Rose Colored Glass, "Can't Find the Time"

After poor distribution from record label MCA prevented "Can't Find the Time" from becoming the hit it deserved to be, a few more singles came and went for Orpheus. "Brown Arms in Houston" grazed the singles chart, and "By the Size of My Shoes" gave "Rhinestone Cowboy" songwriter Larry Weiss some of his earliest visibility, but there were cracks in the armor. Principal lead singer and songwriter Bruce Arnold, dissatisfied with the touring version of the band and desirous of new collaboration, broke up the group in late '69 and formed a new Orpheus in '71 for one album; he now disavows all connection with the outfit presently gigging as Orpheus Reborn.

"Can't Find the Time," meanwhile, found new life in the hands of Rose Colored Glass, a pop quartet who took it to #54 in the spring of 1971. I'd never have known about it had it not been for a Dick Bartley compilation, Collector's Essentials: The '70s, that I reviewed in the early 2000s for the All Music Guide. (Ignore the typo in the first sentence; it's bugged me for years.) I love that, according to the 45 on this YouTube clip, the strings were arranged by Hoppy Hallman. One more reason to enjoy this chipper rendition of "Can't Find the Time."

Laura Nyro and LaBelle, "It's Gonna Take a Miracle"

The first night of this year's EMP Pop Conference offered a conversation with Nona Hendryx, for years a member of Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles and then LaBelle, where she, Patti, and Sarah Dash moved from girl-group street-corner harmonizing to spacey glam-funk. She's worked with dozens and dozens of gifted and influential musicians and producers of every genre in the pop-soul spectrum, and had a lot of great insights into the music world.

But her conversation with Daphne Brooks and Sonnet Retman was stilted at times, the moderators spending more time rooting through their notes for questions to ask than actually absorbing and reacting to Hendryx's observations. Nevertheless, I was glad to have attended, to have gleaned some history I never knew and to hear stories of a music industry less contrived than today's, in an era when a group like LaBelle could make sonic and visual decisions based on what they wanted, not on what they or their handlers thought was marketable.

The casual music listener likely knows LaBelle only for their #1 hit "Lady Marmalade." I'm going to skip that in favor of one of their less well-known efforts: they provided backing vocals on Laura Nyro's 1971 album Gonna Take a Miracle, garnering a name credit for their efforts. Nyro gives the almost-title track "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" one of her best readings - thankfully, she forgoes the tempo shifts and wobbles that render some of her work dizzying and indulgent. (Like Dylan and P.F. Sloan, she was far better off writing for others than for herself.) Her version of "Miracle" doesn't ascend to the heights of the Royalettes' original (which sadly topped out at #41 on the charts) or Deneice Williams' more successful remake. But it holds up nicely, and those opening harmonies are good for a shiver or two down the back.

And a bit of trivia, courtesy of Nona: on a bet Patti had made with (the producer? I forget), LaBelle laid down all of their backing tracks for the entire album in a mere 7 hours.

Aretha Franklin, "Oh Me Oh My (I'm a Fool for You Baby)"

Had April Fool's Day fallen on a Friday this year, I'd certainly have put together a Friday Funtime set of 10 "fool" songs to match. Most of them would have had a negative valence to the term: Chris Rea's chastising "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," the Rolling Stones gone white-horsey and dark-nighted on "Fool to Cry," Rufus Wainwright's sublimely bitter "April Fools," and the like.

But I'd rather focus today on the more positive interpretation of the fool: the one appreciated by the tarot for his ability to see things as they are and find the joy in what is, who uses his outsider status to provide a window into truth and understanding. This fool's playfulness offers those around him a chance to tap back into that. It is this fool that Aretha Franklin becomes in "Oh Me Oh My (I'm a Fool for You Baby)."

The indominable Lulu took first crack at the tune, taking it to #22 in 1970. (Isn't that just the loveliest video?) But she rendered it sassy and brassy, whereas it perhaps needed a more adult reading, and so along came Aretha a year later. (Alas, it was relegated to the B-side of "Rock Steady," so it only made #73 on the Hot 100.) This is my very favorite of all Aretha's performances, the way she nails every whoop and declamation, backing singers Sweet Inspiration a solid bedrock behind her, the band maintaining a quiet and steady pulse. Almost easy to overlook the eccentricities of the lyric - and I give songwriter Jim Doris a hell of a lot of credit for imaginativeness, from the second verse's fingers-do-the-walking ballet to the last one's genie in a puff of smoke.

It's exactly the sort of odd and oddly romantic imagery a good fool provides.

Dusk, "I Hear Those Church Bells Ringing"

While I try to unfreeze my iPod (in the literal sense - this exceedingly bitter NYC winter is even worse for technology than it is for humans), here's a clip my friend Mike just sent me. The band's called Dusk because its label, Bell Records, already had a band called Dawn on its roster ("Knock Three Times" et al Dawn, that is). Cute.

Can't say I'm won over by this cloying retread of girl-group anthems (and the video uploader makes a point by interjecting a brief clip of the Dixie Cups' "Chapel of Love" in the middle). And I'm rarely won over by the sentiment of "marry me if you want to fuck me," especially when Beyonce's inadvertently turned such a message into such cruel irony as "Put a Ring On It" blasts out of gay clubs. But for those of you who are into "One Kiss Can Lead to Another" girl-group goodness, here's three minutes of playfulness (with an ex-Angel, as in "My Boyfriend's Back," on lead vox): "I Hear Those Church Bells Ringing."

Freda Payne, "Bring the Boys Home"

I am on the whole a pacifist, but I respect the tremendous sacrifices made by the men and women of our military, and the best way I can express my appreciation for those currently in service is to offer a wish that they return home soon. President-elect Obama, I'll trust the judgment of you and the military leaders to sort out the details, but please, as soon as it's safe, heed the words of Freda Payne* and Bring the Boys Home. Meantime, I thank all our veterans for making what in many cases were the ultimate sacrifices to ensure our liberty here.

* Or, as a friend likes to call her, "she-took-two-aspirins-and-now-she's Freda Payne."

Edwin Starr, "Stop the War Now"

R.I.P. Norman Whitfield, who had a hand in writing and/or producing an astonishing proportion of my favorite R&B songs of the golden era of rock 'n' soul (1966-1975, by my definition). Here's one of his politically charged efforts, and you can decide for yourself whether "Stop the War Now" as a follow-up to the #1 hit "War" was an opportunistic knockoff or a more panicked and desperate cry from someone who feared his message hadn't been sufficiently apprehended the first time around.

And since that message is being forgotten right now in light of our current focuses on U.S. financial meltdown, hurricanes and tornadoes, and presidential back-and-forth (not that we shouldn't be concerned with those things) - STOP THE WAR NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS!

PS: An additional R.I.P. to Jimi Hendrix, gone 38 years ago today. I'll say more about him another day.

Los Pop Tops, "Mamy Blue"

YouTube is quite underrated as a music-discovery tool. Anyone reading this has been sent any number of YouTube links, so you know what it's all about; but when you watch music clips that way, do you often look through the other clips posted by that person and see what their tastes are like or discover more from the artist?

I find an incredible amount of material this way—material from my preferred rock era, 1967-1975. And it was via YouTube that I discovered "Mamy Blue", a #57 hit for a mostly Spanish combo called Los Pop Tops in 1971. (Don't mind the uneven lip-synching in this clip.)

Sometime last year, someone had recommended to me "Oh Lord, Why Lord," a Los Pop Tops song from '68 that had missed the charts here. I checked it out: words beseeching ethnic tolerance, set to Pachelbel's Canon in D (one of my very favorite of all melodies). But it was one of the "Related Videos," "Mamy Blue," that really drew me in.

The song, composed by Frenchman Hubert Giraud, is a mournful ode to a mother left behind and now gone, presumably dead, and in the sobbing rasp of Trinidadian lead singer Phil Trim, it becomes amazingly powerful. "I may be your forgotten son," he begins, "who wandered off at 21 / It's sad to find myself at home /And you, you're not around. / If I could only hold your hand / And say I'm sorry, yes, I am / I'm sure you'd really understand." The second verse tells us how much he cherishes his childhood memories, tells us he regrets not spending time with her, doesn't tell us why he's her "forgotten" son. He's "been through all the walks of life," but he finds no cause for celebration in that. I imagine the untold storyline as being something like Diana Ross and the Supremes' "I'm Livin' in Shame," only without silly details about knives and plates, which I guess makes it something like Imitation of Life, which is all to say it's a story of how Mom raised an elitist ingrate. (See also: "Someday Mother will die and I'll get the money / Mom leans down and says, 'My sentiments exactly, you son of a bitch.' " —TMBG)

But I digress. "Mamy Blue" has been recorded numerous times since its Pop Tops rendition, most versions lacking any real feeling. Stories, who'd just gone to #1 with "Brother Louie," took a rocked-up version to #50 in 1973. I've been thinking that in hindsight, having just pushed America's buttons with a song about a mixed-race relationship, Stories' releasing a song with the title "Mamy Blue" may not have been especially shrewd.

Elton John, "Where to Now, St. Peter?"

I bought the newly reissued Tumbleweed Connection this week. I'd known several of its songs from a lifetime of radio listening, but hearing the album as a whole, I was awed by its tight construction; it might as well have been a concept album. Recurring notions of wild-West Americana are the most obvious thread, but there are also recurring notions of duty, mostly filial.

Filial duty will have to be a topic for another day, though, because my attention's more on "Where to Now, St. Peter?", a post-death conceit that economically asks some important spiritual questions.

"So where to now, St. Peter, if it's true I'm in your hands?" our narrator asks, upon realizing that he's become an ex-he. "I may not be a Christian, but I've done all one man can." For a guy who's spent much of his spiritual life boxing with God, I find Bernie Taupin's lyric here strikes more than a nerve; it strikes the whole damn spine. Taupin's his usual elliptical self here, but his message is clear: The narrator has been a good person, lived a good life; if his only sin is disbelief, is that really a sin? To that I would add: shouldn't that be even more of a testament to his worthiness, since he's acting out of implicit intrinsic righteousness rather than gunning and gearing for some great reward?

Whether we believe in heaven and hell, reincarnation, what have you, most of us contemplate an afterlife of some sort, and many of us (whether we'll admit it or not) rely on it as the hopeful payback for all the indignities and sufferings we endure this time round. But Elton and Bernie's character in WTNSP desires no reward other than clarity as to the new road that lies ahead. That's a more secure kind of faith, something to admire and emulate.

And I've been thinking how much I'd enjoy hearing this song performed as a five-man madrigal.