DEEP #2/2022 (August)

We’ve gone literary. There are reviews of three recently published books in this column: biographies by the Grammy Award-winning producer Scott Billington, by the lovely pop-soul singer P.P. Arnold and by the only surviving original member of the Four Tops, Duke Fakir.

BLACK BOOKCASE

SCOTT BILLINGTON

“I have often spent months working on a project, from conception, to rehearsals, to tracking, to overdubbing, to editing, to mixing, to mastering. However, a record can sometimes materialize quite quickly.” These are a couple of lines from Scott Billington’s book titled Making Tracks (ISBN 9781496839176; University Press of Mississippi, 336 pages). Although the first thing that comes to your mind is Charlie Gillett’s book about the history of the Atlantic Records also entitled Making Tracks from 1975, for Scott’s book this is an apt title, since he actually writes in detail about making those records and creating those sounds in studios. He describes every step in detail, lists the musicians and engineers and tells about musical choices almost track-by-track. He also explains the history of different roots music genres, portrays the artists he’s worked with and tells numerous anecdotes about them, both funny and sad. The book really takes us deep into making tracks.

  Foreword by Peter Guralnick, there are 48 black & white photos in the book and fortunately it includes index and a detailed discography, listing the albums by the 65 artists that Scott has produced. The first chapter tells about Scott’s foray into the world of music. As a young boy he formed his own groups, played harmonica in them, was one of the founders of the Boston Blues Society, became a record store manager and got a part-time job at Rounder Records in 1976. He started producing records for Rounder in New Orleans in 1981 and eventually became the vice president of A&R. Soon after Rounder was sold to Concord he left the company but still works with the Rounder catalog, alongside his other occupations.

  Scott features more closely 22 artists that he has produced. They represent a variety of genres – from rockabilly and blues to zydeco, brass band music and jazz – but in my review I concentrate on soul and rhythm and blues. The collaboration on the two albums that Solomon Burke had released on Rounder in the mid-80s – Soul Alive! and A Change Is Gonna Come – didn’t end with cordial feelings. In the book Scott tells his side of the story, and in my feature article on Solomon he told me that “Scott’s nickname is Scott ‘Meathead’ Billington” and still about the record company: “Not happy with Rounder as far as the promotion, getting your royalties and things like that. I didn’t want to continue a relationship, where we weren’t happy and where we couldn’t communicate. In the beginning it was a very beautiful relationship, but then it didn’t continue the way we would have liked to continue. I felt it was time to move.”

  Scott produced Ruth Brown’s two last albums for the Bullseye Blues subsidiary – R + B = Ruth Brown (1997) and A Good Day for the Blues (1999) – and two of Bobby Rush’s recent CDs in the late 2010s. He was also responsible for the two Dalton Reed CDs – Louisiana Soul Man (1991) and Willing and Able (1994) – just prior to his untimely death at the age of 42.

  Scott’s two most-produced New Orleans artists, however, were Johnny Adams (10 albums) and Irma Thomas (11 albums), and personally I cherish especially those Irma’s records. Between 1986 and 2008 the twosome came up with many soulful gems, and for the most part Irma herself also was very satisfied... except one little thing that she mentioned in one of my interviews with her (in 1994): ”I'm pleased. They have their shortcomings. They need to spend a little more money on promotion, but by the same token they do have a great distribution, because most of the countries I've gone to since I've been on this tour does have access to the records, so that's a good plus. If they'd spend a little more on promotion, I think they'd have even greater sales, because they have good artists on the label.”

  Although zydeco and brass band music are not my cup of... whatever, I found this book very interesting, especially in terms of making musical choices for each individual artist and act.

P.P. ARNOLD

I remember how in the late 1960s I had a crush on P.P. Arnold. It was not only her sexy appearance but also her pleading and in a sort of soulful way cooing voice. I guess I’m not the only one, and probably the rest of the fellow admirers have already purchased her recently published autobiography called Soul Survivor (Nine Eight Books, ISBN 978-1-7887-0578-3; 384 pages, 8 with images).

  Patricia Ann Cole was born on the third of October in 1946 in Los Angeles, but her family roots were in Texas. Andrew Loog Oldham, the manager and producer of the Rolling Stones, suggested the stage name of “P.P. Arnold”, when Pat had arrived in London for the first time in 1966. The first 22 chapters of the book alternate between Pat’s family history, going back to the 1800s, and her early years in music history in the 1960s, and this back-and-forth method works actually quite well. The book centres on early years, since only on page 238 we enter the 1970s. Unfortunately the index is missing, as well as the discography, but the latter one you can find on her website at www.pparnold.com.

  In her life P.P. has certainly experienced a lot of ups and downs, and tragic events seem to abound. She delivered her first spiritual songs at the age of four. She has always loved music, but there were strong distractions in her life like her father’s strict upbringing and later abusive teen marriage, which produced two kids and ended already in the mid-60s. In 1965 she became an Ikette and even sang lead on the Ikettes’ What’cha Gonna Do (Phi-Dan Records 5009 in 1966) and participated in Tina Turner’s sessions with Phil Spector, but – back to dismay – Ike Turner raped her. Incidentally, on YouTube you can find The Big T.N.T. Show, which was shot in Hollywood in 1966 and where Ike & Tina together with Pat and two other Ikettes perform as the closing act.

  P.P. ran away from the Ike & Tina Turner Revue in England, became romantically involved with Mick Jagger, signed with Immediate Records, which released two impressive albums – The First Lady of Immediate and Kafunta in 1968 – with fully orchestrated, melodic pop-soul songs and notable covers. Best-known hits from those days were The First Cut Is the Deepest, written by Cat Stevens, and the cover of Angel of the Morning, originally released by Evie Sands. Unfortunately an impressive 1969 single, Bury Me Down by the River and Give a Hand, Take a Hand, produced and co-written by Robin Gibb, flopped.

  P.P. writes openly about her sexual relationships with some of the British and American rock stars of the day, such as Steve Marriott of the Small Faces, Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart, even Marianne Faithfull, but when she starts listing her sessions and recordings with rock, funk and even punk artists in the 70s, I strayed into more cursory reading. She didn’t enjoy working with P.J. Proby – to put it mildly – and she also writes about British undercurrent racism. One subject that repeatedly comes up on these pages is drug abuse, which in her case went as far as even doing some dealing. More tragedies: she lost her 13-year-old daughter in a car accident in 1977, while living in Hollywood.

  Besides LA and London, P.P. has lived in Malibu and Miami, but these days she resides in Spain. P.P. has encountered more than a fair share of hardships in her life, and in this book she frankly chronicles them, but, besides personal matters, she also concentrates on music quite thankworthy. She tells about her recording sessions, about her fellow artists and remembers to list each member of her bands. Somewhat strangely the memoir actually ends at 1982. After that there’s only a six-page-long epilogue, which covers the last forty years. I would have liked to read a bit more about that period.

  Anyway, these days P.P. seems to be happy. She has performed in musicals, tours a lot and what’s most important - recently two good albums have been released: The Turning Point in 2017, which finally gives us those shelved but fine and full Barry Gibb produced tracks from over 50 years back and The New Adventures of...P.P. Arnold two years later. That latter album contains fifteen songs with richly orchestrated tracks and melodies by, among others, P.P. herself and the producer, Steve Cradock. Her latest hit, Baby Blue, is also included.  Grab those records and listen to them while reading this illustrative and revealing book by one of the sweethearts on the U.K. pop-soul scene.

DUKE FAKIR

First and foremost, Duke Fakir’s and Kathleen McGhee-Anderson’s book titled I’ll Be There: My Life with the Four Tops (Omnibus Press; ISBN 978-1-913172-59-6; 244 pages) is not a book about the Four Tops, per se, but for the most part about Abdul “Duke” himself and his life... and his opinions. Abounding enough in photos, altogether there are 16 pages with images plus 11 separate black & white photos, but there’s neither index, nor discography in this book.

  Duke, the tenor voice, was born on December the 26^th in 1935, and he inherited two different religious backgrounds from his parents, Christian and Islamic. At the North End of Detroit he met some of his former football friends, who later for a brief period became also gang members, such as  Levi Stubbs, Lawrence Payton and Ronaldo “Obie” Benson, and eventually in 1954 those four boys formed a singing group called the Four Aims. They changed their name into the Four Tops before the release of their debut single on Chess in 1956, Kiss Me Baby. When writing about this period, some proofreading would have helped, because James Brown’s Please, Please, Please didn’t chart until in 1956 and Dinah Washington released What a Diff’rence a Day Makes only in 1959 – so they were not singing those songs in 1955.

  In the early 60s the Four Tops sang background for Billy Eckstine and had singles released on Riverside Records before their breakthrough with Baby I Need Your Loving on Motown in 1964, after their jazz standards album had been shelved. On a more personal note, Duke and Mary Wilson got engaged those days, but that didn’t last very long. Duke’s second marriage to Piper in 1974 was the lasting one.

More inaccuracies: Duke writes that Berry Gordy made a bet that the Four Tops can’t record Walk Away Renee and make it a bigger hit than the Left Banke’s original, which was - according to his words - currently on the charts.  According to Duke, the single was rushed out. As “BayouMotownMan” explains in his posting on the Soulful Detroit Forum in May this year, the song was pulled off the Reach Out LP almost a year after the release of the album, and close to two years after the Left Banke had a big hit with Renee (# 5-pop in Billboard), so rush-release is not the correct expression here.  Duke later writes that Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin “both left the Temptations at the same time, each recording solo albums at Motown. After a year or two, their careers were in free fall.” I don’t think we all agree with that.

  After the Motown period in 1963-72, the group switched to ABC-Dunhill, where – according to Duke – they were treated badly. That may be true, but they stayed there for as long as seven year and enjoyed many top-10 r&b hits and one big national smash, Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got). They returned to Motown in 1983 for a few years, prior to the Arista era.

  At one point Duke was heavily into drinking and cocaine as well, but then religion saved him. He also went through a heart surgery, and in the end won the Lifetime Grammy in 2009. His stories about losing lifelong friends are touching, and on the other hand his introductions of new members - Theo Peoples, Harold Bonhart, Ronnie McNeir, Lawrence Payton Jr. and Alexander Morris – are quite cordial.

  I’ve mentioned this many times earlier, but I wish that in biographies like this the artists would talk more about music – recording sessions, life on the road, fellow artists, musicians, producers etc. Lacking those elements, this book is not for music enthusiasts, but hardcore Four Tops fans will undoubtedly acquire it anyway.

© Heikki Suosalo