No ordinary Joe
Rare ’70s Philly soul gems get wider release. By Geoff Brown.
Nat Turner Rebellion
★★★★
Laugh To Keep From Crying PHILLY GROOVE. CD/DL/LP album, which are combined on
The album was released in 2019, notably on the Vinyl Me Please club, but now it has a new track and is more widely available.
The Rebellion started when Jefferson, a drummer touring with The Sweet Inspirations, was stranded in Philadelphia in the late ’60s with a badly infected foot. While recovering, he decided to strike out on his own and went back to Petersburg to form the group, despite his mother’s strong misgivings about the name. The South, after all, was still the South, and even now prejudices and injustices persist.
The group – Jefferson, Ron Harper, Bill Spratley and Jefferson’s brother Major Harris – were quickly signed to Stan Watson’s Philly Groove label, then hot with the sweet soul of
The Delfonics. The Rebellion struck an altogether different Philly groove.
Songwriter Jefferson had two main sources of inspiration – the rhythmic drive and vocal variety and assertion of Sly And the Family Stone and the more sophisticated harmonies of The Temptations, though with Norman Whitfield’s funk-psych pulsing behind them. Thus, Fat Back introduces instruments in an effective Dance To The Music fashion, Right On We’re Back is another excellent Family Stone clone while Tribute To A Slave speaks to the group’s namesake. (Jefferson identified so strongly he took to wearing a noose.) Driving, Temptations-like funk is the engine behind Laugh To Keep From Crying, Plastic People, Love Peace & Understanding and Fruit Of The Land, and Can’t Go On Living, written by Gamble & Huff collaborators Norman Harris and Alan Felder, was a 1971 single that features a very David Ruffin-style vocal from Major Harris.
Of their ballads, Jefferson’s song McBride’s Daughter has a strong lyric and melody, Never Too Late is good Philly soul, but perhaps not distinctive enough from the pack. 1972’s attractive coming-of-age single Ruby Lee was audibly their biggest push at a commercial breakthrough, while its B-side, You Are My Sun Sign, a bright uptempo Temptations groove, is new to the LP, replacing Going In Circles.
Nat Turner Rebellion folded in the early ’70s. Jefferson became a successful songwriter for The Detroit Spinners (One Of A Kind (Love Affair), Mighty Love) and The O’Jays (Brandy), while Harris joined The Delfonics and later had a big solo hit with 1975’s Love Won’t Let Me Wait, a US R&B Number 1 and Top 5 pop. Joseph Jefferson died in July 2020, the last survivor of Nat Turner’s Rebellion.
★★★★ Mountains MATADOR.
LP
Ex-Hex and Wild Flag bandleader’s bleak, eccentric 2000 solo debut. REELING from bereavement and in the midst of a deep depression, Mary Timony drew a line beneath the Breeders-esque pop of her recently defunct group Helium for this overlooked treasure. Holed up in a Boston loft, she swapped lopsided indie rock for stark, unusual orchestration (including viola, vibraphone and brass) and an unexpected turn towards medievalist folksong. The arch organ threnodies of 1542, the strings and harmonies of the eerie The Hour Glass and the brittle agonies of The Bell suggest Timony was no longer focused on the MTV crossover success Helium had briefly enjoyed. But while Mountains is a solitary, inwards-facing and occasionally traumatic collection, this introspection still delivered dark magic: see The Fox And Hound’s elliptical ruminations, and the bristling catharsis of Valley Of 1,000 Perfumes, which Timony has revisited with a full orchestra for this reissue.