decade
Billy Ocean by Don Hunstein/Sony Music Ent. Archives. Names are built on hits. While that first hit usually occurs thanks to a stroke of luck, the work leading up to that achievement for an artist usually goes unmentioned—save for the lips of ardent fans and discerning collectors. The early career and discography of ’80s pop-soul phenom Billy Ocean embodies this story line perfectly. The Trinidad-born singer-songwriter toiled in the minor (and…
July 1, 2013 | Justin Kantor | Articles
In the Ring: The David Axelrod Interview, Part 2
“Oh, the canvas is hard, the referee’s counting to ten. Gotta get on my feet, and start in punching again.” –Frank Polk, “In the Ring,” produced by David Axelrod The glory days of the super-producer are far from over; it’s just that the landscape has drastically shifted into a postmodern apocalypse, metaphorically similar to the cover painting of Earth Rot. Is Timbaland the closest we have to a Norman Whitfield? Is Kanye West the new…
May 9, 2017 | Eothen Alapatt and Brian DiGenti | Articles
12 records crafted by disco architect Randy Muller of Brass Construction
This is the story of how an eighteen-year-old influenced the sound of an era. It is the story of how one man’s musical craftsmanship artfully bridged the rough funk of the ’70s and the polished dance-floor grooves of the ’80s. It is the story of Brass Construction’s Randy Muller, a Guyanese-born, Brooklyn-bred intellectual with three college degrees who lives and breathes music. Randy Muller is a true unsung hero and behind-the-scenes master…
May 27, 2014 | Andrew Mason | Record Rundown
Brazilian producer Lincoln Olivetti remembered by friend and colleague Kassin
Just months away from completing his first solo album in decades, the prolific arranger, producer, synthesizer pioneer and Brazilian “studio wizard” Lincoln Olivetti died as a result of multiple organ failure on January 14, 2015, at the age of sixty. A Brazilian Quincy Jones minus the patience for celebrity, Lincoln (often with his regular partner Robson Jorge) ruled the Brazilian airwaves and masterminded the most popular telenovela…
April 20, 2015 | Allen Thayer | Articles
Seriously Deep: The David Axelrod Interview, Part 1
The day after David Axelrod’s 2004 London concert, I met with him in his hotel lobby to discuss the show. I naively asked him if this was his first live concert. “I started doing concerts in 1970,” David told me, while wearing his trademark dark sunglasses and a cigarette in his lips. “The first concert I ever did was the Monterey Jazz Festival. Cannonball [Adderley] made me do that. Because my son had died.” At the tail end of…
February 7, 2017 | Eothen Alapatt and Brian DiGenti | Features
João Donato steered Brazilian music in new directions
João Donato with Gal Costa Where’s João Donato? It’s a frequently asked question, referring simultaneously to the physical location and the musical moment he inhabits. And it is the question I ask this particular Sunday morning in the lobby of a São Paulo hotel where João Donato is staying for the weekend. The maestro was playing a series of shows to celebrate his seventieth birthday, and after shadowing him for two days I was beginning…
July 9, 2014 | Allen Thayer | Articles
Deep jazz from Japan
“Geek culture,” replies a frequent visitor, perhaps rather flippantly, when asked to provide an explanation for the Japanese term Otaku. That hardly sounds approving. A relatively recent term, Otaku has in it short life been linked with obsessive fandom of anime and manga. Also the notorious Otaku Murderer, who abducted and killed four young girls in the late 1980s. It has been burdened with such negative…
June 4, 2018 | Wax Poetics | Articles
Nate Wonder & Chuck Lightning talk about their band Deep Cotton and producing Janelle Monáe
Travis Atria spoke to Nate Wonder and Chuck Lightning for Issue 57’s cover story on Janelle Monáe. The following is an extended talk with the duo. Since Barack Obama’s election, there has been a lot of talk about living in a post-racial society. It’s a nice thought, but if Trayvon Martin’s death and the poverty rates in this country have taught us anything, it’s that post-racial America is still a pipe dream. However, there is one…
December 17, 2013 | Travis Atria | Articles
Lincoln Olivetti 2: Brazilian Disco Don & AOR Ace 1975–1997
The world’s attention will soon be on Brazil for the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The last time there was a global sporting event in Brazil, the 2014 World Cup, a little mix I had fortuitously just finished, called Lincoln Olivetti: Brazilian Boogie Boss 1978–1984, managed to get swept up in that summer’s Brazilianity. I couldn’t believe it at first as my mix was reposted, tweeted and recommended left and right. I knew the music…
August 5, 2016 | Allen Thayer | Mixtape
The Frank Ocean Interview
Photo by Brick Stowell Luckily, Frank Ocean’s throat is feeling better. It’s a few days after his aborted New York City debut, and his voice arrives full and deep over the phone, with no sign of the sore tonsils that devastated a line of ticket-holders that frigid Sunday night. After announcing that his show was canceled, he posted on his Tumblr page: “im really sorry yall. i’ll be back soon as i’m healthy. thats my word.” It’s a word…
February 10, 2012 | Matthew Trammell | Articles
Bobby Womack is a thread that runs through soul music
#74959683 / gettyimages.com Bobby Womack was Sam Cooke’s protégé, and alongside his brothers (known alternately as the Womack Brothers and the Valentinos), he toured with the Soul Stirrers, Jackie Wilson, and James Brown. He wrote hits for Wilson Pickett, including “I’m in Love,” which was about marrying Cooke’s widow. He played guitar for Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Sly Stone, and Janis Joplin, and he worked with the Muscle Shoals…
June 27, 2014 | Travis Atria | Articles
Kamasi Washington and the grand arrangement
Photography by Mike Park The first time Kamasi Washington touched a saxophone, he was thirteen. He was no musical novice, already playing drums, piano, and clarinet for years, but one night after one of his father’s rehearsals at the house, Kamasi picked up his dad’s soprano sax and played his favorite song at the time, Wayne Shorter’s “Sleeping Dancer, Sleep On.” “I was somehow able to play a song from my heart,” says Washington, “and…
May 5, 2016 | Allen Thayer | Articles
Luther Vandross broke through to the mainstream with 1986’s Give Me the Reason
By the mid-’80s, Luther Vandross had become a model of consistency by producing high quality, timeless quiet storm recordings. By 1986’s Give Me the Reason, he was on the verge of breaking new ground by expanding his listening audience and establishing himself as the premiere male voice in R&B music. After spending years perfecting his vocal craft as an in-demand background vocalist for Chic, David Bowie, Roberta…
December 23, 2016 | Chris Williams | Articles
Grasso Brothers know how to boogie, and show it on new compilation
A pair of siblings for whom crate digging has grown from a shared obsession to a family business, Gino and Federico Grasso hail from Bologna, Italy. Inspired by and heavily involved in Italy’s disco and boogie explosion during the ’80s, the pair have traveled the globe searching for the perfect beat. While elder brother Gino DJs regularly and dabbles in production under the moniker “G&D Edits” alongside house producer…
September 14, 2016 | Wax Poetics | Articles
No worries bout nothin
PICTURE ME HOARDIN. (Moral support via Daniel Dumile and Grandma’s afghan.) My entire hair repertoire, from “smooth and nicely brushed” to “aw fuck it.” BEAT SWAP MEET #17, 03/11/12 – My grasp of what constitutes “style” is limited, but I know that ladies should always accentuate the indent where the waist meets the hips and that the cotton sundress is timeless. I know that unless you are dating Fabolous, your boyfriend…
March 28, 2012 | Logan Melissa | Guest Blog
Cultural Roots could have been the biggest reggae vocal trio of all time
Cultural Roots in London, 1990. (left to right) Devon Russell, Erroll Grandison, and Wade Dyce. Photo courtesy Dyce. Cultural Roots founding member Wade Dyce, now living in Salem, Massachusetts, takes his time to ponder when I ask him about the unusual path that led to the life and death of reggae’s most elusive outfit. “We still did what we had to do, and people were still interested in working with us,” he says. “But it wasn’t… It just…
May 8, 2014 | Seb Carayol | Articles
The Department of Justice’s report on Ferguson
View image | gettyimages.com On March 4, the Department of Justice released the results of a wide-ranging study on the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, a city that needs no introduction. The report is harrowing. What it says about America today is more harrowing, and we will deal with that in a moment. First, to the report. In short, it “revealed a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson Police Department…
March 11, 2015 | Travis Atria | Guest Blog
In pursuit of his calling, Tim Maia sparked the ’70s soul movement in Brazil
“I don’t smoke, I don’t snort coke, and I don’t drink, but sometimes I lie a little”1 –Tim Maia Tim Maia was never satisfied. Brazil’s number one soul brother had a voracious appetite for both carnal and philosophical indulgences. Among his dozens of hit songs, and others that should’ve been, you’ll find impassioned odes to chocolate, women, mortality, and his hometown of Rio de Janeiro. Tim’s remembered by the Brazilian public as a…
September 25, 2012 | Wax Poetics | Articles
Tied by 12
Guys! Here’s me at Coachella! is how this post was supposed to begin. Above, here’s what I wore! We drove for 4 hours and, per tradition, we hit up the In-N-Out just after checking into Motel 6 because I don’t need fancy accommodations but I do need a big delicious burger – no onions, extra spread! At the show, h earing Snoop’s If you ain’t up on thaaaaangs — the very sound of so many of car rides with LA…
April 25, 2012 | Logan Melissa | Guest Blog
Blondie rose to stardom out of New York City’s burgeoning downtown scene of punk rock and new wave
In 1970s New York City, photography student Chris Stein found his muse in singer Deborah Harry. The two became romantically involved, and Stein joined her band as a guitarist. In 1974, they would form the band Blondie, coming out of the burgeoning downtown scene with other punk rock and new wave acts like Television, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, and the Ramones, all orbiting around the clubs CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. As a photographer, Stein…
July 1, 2015 | Andrew Mason | Features
Jamaiel Shabaka cut his teeth with legend Sun Ra before recording the mysterious reggae LP The Land of the Rising Sun
It was a record. It’s always a record. A few months ago, while on a visit to the best unsung record shop in Los Angeles, Mono Records, owner John pulled an intriguing LP off his oh-so-coveted shelf of not-yet-priced acquisitions. He wanted to show me a reggae record he didn’t know anything about, lost—but not so lost, as I would soon discover—in a huge collection of radical jazz he had just purchased. Credited to one Jamaiel Shabaka, it…
March 8, 2016 | Seb Carayol | Articles
Newcleus was at the center of the electro cosmos
Newcleus. All photos courtesy of Cozmo D. In the early 1980s, hip-hop was going through a change. With advancements in electronic music-making technology too tempting to resist, a few pioneering artists started experimenting with drum machines, synthesizers, and sequencers to create an electronic hip-hop sound. Electronic music wasn’t new, but electronic hip-hop was. Newcleus, with their trademark spacemen-with-attitude approach,…
August 4, 2015 | Wax Poetics | Articles
Quitapenas pick five tropical favorites
Head an hour east of Los Angeles and you’ll find yourself in the Inland Empire of San Bernardino/Riverside, where a thriving Latinx DIY music and art scene is on display to a melting pot community and audience. It is out of this grassroots local scene that Quitapenas developed their unique rhythm and following. At the heart of the group is a tropical Afro-Latin combo, brewed under the warm California sun with a certain liberation in…
March 29, 2017 | Andrew Mason | Contests/Record Rundown
An excerpt from the book Love, Peace, and Soul: Behind the Scenes of America’s Favorite Dance Show Soul Train
Excerpted with permission from Love, Peace, and Soul: Behind the Scenes of America’s Favorite Dance Show Soul Train (Backbeat Books). This is not Michael Jackson, and this is not “Thriller”! —from “King of Rock,” by Run-D.M.C. By 1979, the music industry was changing fast, and Soul Train and Don Cornelius were struggling to keep up. On July 12, 1979, Comiskey Park became the receptacle for rock and roll fans’ revulsion, as the end…
October 2, 2013 | Ericka Blount Danois | Articles
Pianist Eddie Palmieri is a true Latin-music visionary
Born in Spanish Harlem in 1936, nine-time Grammy winner Eddie Palmieri is undeniably the preeminent worldwide ambassador for Latin American music. There’s no one else even close. Palmieri is frequently compared to Art Blakey as a father figure band leader and McCoy Tyner for his percussive piano style, but when it comes to contributions to an art form, he’s more on par with Miles Davis and James Brown. Like Miles reinvented jazz and Brown…
May 10, 2016 | Wax Poetics | Articles
Ed Motta drops AOR Mix 2 chock full of funky and rare tunes
Ed Motta has created AOR Mix 2, another brilliant mixtape exclusively for Wax Poetics, in support of his U.S. tour (stream the mix below). This weekend, the crown prince of Brazilian funk makes a special pilgrimage to the geographical source of inspiration for his latest album, AOR. San Diego, L.A., and Oakland will get a rare treat to see Ed for the first time on the West Coast in 14 years. Ed’s eleventh studio album finds the Dr. Who of…
October 8, 2014 | Allen Thayer | Mixtape
Curtis Mayfield injected his own cultural commentary into the Super Fly legacy
The streets of New York City weren’t very pretty in the 1970s. Littered throughout once welcoming communities, an influx of heroin junkies, many broken young brothers home from the Vietnam War, became yet another symbol of a deteriorating society. As essayist James Wolcott described the then-rotting Apple, it was “a metropolis on the verge of a nervous breakdown with a side order of panic in Needle Park.” Originally published as…
June 3, 2013 | Michael Gonzales | Articles
Gino Soccio was the one-man-band behind countless disco gems—until he vanished
At the board, 1981. Photo courtesy of Gino Soccio. About a month before thousands chanted “Disco sucks!” at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Gino Soccio was ensconced in his Montreal studio, sipping coffee with cognac and laying down tracks for his second LP. Leaning against a twenty-four-channel mixing desk, Soccio spoke like a disco evangelist during a June 1979 interview with the Canadian Press : “Disco is more than just music. It’s a social…
May 29, 2013 | Jered Stuffco | Articles
Rockin’ You Eternally: The Leon Ware & Marcos Valle Story
“All the roots of the samba and rhythm & blues and soul are the same: Black,” Marcos Valle explained from his home in Rio de Janeiro on the subject of his short, but fruitful songwriting partnership with R&B journeyman, Leon Ware, circa 1979 to 1982. “When we started to write, we found how easy it was, and at the same time how new it was, combining the feeling I had and the feeling he had.” This unlikely partnership only…
June 2, 2017 | Allen Thayer | Articles
Bernie Worrell was the key to the P-Funk sound
The Funkadelics: (left to right) Eddie Hazel, Billy “Bass” Nelson (with cap pulled down), Bernie Worrell, Tiki Fulwood, and Tawl Ross. “Bernie is like a genius of geniuses.” –George Clinton “There’s perfect pitch and absolute pitch. I was born with perfect pitch,” this founding father of funk informs me. “That means you could tap on a piece of metal, and I’ll tell you what pitch it is. I’ll hear a jet flying overhead and tell you what…
June 27, 2016 | Matt Rogers | Articles
Bassist-turned-arranger Richard Evans put the soul in Cadet Records
From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Richard Evans was the main man behind Chicago’s groundbreaking soul-jazz record label Cadet, a subsidiary of the successful blues label Chess. In the early ’60s, Richard not only took Charles Stepney under his wing but also played bass with Sun Ra and befriended a young, talented organ player named Donny Hathaway. As the ’60s neared their end and popular music became more psychedelic, Leonard Chess’s…
October 8, 2014 | Wax Poetics | Articles
Rhodes Electric Piano
World War II may have given us the atom bomb, but it also contributed what Ray Charles would call “an atom bomb on the musical landscape.” Predating synths like the Moog, the Rhodes piano was the great keyboard instrument innovation of the twentieth century. Its history is intertwined with the history of jazz, and while jazz keyboard began on a borrowed European invention, the Rhodes was the first keyboard instrument jazz could…
May 20, 2013 | Peter Kirn | Articles
Producer Michael Powell helped create Anita Baker’s massive R&B record Rapture
By the mid-’80s, Anita Baker was on the verge of setting herself apart from her contemporaries with her next offering. After spending years perfecting her vocal craft with legendary Detroit band Chapter 8 and experiencing modest success with them, she decided to leave the music business altogether. She worked odd jobs around her hometown, then she received a phone call that would change the trajectory of her soon-to-be budding musical career….
March 17, 2016 | Chris Williams | Guest Blog
Marshall Chess cultivated a stimulating studio at Chess Records with the Cadet Concept label
Marshall Chess literally grew up in the music biz. He was five years old when his father Leonard and uncle Phil Czyz (the anglicization of their name came after their immigration to the U.S. from Poland in 1928) purchased a portion of Aristocrat Records, which ultimately became the iconoclastic, independent blues and R&B label Chess Records. When Marshall turned thirteen in 1955, vocal group the Flamingos played his bar mitzvah, which was…
October 21, 2016 | Andria Lisle | Articles
New York’s golden era had hip-hop luminaries digging in the crates at the legendary Roosevelt Hotel Record Convention
Busta Rhymes (in hat) and dealer John Carraro (at the turntable) It is no small privilege to have been invited to share with you the story of New York’s legendary Roosevelt Hotel Record Convention, located at East Forty-fifth Street. It may be by sheer coincidence or destiny itself, but this seems to be the appropriate time for ruminations and memories to be resurrected. This is the tale of a convention where for a few sacred seasons, a…
May 9, 2014 | John Carraro | Articles
Roy C’s legacy goes beyond the single song (and ubiquitous golden-era hip-hop break) “Impeach the President”
Photo courtesy of Roy C. It’s hard to conceive that hip-hop was almost deprived of one of the most ubiquitous breaks in the history of the genre, “Impeach the President,” due to its composer considering the most unlikely of careers for a future sultan of soul: pugilism. “Heavyweight,” exclaims soul singer-songwriter Roy C. Hammond. “Would you believe the same people that trained Joe Louis trained me?” From his self-contained…
June 12, 2013 | Rico Washington | Articles
Danser’s Inferno
There was a time when jazz, funk, and soul music meant absolutely nothing to me. I was fifteen when I bought my first garage-sale turntable and listened to my father’s Grateful Dead and Doors albums. Names like Otis Redding, Thelonious Monk, and Parliament were not in my vocabulary. Regardless, after that needle hit its first groove, I was hooked, and I hit the streets in search of new acquisitions. I convinced an older friend to drive to the…
August 1, 2013 | Greg Winter | Re:Discovery
Virginia Beach singer Kenna is leading the followers
It makes perfect sense that Kenna’s intent on giving credit to artists who blurred lines before him, going so far as to dub his latest series of EPs Land 2 Air Chronicles II: Imitation Is Suicide. More specifically, imitation without repping your influences. As the Ethiopian-born, Cincinnati-bred, Virginia Beach–molded singer/musician/producer/entrepreneur/philanthropist will readily offer, “I’m like the most famous non-famous person on the…
November 7, 2013 | Kenny Herzog | Articles
KPM library records reimagined by Shawn Lee and Tim Love Lee for Tummy Touch Records
Library records are jewels that the keenest collectors search out. KPM is one such repository of recordings that has over 30,000 tracks in its vaults. These tracks are used throughout various media including radio, TV, and film. Self-proclaimed library music junkies Shawn Lee and Tim Love Lee sought out a couple of specific 1970s KPM 1000 series LPs that featured Herbie Flowers (bass) and Barry Morgan (drums) with hopes of filling them out…
April 11, 2014 | Eric Luecking | New Releases
Introducing our new hybrid journal with no ads. Available in paperback and hardcover. 118 pages of all-new Prince content. 8 x…
