It's New to Me: The Man Who Invented Soul by Sam Cooke (2000)

Illustration by Andre Helle from Fables de la Fontaine, 1924

You know who your real friends are because they are the ones who buy you box sets. My special lady friend bought me The Man Who Invented Soul recently, and I've been digesting its four discs slowly over a couple weeks. I'm not a natural admirer of great voices - if you sing on key, I'll listen, and if you have a voice I find interesting, I pay attention. But I was blown away by the voice of Sam Cooke in a way that I wasn't entirely comfortable with at first - his voices is supernaturally smooth, nuanced, and beautiful, matched only, maybe, by Smokey Robinson. I was also surprised at Cooke's songwriting skills beyond the big hits he wrote that are now standards - everyone knows "Chain Gang", "Twistin' the Night Away", "Cupid", and "Another Saturday Night", but there was much more to Cooke's songwriting. He's almost a match for Robinson in that category, putting them more or less even as the two geniuses who shaped the world of soul music.

I have nothing insightful or critical to say about Cooke, but I do have some comments on how The Man Who Invented Soul is arranged. I don't think there's any doubt that it is the essential document of Cooke's career, even though it doesn't cover his early gospel work with the Soul Stirrers or his last albums with ABKCO before his untimely death in 1964 at the age of 33. But the set hits all the highlights from the meaty middle portion of his career, presenting his best singles and album cuts in amazingly pristine audio - recordings from 1957 sound like they could have been made last week.

The first disc starts with his first big pop hit, "You Send Me", and covers the stuff Cooke recorded for Keen Records between '57 and '60. It's the shortest disc in the set with only 21 tracks, but these early recordings are impressive in how contemporary they sound for pre-1960 pop. The second half of the disc covers several tracks from 1959's Tribute to the Lady, Cooke's LP of Billie Holiday covers. These songs sag a little in comparison to the "singles" tracks, particularly Cooke's excellent compositions, but the disc ends strong with the awesome Cooke original "(What a) Wonderful World" (not the Armstrong one, the "I don't know much about history..." one).

This disc sets the pattern that is followed by discs two and three of The Man Who Invented Soul - each disc starts with a great string of pop singles before devoting several tracks to one of his covers-heavy "standards" LPs and then ending with a couple more great singles. The second disc presents Cooke's first singles for RCA, including "Chain Gang" and "Cupid" - the latter song has always been a favorite of mine, but repeated listens to Cooke's definitive version make it an "all-time Top 10" song for me. The ten tracks from My Kind of Blues on disc two are okay, but some of his blues covers are ho-hum. This disc also makes the classic box-set mistake of putting alternate versions of songs next to each other, which reduces the disc's listenability - I like "Sad Mood" and "Tenderness", but I don't need to listen to two almost-identical versions in a row. Disc Three covers more of Cooke's pop material, hitting highlight singles and tracks from the Twistin' the Night Away LP, but also devotes seven tracks to the less accessible Mr. Soul album.

Disc four of The Man Who Invented Soul is perhaps the most essential document in the set, composed of the Night Beat and Live at the Harlem Square Club LPs in their entirety. I have a pet peeve about mixing studio tracks and live tracks, so I can't listen to this disc straight through, but I love the two halves of it. Night Beat, in particular, is the definitive document of Cooke's amazing vocal ability, as the minimal arrangements and great song choices give him ample room to showcase his singing.

All you have to do is buy a Soul Stirrers collection and a copy of Cooke's last LP (Ain't That) Good News to supplement The Man Who Invented Soul, and you have the bulk of Cooke's amazing work. You don't have everything, of course - I noticed that this box set excludes some of Cooke's less successful singles like "You Understand Me", which is a really good song. Oddly, the set does include the b-side from the "You Understand Me" single, a reworking of Jacques Brel's French-language hit "Quand On N'a Que L'Amour" titled "I Belong to Your Heart" - this is a great song as well and could have been an a-side. The opening reveals an old-fashioned-sounding backing track, but that becomes irrelevant as soon as Cooke starts singing. The song immediately becomes removed from time, and Cooke delivers what I consider one of his best vocal performances.

"I Belong to Your Heart" by Sam Cooke

Probabilistic Jukebox: "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire" by the Small Faces

Photo titled "Wild Flowers" by Mark Anthony, 1857

"Oh, cool! A song from Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake! There's a lot to say about a song from that album - classic Brit-psych epic, shaped like a tobacco tin, basis for the Dukes of the Stratosphear record, etc." These were my initial thoughts when this song popped up on the Jukebox. Then I realized that "Up the Wooden Hills from Bedfordshire" isn't even on that album - it just sounds like it belongs there. It's actually on the Small Faces' previous album, their second self-titled record and first for Immediate Records in 1967. With its organ-based sound and freakbeat drumming, "Up the Wooden Hills from Bedfordshire" is one of the more psych-rock tracks on Small Faces, and the lyric about "slipping into sleep" is classic Brit-psych fodder as well. Interestingly, the song is the only one on Small Faces that was written by keyboardist Ian McLagan (Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane wrote most of the Small Faces' songs). It's cool that McLagan was keyed in on the direction the band was headed with their sound, which flowered in full on Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake the following year.

"Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire" by the Small Faces

It's New to Me: Smokey and his Sister by Smokey and his Sister (1967)

Lobby card for Zane Grey's The Wanderer of the Wasteland, 1924

"Now that's one lost album that should have stayed lost." That's a line I hear a lot lately, probably because of the proliferation of boutique reissue labels and the increased availability of digital releases. It's a line of reasoning that bugs me, though - what would be the point in wanting something to be unavailable? Take Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's solo album Pacific Ocean Blue - I hear people saying that it should have remained unreleased. Really? It's that bad? So bad that you'd rather deprive everyone else of getting to hear it just to save you the disappointment of inflated expectations? I like "lost" albums - not just for the mystique (although I admit that that's part of the appeal), but because they are usually very personal albums that never got released because of their lack of broad appeal. I will admit, however, that every so often they get canned because they are plain sucky.

Take Smokey and his Sister, for example. I'm calling it a 1967 release because that's when it was recorded, but, apart from two 7" singles, the tracks of this album weren't released until 2007. And it's an album that could make an easy target for the "shoulda stayed unreleased" criticism - a super-twee album of baroque folk-pop made by two kids from Tennessee who moved to New York to make the big time as musicians. After getting a minor hit with their first single, "Creators of Rain", Smokey and Vicki Mims recorded an album of tracks for Columbia, but the execs at the label refused to release the LP - they went on to make a couple records for Warner Brothers, but they never matched the weird appeal of their first songs. A couple years ago, Sundazed Music released the Smokey and his Sister album to satisfy the curiosity of record collectors who had found and loved the "Creators of Rain" single.

The album is oddly appealing to me for some of the reasons I gave above. Vicki Mims has a folky alto voice perfect for harmonizing, and Smokey needs the support for his wafer-thin, whispery tenor. They sing like siblings, with a natural ease and intimacy that's created by their soft vocal style, and well-placed orchestral embellishments give the songs some much-needed "oomph". Cellist George Ricci is one of the best supporting players, adding emotive touches that never overwhelm the delicate compositions. Smokey's songs came from a very personal place as well, with lyrics about love, loss, and the forces of nature. Highlights on the record include the gypsy-folk of "A Simple Cameo" and the sprightly "Come and Be Mine", but the two sides of the "Creators of Rain" single are the Mims' best songs. The b-side "In a Dream of Silent Seas (You Can Find Me)" is the most hushed song of them all, with Smokey's voice often submerged under the waves of violin. As for "Creators of Rain", it's a nature allegory in the familiar acoustic folk style, but its instantly-familiar duet melody matches the vulnerable vocals of Smokey and Vicki perfectly - it's a song that, on its own merits, justifies the "finding" of this lost album.

"Creators of Rain" by Smokey and his Sister

In Stores Now: Revelation Skirts by the Capstan Shafts

Illustration by Virginia Sterrett from Arabian Nights, 1928

The Capstan Shafts, the home-recording project of prolific Vermont songwriter Dean Wells, continues to follow the progression of Guided By Voices (the band that inspired Wells to make music in the first place). After years of solo home recordings, Wells has made the jump into the studio with Revelation Skirts - the ironic things is who is playing the Ric Ocasek role for the Capstan Shafts' Do the Collapse. It's Matt LeMay, the frontman of the unfortunately-defunct spazz-pop band Get Him Eat Him, who not only produced but also played many of the instruments on Revelation Skirts. LeMay wrote famously scathing reviews of Guided By Voices' post-lo-fi records, including a 4.7/10 review of Do the Collapse in which he said, "Pollard used to write minute-long Beatles songs; now he's taken to penning three-minute Ramones tunes. Throughout the album, the added production value seems to hide rather than accentuate." Maybe LeMay sees this as his chance to correct the flaws he saw in GBV's "big break" moment.

As someone who has purchased the entire 350+ songs in the Capstan Shafts discography, Revelation Skirts is a hard album to hear with fresh ears. Not because the sound is the same - it's totally different, with LeMay beefing up Wells' wispy jangle-pop tunes, turning them into Mass Romantic-style arena-ready power-pop. The issue is in the familiarity of the material - the songs of Revelation Skirts are almost entirely "stitched" together from older Capstan Shafts material. It's a smart idea, and Wells does a great job of pulling pieces from his earliest EPs (going all the way back to 2004's The Great Reset Button of Life) and his more recent home recordings like 2007's A Brace for Hephaestus, while avoiding obvious choices from his better-known LPs.

These new stitched-together songs are ideal for new listeners, but they can be jarring for someone who (for instance) immediately recognizes the opening track, "Fairweather Triumphalist" as a Frankenstein-hybrid of old favorites "Drags of Grind" and "The Ice Caps of Mars Are Just Copying Ours". The production choices are smart overall, if the sound is a little in-your-face, reminiscent of the sharp new-wave edges on the Get Him Eat Him records. A couple of the songs get a full "GHEH" makeover - it works on "Cruel Streak Andes", but "Let Your Head Get Wrong" strays a little too far from the Capstan Shafts sound for my taste.

Elsewhere on Revelation Skirts, you get some REM acoustic jangle ("From Revelation Skirts"), New Pornographers power-pop ("Successfully Into You") and plenty of GBV influence ("Versus the Sad Cold Eventually" and "Heart Your Eat Out"). The second half of the record has a particularly great string of songs anchored by the perfect singles "Quiet Wars" and "Your Wasted Isa Talent Here", as well as a melancholy mini-epic called "Versus the World Hater". This may be one of the best records I've heard this year, but I could give a lot to hear a Capstan Shafts record in this style composed of all new hooks. I envy the music fans who will be able to hear Revelation Skirts without any familiarity with the material - I imagine it would be a condensed version of the six-month ecstasy I experienced when I was accumulating the Capstan Shafts records. The constant barrage of hooks, the nimble wordplay, and Wells' creaky-but-elastic faux-Brit singing are everything a fan of indie rock could ask for.

EDITOR'S NOTE: My glowing praise for this record is in no way related to the fact that the front cover of Revelation Skirts is (coincidentally?) an image I used on this site for a Young Fresh Fellows review last year.

"Your Wasted Is a Talent Here" by the Capstan Shafts

Title Fight: "Nothing At All"

Advertising card titled "American Family" by James S. Kirk & Co., c. 1900

Welcome to an "All Twee All the Time" edition of Title Fight. In one corner we have Brighton, UK's Brighter, and in the other we have the Shins of Portland, OR (formerly of Albuquerque). Both of these tracks are rarities of sorts - Brighter's "Nothing At All" is from a set of four songs recorded by the band in June of 1990, just a couple months before they assembled their only big release, the Laurel mini-LP. I'm not sure why these songs were never released by the band (until Matinee Records put together the Out to Sea compilation) - they're as good as anything the band recorded. I'm guessing they were supposed to go on a single that ended up being scuppered (as the English say). This track's good points: a nice keyboard part under the standard twee-pop guitar jangle, plenty of tambourine, and a nice line in the chorus, "I think I'm on the shelf again." The song's weakness is definitely in the incredibly flimsy-sounding lead vocal.

The Shins' "Nothing At All" was a b-side to their "Phantom Limb" single, and it's a solid track that would have strengthened the underwhelming Wincing the Night Away album. The song's got some great synth riffs and an incredibly catchy sing-song melody, and the arrangement steadily adds elements as it goes, including handclaps, which are always nice. The downside to this song is that it sounds like it was recorded by James Mercer without any help from his fellow Shins. This wouldn't be a problem except that it brings to mind how Mercer unceremoniously dropped his old Albuquerque friends from the band last year - I have lots of fond memories of seeing that lineup in their early days, going all the way back to their opening slot on Modest Mouse's 2000 tour.

I couldn't live with myself if I gave Mercer the victory, even though I like that song a lot, so I'm giving the win to the one with the out-of-tune vocals. Yay!

Winner: BRIGHTER

"Nothing At All" by Brighter

"Nothing At All" by the Shins