ROCKY’S PANDEMIC PLAYLIST, PART 7
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE
James Brown, 1956: Brown is said to have taken the song “Please Please Please” from three words the late great Little Richard wrote for him on a napkin. Brown first recorded it as a single with his Famous Flames in 1956, but it took a few years to take hold. Its most famous performance may be at the 1964 T.A.M.I. TV show when the Rolling Stones had the unfortunate task of performing after the Flames. The song marks the birth of soul, funk and everything that followed.
WHAT’D I SAY
Ray Charles, 1959: Charles laid the foundation for soul music in 1954 with his “I Got a Woman,” but his sound didn’t break through to the mainstream until 1959 with “What’d I Say.” It spiked old-school gospel with a heavy dose of sexual innuendo, forcing a good number of radio stations to ban it from playlists. It still managed to produce a crossover Top 10 pop hit. There is no soul without Ray Charles’s R&B. The song still stands up against anything on the charts today.
I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER
Sly and the Family Stone, 1969: Paired with “Dance to the Music,” this is the song that got half a million Woodstock hippies funked up and on their feet at 4 a.m. This multiracial San Francisco band injected psychedelia into soul. With four lead singers and a rapid-fire horn section, Sly and the Family Stone was an unrelenting powerhouse. Although George Clinton’s Parliament/ Funkadelic bands would later own the funk crown, nothing could beat Sly and the Family Stone at its peak.
OH WHAT A FEELING
Crowbar, 1971: Crowbar managed to blend together what they had learned from James Brown, Ronnie Hawkins, Bo Diddley, John Lennon and Sly Stone into a joyous made-in-Canada boogie. Cooked up in Ancaster at the band’s Bad Manors farmhouse (with some nods to Paddy Greene’s tavern), the song was a milestone Canadian Content hit in the ’70s and remains the true anthem of Canadian rock and roll. Cheers to the late Kelly Jay and the recently passed Rheal Lanthier.
INTRO/SWEET JANE
Lou Reed, 1973: This remarkable live performance, released on Reed’s “Rock and Roll Animal” LP would be a definite outlier in this list if it wasn’t for the bass work of Canada’s Prakash John. He joined the band a few days earlier from Parliament/Funkadelic and added some much needed funk to Reed’s protopunk. Check out his work on the intro with guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner. Prakash would join Alice Cooper before forming R&B powerhouse The Lincolns.