Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Esther Phillips
The Country Side Of…
(Atlantic, 1966)
The soul of country music syringed by Texas’s teenage star…
Esther Mae Jones was born two days before Christmas 1935 in Galveston, Texas. Like so many of her future soul contemporaries, she cut her teeth singing in the local church before being spotted at the age of 13 by rhythm and blues maestro Johnny Otis. The newly christened “Little” Esther Phillips (she swiped the surname from a gas station billboard) quickly racked up a string of hits for the Savoy and Federal labels, her sassy, southern purr belying her teenage years and eventually grabbing the attention of Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Her 20s were plagued by heroin addiction, but by the early 1960s, as Ray Charles turned to the Grand Ol’ Opry to record his pioneering Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, Phillips entered the studio to cut her version of Ray Price’s Nashville smash, Release Me. A pop hit, its success would permit her to cover The Beatles’ And I Love Him (a Fabs’ favourite) and open the door to this album of country standards, all torn from the plains of the south by Phillips’ caustic gospel-blues timbre. Her splintered vibrato recalls the jazz-flowing cool of her hero Dinah Washington, but a soupçon of Diana Ross-esque delicacy ensures these tremulous tones are very much her own. The tempos are pulled back, the bluesy piano dressing gives the songs a smoky, bar-at-midnight-taste and the evergreen string arrangements add class and elegance. There’s her wrenching take on Charlie Rich’s No Headstone On My Grave or her mellifluous run through Just Out Of Reach’s string of lonesome verses, in which she sings: “Dreams that just won't let me be / Blues that keep on botherin' me / Chains that just won't set me free”, the latter a fitting description of a life battered by the drug and drink problems that would eventually push her into an early grave. The diminutive girl with the big voice died in 1984. She was 48 years old.
Ross Bennett
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:30 PM GMT 24/10/2008
Further Listening
Ray Charles – Modern Sounds In Country And Western (ABC-Paramount, 1962)
Bettye Swann – Bettye Swann (Astralwerks/Honest Jons, 2004)
Doris Duke – I’m A Loser (Kent, 1969)
Previous Disc of the day
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Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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