Nina puts a spell on you ...

My pal Martin has been raving (and raving) about that new Nina Simone (1933-2003) documentary WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? so its got me compiling some favourite Nina tracks - we have liked her since the 1960s, I first had an EP (ask your grand-dad) of hers circa 1965, with those great tracks "I Put A Spell On You" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", and I think "I Loves You Porgy". I loved that early live album of hers NINA AT TOWN HALL, and of course now there are endless compilations. 

We also got her late sixties stuff like "Ain't Got No, I Got Life" when she was wooing the hippie HAIR crowd, but I really preferred her recordings from a decade earlier. We saw one of her last concerts too, one of the most bizarre I have been to, where she stomped on, played some, ignored the audience, and then stomped off, complete with plastic carrier bag. A difficult life and a difficult woman, obviously, with lots of demons, but she when was on form she was dynamic - that voice ... and that piano playing too (like Aretha Franklin, also able to play with soul). Here's a top dozen Nina's, and seek out the documentary:

• I Put A Spell On You
• Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
• Be My Husband
• Sinnerman
• Fine and Mellow
• The Other Woman
• Seeline Woman
• Four Women
• My Baby Just Cares For Me
• Feeling Good
• Wild Is The Wind
• I Want More and More and Then Some 

Top 60 female singer/songwriters ....

Our "Daily Telegraph" compiled a list of the top 60 (that many?) female singer/songwriters and I was pleased to see Joni Mitchell came out on top ....

1: Joni Mitchell. Canadian Roberta Joan Anderson (aka Joni Mitchell) began her career busking in Toronto but went on to become one of the leading figures in folk music in the Sixties and Seventies. For her pure vocals and thoughtful lyrics, which range from socially conscious to deeply confessional, Mitchell is seen as one of the voices of her generation. Her 1971 album BLUE often ranks well on lists of the greatest albums of all time.

The others? In order from Nr 2 onwards:

Kate Bush / Patti Smith / Dolly Parton / Carole King / Kirsty MacColl / Chrissie Hynde / Nina Simone / Adele / Amy Winehouse / Bjork / Janis Joplin / Madonna / 

14: Peggy Lee. Arguably America's first female singer-songwriter, Peggy Lee entered the public consciousness at a time when it was highly unusual for commercial singers to write their own material. Born into a poor North Dakota family in 1920, Lee began her career at a local radio station, where she sang in exchange for food. She would collaborate on original songs with Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones, but is best known for her equally inventive cover-versions. Lee heavily rewrote Little Willie John's hit song, Fever; her lyrics are now more famous than those of the original. Lee later wrote the co-songs for Disney's The Lady and the Tramp. With her blonde hair and outspoken manner, "Miss Peggy" was reportedly the inspiration for The Muppet Show's Miss Piggy.

Stevie Nicks / Taylor Swift / Sandy Denny / Lady Gaga / Barbra Streisand / P J Harvey / Edith Piaf /

22: Joan Armatrading. Born in Saint Kitts in the Caribbean, 64-year-old guitarist and singer Joan Armatrading moved to Birmingham with her family when she was three. She left school at 15 and was sacked from her first job at a tool manufacture for playing her guitar during tea breaks. Armatrading released her first album in 1972, and went on to have hits in the Seventies by blending jazz and folk, and in the Eighties with a more commercial pop sound. She won an Ivor Novello Award for her songwriting in 1996.

Joan Baez / Billie Holliday / Rickie Lee Jones / Loretta Lynn / Debbie Harry / Sinead O'Connor / Kate and Anna McGarrigle / Cyndi Lauper / Carly Simon / Lauryn Hill / 

33: Aretha Franklin. Soul legend Aretha Franklin began her musical career as a gospel singer in church, and was later taken on tour by her preacher father. The Tennessee native became a star in the Sixties singing jazz and Motown standards. Her 1967 re-working of Otis Redding's Respect - which was adopted as an anthem for change by the civil rights movement - gave her a number one in the US in 1967, and she followed this with further hit singles Chain of Fools and Say A Little Prayer. In the Seventies, Franklin began to write more of her own songs, including Call Me and Rock Steady. The 70-year-old became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Patty Griffin / Lucinda Williams / Tori Amos / Siouxsie Sioux / Tracy Chapman / Regina Spektor / Erykah Badu / Bonnie Raitt / K D Lang /Gillian Welch / Emmylou Harris /  

45: Sade. British-Nigerian singer Helen Folasade Adu is better known as Sade, the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award-winning soul, jazz and R&B band of the same name. As the group's chief songwriter, Adu was the driving force behind hit singles Your Love is King and Smooth Operator. The band have sold over 110 million albums worldwide, making Adu one of the most successful British female musicians ever. In 2002, she received an OBE for services to music and dedicated it to "all black women in England".

Roberta Flack / Gretchen Peters / Alicia Keys / Aimee Mann / Dar Williams / Laura Marling / Shania Twain / Ani Difranco / Odetta / Cat Power / Norah Jones / Judee Sill / Beth Orton / KD Tunstall / Sarah McLachlan.

Phew! I know and like most of these of course - ok, there are a few I am not familiar with - but it almost seems a list of 60 female singers, but of course Peggy Lee wrote a lot of songs, and singers like Barbra and Aretha have song-writing credits too.  The only omissions I can think of are Laura Nyro, Janis Ian and Francoise Hardy. Has Annie Lennox written songs? 

The full list can be explored here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/the-60-greatest-female-singer-songwriters-of-all-time/joni-mitchell/

Aretha sings Carole King, again ...

Words are not necessary. 

Joni and Tom ... and Aretha, Dusty and Janis too

I did not realise Joni Mitchell had appeared on our UK "The Tom Jones Show" back in January 1970, but while browsing the revamped Joni website (looking for an update on her health situation) I came across these. She also did some BBC recordings about the same time. I first saw her later that year at the Royal Festival Hall, in November, when she was the reigning hippie princess. Then (as per my other Joni posts) I got to meet her in 1972, and saw her again in 1974 when she was the new jazzy Joni.

Tom of course had them all on his shows - here he is with Janis Joplin, also 1970, her last year - and Dusty Springfield, and also with Aretha Franklin in 1970 Gosh, wouldn't it marvellous to see these again now - and here they are ! Sorry, no Tom and Joni clip.

Sir Tom of course is one of our elder statesmen of musc now, he has been great on the BBC series of "The Voice" adding some necessary gravitas and he is still rocking in his 70s. Way to go,

Aretha's "Nessun Dorma"

Many thanks to Mike in San Francisco for mentioning Aretha Franklin's version of Puccini's area "Nessun Dorma" (from TURANDOT of course).  Despite being a great Aretha fanatic (see my posts on her, at label) I had not heard of it. It was never released here in the UK and was not on any of her albums I knew, included that recent DIVA CLASSICS. Seems it was on a three-track CD single released in the USA, the live recording plus two tracks from her "A Rose Is Still A Rose" album: "Here We Go Again" and "In The Morning".

I duly ordered the cd single but it never turned up, as occasionally happens, but the seller sent a replacement by first class post and it arrived yesterday. I was a bit unsure how Aretha would cope with this, but I needn't have worried - she lets rip and nails it. 'Vincero' indeed! This was in 1998 and she replaced an ailing Pavarotti at very short notice, as detailed in that recent biography on her "Respect" by David Ritz - which I reviewed here, Aretha label.

Now I discover it is also on YouTube! Wish I had known that while I was waiting for the disk to arrive! Enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmXkEhs00lo&list=RDGmXkEhs00lo

Respect: Aretha

What a fascinating unputdownable read RESPECT - The Life of Aretha Franklin  - by David Ritz is. I just finished its 500 pages this morning. As an Aretha fan from back in the '60s when she was a sensation on Atlantic Records, and then discovering her gems on Columbia, and then on to her disco era with Arista in the 80s - its all here, and cements Aretha - warts and all - at the centre of American music and show business. My late best friend Stan, an Aretha fanatic, would have loved this. 

Aretha - the diva's diva - comes across in all her complexity and Ritz certainly knows his subject and her background in gospel, and before they passed, interviewed both her sisters Erma and Carolyn, and brothers Cecil and Vaughn, as well as other close family relations and friends, like James Cleveland, and Etta James and others. Aretha of course was the child prodigy raised in gospel at her famous preacher father's church in Detroit. She was famous at 12 years old as a gospel singer and it was a given she would be making hit records. Columbia didn't quite now what to do with her, but she had some great records there before singing to Atlantic in 1967. The book is not a whitewash, but shows how complex and difficult Aretha could be to her own family (wanting her sisters to stay as her backup singers and not have musical careers of their own) and to those working for her or booking her concerts, as well as her fallings out with various producers like Jerry Wexler, Luther Vandross, Curtis Mayfield and others.

The book is not only a great record of Aretha's career and highs and lows, as well as her personal life (being a mother at 12) and her men, but also a great record of American soul music, taking in as it does Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Ray Charles and more. Ritz was there and saw and knew them all, including several meetings with Lady Soul herself. As the blurb says: "Ritz's intimate and elegant voice steps from behind the veil of the ghostwriter to tell a tale of genius, dysfunction, and blind ambition, describing a world of triumph and tragedy of new mythic proportions. A great read and a really heroic work of biography - honest, loving, no-holds-barred". It is a tale of American triumph as well as tragedy. It also covers that interesting time in the '80s when the record companies were awash with money, as the compact disc took over from vinyl and the fans had to purchase all their favourite records again in the new format ....

The good news is that Aretha is back in her early 70s, with that recent album of Diva covers, a mixed bag. Thankfully I got to see her twice, in her peak years, in concert in London ((Odeon, Hammersmith) in 1968 (left) and when she went afro in 1970 (right), before she stopped flying - which meant she was ignoring those international markets - Europe, Asia, Latin America - where she could have earned fortunes. She continued through the decades, singing at the inaugurations of Presidents Clinton and Obama, and she is still going. 
I may have flirted with other divas like Nancy Wilson, Peggy Lee, Nina Simone, Donna Summer, Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, Dionne Warwick, Cleo Laine, but Aretha is and will always be part of my triumvirate: her, Barbra and Joni Mitchell. Oh, and Joan Armatrading ... My friend Mike in San Francisco has been raving about Aretha's version of "Nessun Dorma" - one I must investigate and add to the collection (I have now ordered it on a CD single, plus a few albums that passed me by: SPARKLE, A WOMAN FALLING OUT OF LOVE, the expanded AMAZING GRACE, etc).. More Aretha at label ...

Christmas treats: for me !

Christmas treats, and its not even Christmas yet and I don't know what Santa is bringing! 
I am engrossed in the new biography of Aretha Franklin, "Respect" by expert David Ritz who certainly knows his soul and r&b, having known and worked with them all. Its a terrific 500 page tome filling us in on everything Aretha!

The Joni Mitchell new 4-cd retrospective in that nice book package, with extensive notes by Joni, and the re-mastered favourites sound great. Nice Christmas references too:

"River" of course is a new Christmas classic and gets covered a lot: "Its coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees, they're putting up reindeer, and singing songs of joy and peace" ..... and that nice reference in "Chinese Cafe": "Christmas is sparkling out on Carol's lawn, this friend of my childhood games has kids almost grown and gone".... and I love how she sings in "Barangrill" (not included here): "The guy at the gas pumps has a lot of soul, he sings "Merry Christmas" for you just like Nat King Cole".

Sophia's book is also a treat for devotees as she reveals a lot about her early Italian films and shares correspondence from Cary Grant and Richard Burton, and comments on a lot of her films, surprisingly dismissing EL CID as a "Superwestern" ....
That new David Hockney documentary has just arrived too - I have had a quick look, it contains moments from earlier BBC documentaries I did not have any more, and also from Hazan's A BIGGER SPLASH, and there is another new Hockney documentary too, covering his recent paintings. 

On the music front, Aretha new "Diva Anthems" cd nicely complements the new book, while Ella and Nelson Riddle is a treat (thanks Jerry), with perfect versions of songs like "I Can't Get Started" and "Georgia On My Mind", reminding one of that lush Nelson Riddle sound; Quincy Jones steps up to the mark too with that fabulous Donna Summer album now re-issued and expanded with great notes (also part of a Donna 6 cd reissue) - this is probably my most played cd just now, great to hear "Love Is In Control", "State of Independence" and/"Lush Life" again - as per my last post on Donna (see label). I am awaiting delivery of FKA Twigs and "LP1" (right) - modern hip hop with a twist. 

Then there is BFI stuff to catch up with: "Sight & Sound" and the January programme with some more Maggie Smith treats .... more at labels!
And the Christmas song? Tom Odell's "Real Love" .... along with Sam Smith ("In The Lonely Hour") and Ed Sheeran ("X") the success of the year. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZLYp-jgx-I

Showpeople: Aretha and her Aretha-aires

I loved that 1993 television concert Aretha Franklin did, where she was backed by her new backing group: The Aretha-aires, comprising of her old pal Smokey Robinson and those Brit guys Elton John and Rod Stewart, the three of them provided a smoking backing combo as Aretha - caught at a good point here, looking and singing good - bounced off them. She, by the way, was introduced by the likes of Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman. 

I recorded this on vhs cassette at the time, but don't know where it is now - but a few clips are on YouTube. She and Elton also did a great version of his "Border Song" .... my late best friend Stanley would love this:

A new biography on Aretha is out too, RESPECT by David Ritz, and should be quite a good read, from the excerpts available on Amazon. It doesn't seem the usual scissors and paste job, but quite insightful and he had several meetings with her. It will be winging its way to me on my return from my next visit to Ireland, next week. Then there is her new album, see Aretha label - seems she is going to continue surprising us in her 70s. As I said before here, we (Stanley and I) saw her in her prime years, 1968 and 1970, here in London, before she stopped flying. 

More music news .... return of the oldies !

80 may be the new 70 as a lot of our senior ladies turn 80 this year: Dames Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins; Sylvia Syms, and Bardot and Loren (as noted below). In the music biz, some seniors, some in their 70s! are back in action, plus the 80 year old Leonard Cohen, with a very well received new album ....

I was surprised to see my all time favourite Aretha back with a new album, singing Diva classics (like "People", "I Will Survive", "At Last", "Nothing Compares To You" and Adele's "Rolling In The Deep") ----- she also appeared on Letterman (its on YouTube) and sang the Adele number (with a rather sad looking Cissie Houston - Whitney's mother - among her backing singers). At 72 she looked fine, but perhaps should have covered her shoulders and upper arms .... 
she also looks over-made up on the album cover. I've pre-ordered the album which is out in a week or two. Ditto Annie Lennox's new one: NOSTALGIA where she goes back to the songs of the '30s and '40s, like: "Georgia On My Mind", "I Put A Spell On You", "Summertime" and "I Cover The Waterfront" - should be interesting. I still listen to the Eurythmics back catalogue and Annie's stunning DIVA album. How long is it since she and Aretha belted out "Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves .." probably 30 years.

I am holding fire on the new Bette Midler one ITS THE GIRLS,  but it may be a must have, as she goes back and re-interprets the great girl groups with her versions of old favourites like: "You Can't Hurry Love", "Too Many Fish In The Sea", "Tell Him", "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon", "Be My Baby", "One Fine Day" etc. It may be a bit too much, but maybe we will like it ...

I am not bothering with Barbra's PARTNERS, as mentioned in last music post, Dolly also has a new one out after wowing Glastonbury this summer,  and I like Smokey's duets ... also mentioned previously. So, nice to see it not only The Rolling Stones who can keep rolling on ....

Dusty time again ...

How we listened to music then - a nice shot of Dusty in 1965, used to promote a new biography on her, recycling all the gossip and myths. 

Britain's greatest pop diva, Dusty Springfield was also the finest white soul singer of her era, a performer of remarkable emotional resonance whose body of work spans the decades and their attendant musical transformations with a consistency and purity unmatched by any of her contemporaries (Lulu, Sandie Shaw, even Mariane Faithfull, or dear old Cilla); while remaining a camp icon of glamorous excess in her towering beehive hairdo and panda-eye black mascara.

I have done several items on  Dusty already, as per label - including seeing her record one of her 1969 tv shows for the BBC, when I was 20, at the old Golders Green Hippodrome. She was in a bad mood that day and was having a diva moment, as she had to re-record her first song. I can still picture her stomping around the stage. 

For when you have a spare hour, this compilation  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCcYTv6Evoc&list=RDoCcYTv6Evoc#t=3074

 of her BBC appearances is worth watching, particularly the later ones, and that last sad final one on the Jools Holland Show. I also like her doing "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" with The Pet Shop Boys at the Royal Albert Hall Brits Awards in 1987 see below - the only time they did it apart from the pop video. In their later shows the Boys used a back projection of Dusty for the number. She remains though for me up there with Joni, Barbra and Aretha, and her "Dusty In Memphis" remains an essential album. 

Song writer Gerry Goffin who died recently, is featured on the album too, as four Goffin-King songs are included:  the wonderful "No Easy Way Down" plus "Don't Forget About Me", "So Much Love" and "I Can't Make It Alone". There will always be so much love for Dusty - if only her last years had been better. 

Top female singers of the last 50 years ...

My 1969 BBC ticket for "The Dusty Show"

There is a lively debate going on at the Datalounge.com gossip site, which I have been contributing to, on the Top 5 female singers of the last 50 years, so those established before then (such as Peggy Lee, Ella, Judy, Lena, Sarah, Billie, Doris etc) are excluded ....

Leading the pack, with my assistance, are these ten: 

Barbra (if only for those first early albums in the early '60s showing how different and stunning she was) and then the stage and screen FUNNY GIRL / Aretha (if only for those great Atlantic years) / Joni (that classic sequence of '70s albums) / Dusty Springfield / Annie Lennox (those great Eurythmics tracks and videos, that solo album DIVA which I practically wore out / Whitney / Dionne / Karen Carpenter / Nina Simone / Donna Summer - and I have been trying to big up Joan Armatrading, but the Americans don't seem to know her ...

Honorable mention: Etta James / Janis Joplin / Laura Nyro / Sade / Carole King (if only for TAPESTRY, another album that became part of one's life) / Carly Simon / Petula Clark / Cleo Laine / Nancy Wilson / Shirley Bassey / Diana Ross / Tina Turner / Roberta Flack / Mary J Blige / Tracy Chapman / Amy Winehouse / Janis Ian / Patsy Cline / Bobbie Gentry, and I would have to add: German diva Billie Ray Martin, Regina Belle, and disco gals like Kelis,  Ultra Nate, Adeva, Rosie Gaines, Joyce Sims, Erikah Badu, Angie Stone, Shara Nelson and Janet Jackson (again if only for THE VELVET ROPE, and those terrific remixes, all the way back to "What have you done for me lately").  Some like Janis or Amy Winehouse only lasted a few years, but their legacy is huge. Sade is an interesting case - not much output, an album and tour once every decade, but we still like and play her a lot, and again, what a style icon. I love how she performs PARADISE slinking around the stage in that electrifying tour dvd.

Funny how today's girls like Beyonce, J-Lo, even Madonna are not seen as great singers - despite some great songs and video moments. I personally don't care for Tina Turner, Whitney. Bassey or Diana Ross much myself, but they have to be included in the mix.  There just does not seem to be a comparable list of male singers ... 

Oops, a few more I like and used to play a lot: K D Lang, Linda Ronstadt, Kiri Te Kanawa, Alicia Keys, Gladys Knight ..... and of course recently there was no getting away from Adele or the reclusive Emile Sande (is there any programme she has not been on?) - this could go on and on.

Aretha: a playlist

Playing Aretha Franklin tracks on shuffle on the iPod has made me realise how much of her output I have and like, ever since those late '60s. I may have been 13 in 1959 (subject of my last post below), but 10 years later I was 23, sharing that large maisonette with 2 friends in South London. Stan introduced me to Aretha in 1967, and I introduced him and Joe to that young Joni Mitchell in '69 .. We had seen Aretha live in London in 1968, and then again in 1970 - when she must have been at her considerable peak, before she stopped flying to Europe. (Stan was agog at her '68 show as he was sitting behind her brother, and was able to eavesdrop on the family). This then, for Stan, is a random selection of my favourites - 20 or more. 

Thats Why I Sing The Blues

Good to me As I Am To You - with Eric Clapton on guitar, from LADY SOUL.

Ain't No Way

A Deeper Love - all those remixes 

Night Time Is The Right Time

Dr Feelgood

Do Right Woman Do Right Man

Drown In My Own Tears

Today I Sing The Blues

Running Out Of Fools

Spirit in the Dark

A Natural Woman

I Never Loved A Man (the way I love you)

Chain of Fools

Don't Play That Song

Border Song - She makes Elton's song sound even better, as she did with The Band's The Weight and The Beatles' Let It Be.

See Saw

Until You Come Back To Me

Share Your Love With Me
Pledging My Love/The Clock

Dark End Of The Street

Sit Down and Cry

The Thrill is Gone

Pulling

Sweet Bitter Love

That LIVE AT THE FILLIMORE album with Ray Charles is a terrific sample of her at her best. 

It was fun too seeing Aretha back with a bang in the disco 80s, with those hits produced by Michael Narada Walden: 

Who's Zooming Who?

Freeway of Love

and those later albums. It would be terrific if, after those health scares and weight problems, she stunned us all with some more terrific songs and vocals. Looking at her discography and album covers there is so much out there, various compilations from those Columbia, Atlantic, Arista years. Those Atlantic recordings at Muscle Shoals, Alabama may be her peak recordings, but those early Captiol years had nuggets as well, even when she was recording showtunes and standards, with songs like "Won't Be Long", "Soulville" and "Until You Were Gone".

There is not that much Aretha on film availabile, apart from those '80s hit videos with Annie Lennox and George Michael; luckily I recorded that 1993 tv show where Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman introduced her, and where Elton, Rod and Smokey played her back-up group "The Aretha-aires" (as per previous post, see Aretha label), and that Divas concert on VH1 which was spine-tingling when Aretha and Carole King sang King's "Natural Woman" with Mariah, Celine, Shania and Gloria Estefan on backing vocals ...her 2 gospel albums are essential as well. 

Aretha, and Barbra and Joni must surely be the top female vocalists of the last 50 years or so, not ignoring Ella or Sarah or Nancy Wilson and of course Dusty Springfield or Joan Armatrading, thats a top 5 then ...

Diva time

I am always pleased to discover a new hip hop diva, and my new favourite is Kelis. OK - Kelis has been around for a decade or so, I liked her "Caught Out There" (the one that goes "I really hate you right now ...") and "Milkshake" was a hit too and Kelis seemed another kooky diva like Macy Gray whom we all went nuts over - but I never really got into Kelis until this week when I saw on MTV a concert of hers from Ibiza, and suddenly I am bananas about Kelis.
This concert brought back all that euphoria about clubbing and having a great time and Kelis is dynamite on stage - like Grace Jones, Adeva, Ultra Nate, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Chaka Khan, Rosie Gaines ("Closer Than Close") and all the others I liked like Joyce Sims ("Come Into My Life", "All in All") or Donna Allen ("Joy and Pain") or Alison Limerick ("Where Love Lives"), Eve Gallagher ("Love Come Down"), Ce Ce Peniston ("Finally"), Gwen Guthrie, Jennifer Holiday ("Hard Time for Lovers") or German diva Billie Ray Martin - all those hits like "Running Around Town", "Your Loving Arms" etc., and listening to and watching Sade or Janet Jackson remains a timeless pleasure, particularly Janet's "Velvet Rope" album and her Joni Mitchell tribute "Got till its gone" ....

Sade's rendering of "Paradise" on her concert dvd is something I can watch over and over too, then there is Angie Stone and D'Angelo ... yes, we are in a neo-soul groove ... old soul too of course, having seen Aretha (twice), and Roberta Flack (I still love "Compared to What" and "Trying Times" on her first album "First Take"),  Nancy Wilson and Otis Redding in their 60s prime.  

Alicia Keys is my other current diva of choice, ever since "Falling" and we also like Jody Watley, Shara Nelson (initially with Massive Attack - that great video for "Unfinished Sympathy", left), Angela Bofill ("Too Tough"), Regina Belle, and now Emile Sande is everywhere ...

I now have Kelis's "Greatest Hits" and most recent album "Flesh Tone" to listen to and put on repeat on the iPod! Groovy ... and now there's Aimee Mann to finally discover ...  Then we have all the club anthems by Groove Armada and A Man Called Adam ("Barefoot in the head", "Duende" album, and their groovy collection from Space, Ibiza), I loved their club nights at Heaven; the deep house Global Underground compilations by disk jockeys like Danny Tenaglia ("Music is the answer"), Ibiza anthems ("Brighter Days" by Dajae, "Sun Rising Up" by Deux) and chillout compilations, and more soul sounds with Soul II Soul and Inner City, 

Dusty & Neil Tennant 1988

and getting "Fired Up" with the Miami Murk/Funky Green Dogs - what a night that was, also at Heaven. Clubland in all its diversity - well from 10 years ago anyway ... Heaven nights in the early '80s is a whole other chapter ...  We don't of course like all divas, some (not naming Mariah, Rihanna, Beyonce and others) leave us cold. Dusty Springfield of course was a diva, and then there is Madonna, well her early to mid-period anyway ... pleased now I got to see Dusty taping one of her 1969 BBC specials at the old Golders Green Theatre, I remember she had to re-do the first song so she was stomping around the stage in a bad mood .... thats a diva!. Her Dusty In Memphis album is essential, as well as her collection of A-sides and B-sides, and her work with the Pet Shop Boys, and I also like that Donna Summer-Quincy Jones album with Donna's dynamic version of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life", a diva anthem indeed. 

Then there is Debbie Harry of Blondie and of course Eurythmics' Annie Lennox, I practically wore out her first solo album, titled - what else? - "Diva". I have not even mentioned Barbra Streisand ... well I saw her on stage in FUNNY GIRL from the front row, when I was all of 20 in 1966. We liked the early Barbra albums and movies - until her A STAR IS BORN when a diva was suddenly A Star Is Boring. 
The '70s of course was a good time for seeing various divas: Peggy Lee at the Royal Albert Hall in 1971, also Dionne Warwick, Petula Clarke, Cleo Laine several times, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, Joan Armatrading and a very bizarre concert by 
Nina Simone. ...whom I always liked, particularly that "Nina At Town Hall" album; Nancy Wilson's live album is enjoyable too, like Nina she also does a killer version of "You Can Have Him" and a hilarious "Ten More Good Years" - as Nina put it: "Give me more and more and then some" ...

Next musical extravaganza: the reissued Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" - the '70s in aspic.

Divas ain't what they used to be ...

An interesting new year afternoon catching up with the 2012 VH1 DIVAS - that annual Diva concert from music channel VH1. This one though leaves one wondering whatever happened to divas. It begins amusingly enough with host Adam Lambert finding his inner diva with help from GLEE's marvellous Nene Leakes. Then there is a mish-mash of dance music tributes by divas who are not well known on this side of the Atlantic, apart from Kelly Rowland and Miley Cyrus. The snippets we see of real diva stars Donna Summer, Whitney Huston, Blondie and Madonna are the best things on offer, apart from Adam in that red get-up.

There is also a pitiful attempt to recreate the best dance track of all time - Deee-Lite's "Groove Is In The Heart" by Natasha Bedingfield and some others, that makes one want to rush and put on the real thing.
Adam though rocked with his versions of David Bowie's "Lets Dance" and bravely took on Madonna's "Ray of Light" in a very odd Kaballah ? style tunic.

Thank goodness I got the dvd of the first Diva concert in 1998 - was it really that long ago ? - headed by Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Carole King, Shania Twain, Gloria Estefan and Mariah Carey - now, thats Divas!  Let's play it again ... The divas headed by Aretha singing Carole's "Natural Woman" ...

 I must dig out an old vhs video cassette recording of a 1993 Aretha TV Special: "ARETHA FRANKLIN & FRIENDS: DUETS" where introductions are by Dustin Hoffman and Robert de Niro, and her back-up singers "The Aretha-aires" are only Elton John, Rod Stewart and Aretha's old pal Smokey Robinson. as they belt out the likes of : "Chain of Fools", Elton's "Border Song", "I Never Loved A Man", "Think", "Since You've Been Gone", "Natural Woman", "This Old Heart of Mine", "People Get Ready", Spirit in the Dark" etc. Its almost as good as seeing Aretha at her peak as my pal Stan and I did in 1968 and 1970 both at Hammersmith Odeon, before she stopped flying to Europe. 

 

My Aretha 1968 and 1970 Concert Programmes

We also saw Otis Redding and the Stax Tour there in 1966, just before they took that flight home ....