40 Year Itch : No More Sleepin' In Bed

Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes : Wake Up Everybody

[Purchase]

    From the most popular R and B album of  Christmas 1975 comes the title cut "Wake Up Everybody", an epic "message" song written by John Whitehead and Gene McFadden and produced by Gamble and Huff. This is the seven and a half minute album version with the prolonged funky jam that rolls on while Teddy Pendergrass calls out preachers, politicians and cheating businessmen. The song may have topped the soul charts for two weeks in early 1976, but I'm not sure the world actually woke up. The lyrics could have been written last week...which may explain why John Legend and friends recorded a cover version five years ago.

Six Degrees of Separation: Parliament to Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes

[buy it]

1. Parliament's 1975 platinum funk album Mothership Connection was the first to feature Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley who had left The JB's, James Brown's backing band.

[buy it]

2. James Brown liked his horn sections. What Brown didn't like was having an opening act mock him on stage. Joe Tex did just that, tossing a blanket over his shoulder and singing "Please, please, please-get me out of this cape!" They had some history. Brown thought Tex swiped his dance moves. Tex knew Brown swiped his wife. When JB shot at his rival in a nightclub, he wound up paying off customers hit by stray bullets with $100 bills. Tex emerged unscathed.

[buy it]

3. Joe Tex released his #2 R and B hit "The Love You Save". You can find it on the Joe Henry produced soundtrack to Jesus' Son released in 1999.

[buy it]

4. The Jesus' Son soundtrack also includes Barbara Mason's " Yes I'm Ready" a  #5 pop #2 R and B hit from 1965. The lush strings are an early example of what would become the Philly Soul sound.

[buy it]

5. Those strings were played by the house band of Philly's Sigma Sound recording studio. They played on hits by The O'Jays, The Spinners, The Stylistics and many more...including their own #1 hit in 1974, as MFSB ( Mother Father Sister Brother, not Masters of Funk Soul and Blues). The song,"TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" became the Soul Train theme.
The man on the top right corner is drummer Earl Young.

[buy it]

6. Before he founded The Trammps ( of "Disco Inferno" fame) , Young is credited with inventing the disco style of rock drumming with his use of the Hi Hat cymbal, first heard in 1973 on the Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes' #7 hit , "The Love I Lost".