Turn It Up - 10/28/2024

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

It’s a new week, so we’re back to share some things we’ve been listening to. David goes first, then Charles, and we’ve got a bunch of reading recommendations at the end.

Sammi Smith – “I’ve Got to Have You” (from Something Old, Something New, Something Blue, 1972)

While it’s still on my mind, and maybe yours, I want to start with two more Kris Kristofferson-related recommendations, adjuncts to our special Kristofferson TIU and my Kristofferson appreciation… Friend-of-Kris Sammi Smith is best known, of course, for her humid crossover smash with his “Help Me Make It through the Night.” “[Kris] and I went into old Monument studio,” she told me in 2001, recalling the demo session that preceded the first of her great albums for Mega Records. “He played guitar, and I sang, and we put down six or seven of his songs… just about every song he had.” “Take the ribbon from my hair,” she began, turning the tables and taking charge. Over the course of her career, Smith would eventually record not quite an album’s worth of Kristofferson’s songs, including what’s perhaps my favorite reading of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and what’s for sure the greatest version of his “I’ve Got to Have You.” Rolling atop a quivering country soul rhythm bed, Smith whispers and purrs her way through Kris’ lyrics of erotic desire and more: Gender flipping the song’s narrator once again ups both its vulnerability and the singer’s power. “I don’t know if it’s love, but it’s enough…,” she gasps. “It’s all over. I’ve got to have you.” I must admit that when Kristofferson died, one of my first thoughts was to hope, in this moment of reclaiming overlooked women artists, his passing might at last draw a bit of attention to the work of his greatest interpreter. Not holding my breath but will still grab every opportunity to cheerlead for Sammi Smith. – DC

Marilyn Sellars – “One Day at a Time” (from One Day at a Time, 1974)

I was a little surprised that nearly every Kristofferson obit and tribute whiffed on one of his most enduring songs. Cowritten with his early supporter Marijon Wilkins, “One Day at a Time” is a Good News gospel earworm that’s been recorded by everyone from Shirley Ceasar to Merle Haggard, from Ace Cannon to Judy Collins, not to mention turned to repeatedly by innumerable televangelists and youth pastors. Like so many gospel standards, it sounds as if it must’ve been around forever, but Sammi Smith’s Mega Records labelmate, country-gospel singer Marilyn Sellars, broke the song only 50 years ago when her version cracked the country Top 20 and the pop Top 40. Sellars, her brassy alto vibrating with real positive Donna Fargo energy, pleads with Jesus to help her get through another 24. It’s a joyous altar call but can double as a one step to sobriety as needed. – DC

BJ the Chicago Kid, featuring Andra Day – “Crazy Love” (from Gravy (Deluxe), 2024)

BJ the Chicago Kid has now re-released an expanded edition of last year’s Gravy, and all of it’s a retro-soul-infused delight. I especially dig “Crazy Love,” a duet with Andra Day, BJ’s fellow Neo-Soul survivor that channels Donny Hathaway with Roberta Flack hooking up with horns and changes courtesy Al Green. BJ and Andra have had troubles but sweated through them, trusting that honesty can get them through anything. Doesn’t sound crazy at all.  – DC

The Stanley Brothers – “Lonely Tombs” (from For the Good People, 1960)

This Halloween, treat yourself to “Lonely Tombs,” a country warhorse recorded by Wade Mainer, the Blue Sky Boys, Hank Williams, Roy Acuff and many more. It’s ostensibly a gospel number but is creepy as hell, especially when the Stanley Brothers do it. Carter Stanley sings lead, brother Ralph joins in otherworldly harmony on the chorus, as Carter recalls a trip to a cemetery when he began hearing voices coming from the graves, even his dead mother’s, whispering “in a low gentle tone” of how short human life is and “how sweet is the rest in our beautiful heavenly home.” “Join us,” they seem to call, but all Carter can do is shiver: “What a dark lonesome place that must be.” – DC

Jack Jones — “Come Rain or Come Shine” (from Wives and Lovers, 1963)

Jack Jones was more modern than the later pop crooner throwbacks (Harry Connick Jr., Michael Feinstein, Michael Buble) he anticipated, and if not more modern, he was at least hipper, let’s say, during his 1960s peak than were obvious forebears such as Sinatra, Tormé, and Bennett. He was a baritone who often felt like a tenor, and while he mostly stuck to the Great American Songbook and its kin (with exceptions: He had a No. 1 Easy Listening hit with a version of “The Race Is On” that, you will note, I am not Turning Up), his version of pop vocalizing fit far better in a post-rock and roll world: He shared a youthful brightness with Bobby Vinton and Bobby Rydell, for example, a tone with Pat Boone, and sang circles around all of them. Well, you could sing circles around Boone, but still, Jones was a hell of a singer. His version of “Come Rain or Come Shine,” that great Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer standard, is a good example of what he was great at. He feels each line, leans jazzy in his phrasing, holds some notes for emphasis and others just because he knows we know his voice is stunning. As was his sunny way (that’s the Tony B. in the man), he leans much harder into the “shine” than into the “rain,” but let’s you know he feels both. R.I.P., Jack Jones. – DC

Ka – “Lord Have Mercy” (from The Thief Next to Jesus, 2024)

Ka died last week at age 52. I first became aware of his work thanks to the crew of devotees that argued – successfully, in my case – that the New York-based artist was one of hip-hop’s most consistently compelling, with a lyrical intensity matched by astonishing tracks that complemented his deep and restless rhymes. His latest album – tragically, I assume it’s his last – is The Thief Next to Jesus, a gospel-infused collection that considers the role of Christianity to Black communities throughout history, and to Ka specifically as he considers the faith’s paradoxical ability to both liberate and bind. It’s all heady stuff, delivered with the breathy relentlessness that defined him, and matched to beats that include samples of both sound and speech in their hypnotic swirl. “Lord Have Mercy,” with its piercing vocals and lonesome piano line, works the flaws in the system while simultaneously seeking a redemption that may well be impossible. What a great artist, gone far too soon. – CH

Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin – “Stars Begin to Fall” (from Symbiont, 2024)

I first spent time with Symbiont in the immediate wake of the Hurricane Helene disaster, and it seemed so much like the sound of our times to render that well-worn phrase meaningless. This stunning album from Blount and Obomsawin, two of the brightest young lights in the post-Americana “roots” renaissance, blends music from African American and Indigenous traditions around a futurist reckoning with apocalypses both climatological and otherwise. To tell these stories, the duo uses arrangements that sound appropriately post-industrial, a clanging mix of drum and synth that somehow mixes perfectly with the “traditional” melodies and acoustic instrumentation. It’s impossible to pick a favorite, but right now I can’t stop listening to “Stars Begin to Fall,” an adaptation of the spiritual “My Lord, What A Morning” that the duo turns into an epic soundburn featuring cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum. Capturing both the hopeful and harrowing impulses that drive Symbiont, “Stars Begin to Fall” calls up a new world even as the old one collapses. Here’s praying we do better next time. – CH

Shirlette Ammons – “Corner Pocket (Small Pond Session)” (from Spectacles RMXD, 2024)

I somehow missed Ammons’ fantastic new album Spectacles, released earlier this year, and I only became aware of it because of “Corner Pocket,” her contribution to the massive, excellent Hurricane Helene benefit album Cardinals at the Window. It’s also included on her new album of remixes, even though it’s an entirely new song, and it’s a stunner. Over popping live-band funk, Ammons celebrates the strength of Black culture – shouting out communities from Bronzeville to Eatonville in her rollcall of affirmation – with a flexible flow that seems animated as much by the joy of delivery as by the richness of content. “When I finish the sentence, screaming ‘this is what’s in us,’ let’s never finish the sentence,” she repeats at the end, and the message keeps resonating even after the track fades. And on and on. – CH

Charli XCX (feat. Bon Iver) – “I think about it all the time” (from Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, 2024)

Brat summer may be over, but Charli XCX isn’t fading away. On the new album of brat reworkings, she turns many of the songs inside out to create almost entirely new sonic experiences. For “I think about it all the time,” Charli brings along Justin Vernon, the Bon Iver leader whose grainy falsetto fits perfectly inside the swirling electronic arrangement. There’s a further connection: Vernon has long professed his love for Bonnie Raitt, including issuing a remarkable version of “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” And Raitt appears here, with sampled echoes of Raitt’s 1989 classic "Nick of Time" adding another layer of longing to the track’s restless textures. (The fact that Raitt’s voice drops in from out of time to sing about running out of time is a neat and smart trick, as well.) Sounding something like the racing thoughts of a 3 A.M. anxiety attack, “I think about it all the time” sends fragments of the three singers’ voices spiraling out in a manner both disorienting and reassuring, as all three sound like they’re doing whatever they can to avoid running out of time even as they lose their grip on it. – CH

Grateful Dead – “Box of Rain” (from American Beauty, 1970)

Phil Lesh, who died last week at the age of 84, is usually credited as the most experimental of the Grateful Dead. The bassist earned that reputation with his fluid playing and a love of jazz and avant-garde music that pushed the group into the furthest reaches of its improvisatory approach and exploratory spirit. But Lesh also contributed a couple of the band’s sweetest and most grounded moments. His rare appearances as front man included the rich rumination of “Unbroken Chain” or the slippery country stomp “Pride of Cucamonga” - both on From the Mars Hotel, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year - plus the big-hearted live version of Robbie Robertson’s “Broken Arrow” that made appearances during the group’s final touring years. (And his high harmonies were a secret weapon throughout their career.) But “Box of Rain” remains the most stunning and enduring. Lesh composed the rolling, multipart melody and shared it with lyricist Robert Hunter, with the brief to write something from Lesh to his dying father. Hunter, employing his signature enigmatic mysticism, returned with a lyric that intermingled considerations of the eternal with heartfelt, and heartrending, reckonings with mortality. (Anyone lucky enough to have not yet experienced a moment of “What do you want me to do, to do for you, to see you through?” will have to at some point.) Lesh’s vocal is sad and graceful, and the Dead – in the heart of perhaps their most fertile creative period – move around him like a friendly fog. It’s not hard to hear fresh resonance in the song’s reminder that it’s “such a long, long time to be gone, and a short time to be there” now that Lesh (like Hunter) has moved on. But, in whatever context, the ethereal magic of “Box of Rain” remains one of the Dead’s very best. This song has been there to see me through more than once in my life, and I hope it does the same for you. – CH

Recommended reading:

-Clayton Edwards talks with Shawna Virago about Blood in Her Dreams and more, for American Songwriter

-Steacy Easton on new album symbiont, and in conversation with its creators Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin, for The Bluegrass Situation

-Bob Mehr profiles Randy Newman, for The New York Times

-Carl Wilson on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical version of Warriors, for Slate

-Julianne Escobedo Shepherd on Lollise’s “Afrofuturistic pop utopia,” for Hearing Things

-Julianne Escobedo Shepherd on the Red Hot Organization, for Hearing Things

-Amanda Petrusich talks to Justin Vernon, for The New Yorker

-Mark Anthony Neal on A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory, for Medium

-Jody Rosen on Ka, for New York Times

-SZA talks to Kendrick Lamar, for Harper’s Bazaar

-Thomas Hobbs talks to Ghostface Killah, for Stereogum

-Kiese Laymon’s letter from home, for Bitter Southerner

­-Kia Turner talks to Andre 3000, for Essence

-Clover Hope on Missy Elliot’s Da Real World, for Pitchfork

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