One of my favourite 1960s soul records is the widely ignored, wonderfully slow version Freddie Scott cut of Ray Charles' ‘I Got A Woman' - but that hasn't been uploaded onto YouTube. Nor has Scott's version of Dylan's ‘I Shall Be Released', nor his version of Van Morrison's ‘My Brown-Eyed Girl' from the Vanthology album. But this is his version of another of Van's Bang sessions songs, ‘He Ain't Give You None'. (Scott, too, worked with Bang's Bert Berns.)
Freddie Scott was born in 1933 and died five years ago, aged 74.
I like that. Don't like Van, who is the epitome of the mid-Atlantic identity crisis, but Freddie and his girls sound fresh even now, and isn't he a wonderfully expressive singer? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteMichael
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of recent personal favourites, would be interested in your opinion of this song. Its by the the late great Rowland S. Howard, who, as well as being the guitarist in a number of Nick Cave's band, also made two fine solo albums.
This song is from the first of them, 'Teenage Snuff Film' (a terrible title, I know). For my money, Howard was a far better songwriter and a much more interesting character than the enormously over-rated Nick Cave:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqMuavjwb6M
Hm. I didn't like it. All I hear is art-school 80s posing and a voice that's sometimes flat despite the application of Joe Meek levels of echo. That's a first-play response. But unfortunately I'm just too busy to persevere. And I've only heard odd bits of Nick Cave on Radio 6 Music; he sounds, on the face of it, more interesting. But thanks for the link & the suggestion anyway.
ReplyDeleteQuite some time ago now a Bob Dylan came out.
ReplyDeleteI'm just saying.....
Unfortunately, anonymous, Freddie Scott died in 2007. His last big hit was a Dylan song, but there'll be no covers from the new album...
ReplyDeleteMichael
ReplyDeleteCan't say I know too much about 80s art rock. My own tastes tend to run more to folk (people like Joe Heaney, Bert Jansch, Martin Carthy, John Renbourn, Planxty (or Planxton, as Bob called them), country (artists like George Jones, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, the two John's, Prine & Hiatt), and early to 1970s soul (Sam Cook, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Otis), etc....
Closest I come to Art Rock would be a band like Joy Division, I think, but its never been a genre that has particularly appealed to me. Also quite liked some early Roxy Music (from about 'Virginia Plane' to 'Love is the Drug') before Ferry's terminal decline into musak...
Got interested in Rowland S. Howard after seeing a very good documentary about him here in Australia. I see Cave as far more of a product of 'art rock' - in his theatricality & general pretentiousness..
But as my Uncle Freddie used to say 'de gustibus non est disputandum'