![]() ![]() Anyone who’s listened to Quincy’s cut a few times can both pinpoint just where Evelyn lifted his loops and appreciate how he was able to make his own mood piece from it. “Nights Interlude” starts off his debut album just like “Summer In The City” started off You Got It Bad Girl, but to deliberately reworked intent: the source material’s not drastically cut up or distorted, but the rearrangement of the loops upends the original slow-burn dynamic into something a little more ruminative and meditative. It was a marked change from the first couple singles NOW released on Warp, but not so much from the demos and home-taping experimental mixes he made as a mid ’80s teenager, some of which worked their way into A Word Of Science in ’91. As Nightmares On Wax, he got ahead of the trip-hop/downtempo curve pretty quickly, the sound of a scene of hip-hoppers turned ravers pivoting halfway back to hip-hop. George Evelyn really dug Quincy’s “Summer In The City” cover, or at least I’m guessing he did given how often he flipped it. The First Sample: Nightmares On Wax, “Nights Interlude” (from A Word of Science, Warp, 1991) Simpson’s vocal is still one of her greatest performances, even accounting for her later work with her husband/co-songwriter Nick Ashford, and the fact that the lyrics are reduced to the bridge and the beat-the-heat night-time chorus - complete with a fine twist on the line “go out and find a girl” (“ain’t it nice just to be a girl?”) - leaves the arrangement to do all the work of evoking a shadowless heat haze radiating off brick and concrete. But then there’s the strings - the breeze that cuts through the humidity - and the ensemble’s almost bossa-flavored run-up to the lead vocal from Valerie Simpson, whose first “oooh-eee-yeah” alone is enough to feel like an ice cube pressed to your sun-scorched forehead. That famous intertwined organ riff and electric piano vamp at the beginning, supplied by French Hammond player Eddy Louiss and soundtrack maestro Dave Grusin respectively, would be enough to sustain just about any soul-jazz cut’s backbone. ![]() ![]() It works in the end in part because he’s got a lot of amazing people on board - joined-at-the-hip harmonica player “Toots” Thielmans, fusion legends Bob James and George Duke playing electric piano (on “Manteca” and “You’ve Got It Bad Girl” respectively), and an incognito Billy Preston/Bill Withers/Stevie Wonder chorus credited as “Three Beautiful Brothers” on “Superstition.”īut there’s nothing wrong with peaking early, and if putting his Lovin’ Spoonful cover at the beginning of the album makes for a pretty mellow start, it’s also immediately arresting. It’s tribute-heavy thanks to an Aretha Franklin/Roberta Flack medley and two Stevie Wonder hit-song covers, alongside a rangy shapeshifting soul-jazz reconstruction of Dizzy Gillespie’s proto-Afro-Cuban “Manteca.” But it also sneaks in a couple of his contemporaneous themes - including the “Love Theme” from Sam Peckinpah’s Steve McQueen/Ali McGraw thriller The Getaway and the immortal “The Streetbeater,” or as the jacket gracelessly refers to it, “‘Sanford & Son Theme’ – NBC-TV (The Streetbeater).” So all at once it’s a testament to the versatility Jones had developed in some two decades-plus of writing, composing, and arranging, and something of an off-kilter portfolio. Quincy’s ’73 LP You’ve Got It Bad Girl is a mighty strange record when it comes down to it. Valerie Simpson, “Summer In The City” (from You’ve Got It Bad Girl, A&M, 1973) It’s all down to an arrangement and some musical performances that were taken out of season as a sample source, it’s an all-weather favorite. Well, if any song can bypass that, it’s Quincy Jones’ cover of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s hit “Summer In The City.” While both versions were both released in their titular season - the original was a #1 smash through much of August 1966, and an edit of Jones’ version came out as a B-side in July of 1973 - it’s Quincy’s version that feels more like a year-round pleasure, and not just because it kicked off an LP that hit store shelves in October. How can you even hear a summer song nowadays without feeling some kind of knot in your stomach? “Hot Girl Summer” notwithstanding, we’re in the kind of dog days that have made a once-romanticized season feel apocalyptic. Hot enough to make the phrase Hotter Than July seem like an impossibility, hot enough to rewire the entire idea of what “normal” heat is, hot enough to send Greta Thunberg on an intercontinental mission to get Anyone to do Anything about this godforsaken state of things. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |