In January and February 1971, Aretha travelled to Miami to record at Criterion Studios with the house band The Dixie Flyers. The resultant recordings formed the basis of the 'Young, Gifted, and Black' album, as well as providing some non-album singles, b-sides, out-takes, and some new songs which were later added onto a greatest hits compilation. This re-imagining is a compilation of the best of those album tracks, b-sides and out-takes to make a record that could have eclipsed 'Young, Gifted, And Black' had it been released instead. A longer and funkier version of 'Rock Steady' starts the disc, followed by a stunning new version of 'You're All I Need to Get By' that was tucked away as a non-album b-side to 'Spanish Harlem'. This song and 'Day Dreamer' were both hit singles, and so deserve their place on the album, as do 'I Need A Strong Man' and 'Lean On Me', which were consigned to the vaults until resurrected for rarities compilations, and other tracks recorded in New York later in the year also remained unreleased at the time.
In 1972, Aretha went back to her gospel roots and recorded her most successful album, 'Amazing Grace', live at a church service. It became the best selling gospel album ever made, but for pure soul and pop numbers this album takes some beating.
Track listing
01 Rock Steady
02 Day Dreaming
03 You're All I Need To Get By
04 All The King's Horses
05 I've Been Loving You Too Long
06 Spanish Harlem
07 I Need A Strong Man (The To-To Song)
08 First Snow In Kokomo
09 Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time
10 Lean On Me
I've managed to find an archive of The Album Fixer's site (thanks Stenn) and so this is the first of half a dozen or so of his old posts.
I had hit the Wayback Machine at archive.org to look up his old posts, which ones are you resurrecting?
ReplyDeleteSo far I've done Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Street Survivors', Jimi Hendrix's 'Band Of Gypsys studio album and 'Electric Church', Meat Loaf's 'Renegade Angel', Uncle Tupelo's 'Nothing Lasts', and Smashing Pumpkins' 'Plume', and I'm only up to October 2015.
DeleteStrangely enough, and I am not all that big of a Prince fan, if it was possible, the AF redux of Purple Rain [https://web.archive.org/web/20180126210116/http://albumfixer.blogspot.com/2016/05/prince-revolution-purple-rain.html] would interest me, considering that is probably *everyone's* entry, and the only other CD I own is the Black Album, when it was legit released, though I did almost buy it as a bootleg years before but lost out LOL
DeleteSimilarly, I'm not that much of a Prince fan, but I did make up the 'Purple Rain' soundtrack from the AF site and it is really good. Coincidentally I've just hit the Prince section in my trawl through the AF site so that must be karma telling me to post it.
DeleteI had reason to revisit PR for the first time in ages back in 2004, when the Jay-Z Black Album remix wave hit and one of my favorites was Purple Album [https://www.discogs.com/Jay-Z-Purple-Album/release/2051917] and it was amazing just how flexible the material was to being adapted for backing Jay's verses. Again. not a fan, but could definitely appreciate how ahead of his time he was in certain areas, especially in retaining the rights to all of his music published and unpublished at a time when that was not something most artists had the guts or financial capacity to pursue.
DeleteAnd he truly was the living Venn diagram connecting Funkadelic, James Brown, Isaac Hayes, commercialism, and artistic independence while never succumbing to any one.
Look forward to it when you post it. :)
Strangely, all of the sudden that particular archived post has disappeared from the search o.O
DeleteYou've reminded me of an album that deserves a post, which is Dangermouse's 'The Grey Album' mash-up of Jay-Z and The Beatles. Now fourteen years old and still a favourite.
DeleteIt was my, and most people's, entry to the Jay-Z/BA remix phenomenon, since up to that point, most remixers either used their own production or the usual suspects per sampling for beats and such. Grey Album, Dangermouse took a chance, and only because it was free to distribute and he only benefitted financially from it due to his exposure was to become a producer of interest with the Gnarls Barkley project and whatever Broken Bells is LOL did the Apple not fall on him for it...
DeleteBut, I actually find Grey Album, much like the original production on BA, weak in comparison to a number that followed, but that's just my take, of course LOL
I actually cannot find my original burned CD-R of it, so I would be interested, even if in my nearly 30 CD BA remix collection, it is more of an outlier.
And the PR post is still available, but not as a snapshotted post, it still appears on that particular archived page of the AF if you scroll down.
DeleteOkay, WM must not have archived some of those...was this a private archive or is it something one could access, if only for alt-historical purposes (i.e. SonicLoveNoize's Alt-Beatles 'Living In The Material World', once available but now pulled for IP reasons, or at least that's the official story)?
ReplyDeleteIntellectual Property, not Internet Provider LOL
DeleteI was sent this link and you can access all the posts by clicking on the year and month, but 'older posts' doesn't work. https://web.archive.org/web/20180126205853/http://albumfixer.blogspot.com:80/2014/08/
DeleteWhy did you include "Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?" That's on her "Young, Gifted and Black" album already.
ReplyDelete"This re-imagining is a compilation of the best of those album tracks, b-sides and out-takes to make a record that could have eclipsed 'Young, Gifted, And Black' *had it been released instead.*"
DeleteTechnically, this would have replaced YG&B, so BYM, in alt-history, is legitimate for the album. Your mileage may vary. :)
R.I.P. Aretha
ReplyDeleteAhhh... thank you for posting. I wish I could DL this, but ZippyShare is the worst. (Sorry! I don't mean to be ungrateful, because your blog is the BOMB! But ZippyShare has so much malware and junk... ugh)
ReplyDeleteBut thank you anyway!
Alternate link added.
DeletePJ, thank you so much... and my apologies, I could have just more politely asked you to post a second link. Sorry... I think this quarantine period has me off in my communication skills a bit, seriously :)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much - downloading now!