40 Year Itch : Wives In Law

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   Inspired by Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Millie Jackson's Caught Up , released in September of 1974, is a brilliant, soulful concept album about a love triangle between a married man, his wife, and his mistress. 

 Side One begins with an 11-minute three song suite, featuring her two-time Grammy nominated single, Luther Ingram's  "(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right ". That classic, sung from the point of view of a mistress who can't let her married man go, segues into "The Rap", a six minute spoke-word "rap" in which she explains herself:

But the sweetest thing about the whole situation is the fact that when you go to the laundromat

you don't have to wash nobody's funky drawers but you're own. And I like it like that. 

I want to keep my situation just the way it is, and to make sure it stays just like that,

 when my man come over two or three times a week to give me my piece 

I set the clock so he can get up and go home on time. Don't want him to be late.

     

Only you can hear in her voice that she never wants the man to leave her.

   On Side Two, with tunes like "It's All Over But the Shouting" and Bobby Womack's "I'm Through Trying to Prove My Love To You",  Millie sings from the point of the view of the wronged wife. The album ends with Bobby Goldsboro's "Summer (The First Time)", which seems to provide the mistress's back story:

You were 31. I was 17. 

I knew nothing about love. You knew everything

Recorded in Miami and at Muscle Shoals Sound with the Swampers, Caught Up is one of the definitive soul albums of the mid-70's. 

Some 1973 Albums We Missed

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Tainted by scatalogical songs about pissing , farting and Pamela's popo, Serge Gainsbourg's follow up to Histoire de Melody Nelson is saved by the title cut and his devastating goodbye song, "Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais" which translates into English as "I've Come to Tell You I'm Leaving" and features the real life sobbing of actress Jane Birkin.

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Recorded with CSN and Y's touring band as well as members of Neil Young's band ( and Neil himself on piano credited as Joe Yankee), Graham Nash's Wild Tales is darker material than his fans might expect. But it rocks as fine as anything he's ever done. One of the year's great surprises for me!

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Vibe master Roy Ayers knocked out one of the best blaxploitation soundtracks of all time on this 1973 effort, highlighted by the funky "Coffy is the Color".

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With the hit title track, which was also featured on the soundtrack to Cleopatra Jones, Millie Jackson hits her stride. She gets super funky on "Hypocrisy". She'd follow It Hurts So Good with Caught Up, which will be in the running for my fave soul album of 1974

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Late of Lindisfarne, Alan Hull released his first solo album, the very tasteful Pipedream, in 1973. File between Duncan Browne and John Martyn.

[Purchase Henry Cow Leg End]

Henry Cow set out to be avant rock and anti commercial. Signed to Virgin, Fred Frith and company  challenge listeners with dissonance,  moments of beauty and  on "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King", a political statement. Robert Wyatt would soon proclaim Henry Cow his favorite group.

[Out of Print]

Is Lightnin' Rod's Hustlers Convention the birth of rap? With Kool and the Gang providing back tracking,  Last Poets member Jalal "Lightnin' Rod" Uridin ( Alafia Pudim) rhymes the story of two hustlers, Sport and Spoon, in the drug and crime infested inner city streets.

Six Degrees: Garland Jeffreys To Drive By Truckers

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1. Before Garland Jeffreys recorded the anthemic "Wild In The Streets" in 1973 (it would finally appear on the 1977 album Ghost Writer), he played guitar on John Cale's first solo album, 1969's Vintage Violence.

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2. The bass player on this album which Cale himself thought was too simplistic was Harvey Brooks who also played on Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, The Doors' Soft Parade and arranged Karen Dalton's 1971 album In My Own Time.

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3. Among the songs Dalton recorded was this George Jones/Leon Payne number "Take Me" which Jones had recorded on his 1966 album Love Bug.

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4. Though his duets with wife Tammy Wynette are better remembered, Jones also recorded duets with Melba Montgomery, who was raised in Florence Alabama ( the same hometown as Sam Phillips and W.C. Handy) , one of the Quad Cities along with Muscle Shoals.

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5. Muscle Shoals Sound Studio is home to some notable recordings including The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses", much of  Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Street Survivors and Millie Jackson's Caught Up, recorded in 1974, with the studio house band known as The Swampers.

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6. David Hood, the bass player for The Swampers, recorded with Traffic, Cat Stevens and Bob Seger. His son Patterson is the frontman for Drive By Truckers. This song , from the 2011 album Go Go Boots, was written by Eddie Hinton who also wrote Dusty Springfield's "Breakfast in Bed".

Patterson Hood