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Every track has a story. Classic songs from the rock music, pop, reggae & soul archive and the stories behind them with Simon Tesler, founder and former editor of 1980s music, media and pop culture magazine BLITZ.
I'm Simon Tesler, back with you for another hour of great music on the theme of BODIES. This is The Jacksons.
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Shake Your Body Down To The Ground, from The Jacksons' 1978 album Destiny, which marked something of a rebirth for a group that had until then seemed to have lost some of its sparkle. They signed to Motown in 1969, when oldest brother Jackie was 18 and youngest Michael just 11. The first three years were the golden period for what was then The Jackson 5, with singles including ABC, I Want You Back, I'll Be There and Michael's solo successes Ben and Rockin' Robin.
Like every other artist on Motown all their music was written and produced by the label's production department, in this case a four man team led by label founder Berry Gordy and dubbed The Corporation. Gordy was reluctant to assign credit to the three other members of The Corporation for feat of creating another team of backroom superstars like Holland Dozier Holland, who got famous and then quit the label.
But in 1973 the other three members of The Corporation jumped ship anyway and The Jackson 5's hits began to dry up. When their original seven-year record deal came up for review, most of the brothers and their father and manager Joe Jackson decided they would rather look for another label that would pay them more than the tight-fisted 2.8% of royalties they were getting from Motown.
Rival label Epic offered them the services of star writer-producer team Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the hit makers behind The O'Jays, Billy Paul and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. Oh, and also a generous 20% of royalties. Most of the group jumped at that chance, but not middle brother Jermaine who had married Berry Gordy's daughter and so was more or less obliged to stay at Motown. So did the group's name: The Jackson Five was a trademark owned by Motown so they signed to Epic as The Jacksons, with Randy, the youngest of the six Jackson brothers stepping in to replace Jermaine.
But the first couple of years at Epic were even less successful than the final period at Motown, despite the support of Gamble & Huff. After two disappointing albums, the brothers finally took full creative control of their own career, writing and producing all the tracks on what became their 13th album Destiny. Oh, with one exception. Lead single Blame It On The Boogie was written by a British songwriter who by a bizarre coincidence also happened to be called Michael - or more commonly Mick - Jackson.
Yet it was already the beginning of the end. Already by now established as the main vocalist as well as the visual focus of The Jacksons, Michael was also proving himself as a fine songwriter. Three of the songs on Destiny including Shake Your Body were written mainly by him, assisted by younger brother Randy. Now he was keen to spread his wings so as soon as recording on Destiny was finished, Michael began working with Epic and new producer Quincy Jones on another solo album. This would mark the beginning of a whole new chapter in Michael Jackson's career. The album was of course Off The Wall, but it also served as the writing on the wall for The Jacksons as a separate entity. Michael was persuaded to reunite with his brothers for two further albums during the 1980s, but Destiny remains for my money the best by far of the 15 albums released by the band of brothers.
Now as it happens we're going to be staying in a funky groove for the rest of the show, so there will be further chances to shake your body down to the ground over the course of the hour. First though we're going slow the tempo just a touch. In a few minutes, Groove Armada, also featuring the blues and soul legend Richie Havens. But first, a glorious track from Herbie Hancock's 1980 album Monster. This is Stars In Your Eyes.
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Two lovely soulful tracks, separated by two decades of music history. Stars In Your Eyes was the lead single from Herbie Hancock's Monster album, with vocals from his regular collaborator in that period, the session singer Gavin Christopher.
But the vocalist on Hands Of Time, from Groove Armada's 2002 album Lovebox, was a soul and blues legend in his own right, Richie Havens, who had been kicking around artistic fringe of New York's Greenwich Village since the 1950s. "I had first gone there," he said, "during the beatnik days of the 1950s to perform poetry, then I drew portraits for two years and stayed up all night listening to folk music in the clubs. It took a while before I thought of picking up a guitar." During the 60s though he developed a reputation as a powerful and soulful folk singer, and his performance in the opening slot at Woodstock in 1969 made him a star, especially after the release of the movie of that iconic concert. He continued performing throughout the following decades right up until 2010, when he retired as a result of ill health.
When he died in 2013, Groove Armada's Tom Findlay wrote a moving account of their work with him in the 2000s for The Guardian.
"I first heard Richie Havens in a field outside Cambridge when I was 16. I was at a rave and a DJ dropped Havens' classic version of Back to My Roots. It was one of those world-stops-still moments: the rave piano, the funk of it all, and this massive voice that drove the track on.
In 2001, my music partner Andy Cato and I were holed up in a cottage in Banbury writing our album Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub). Richie was in New York. Somehow, we tracked him down through a fan website and on a whim sent him the backing track to a song that would become Little By Little. We never expected a response, but two weeks later a digital audio tape arrived. I'll never forget the sound of his voice in the studio that day, its richness and its depth. From that day on, we formed a bond."
Hands Of Time was recorded the following year for the Lovebox album, and Havens played gigs with Groove Armada several times over the following years including at Glastonbury in 2002.
"His anecdotes spoke to his place in musical history," wrote Findlay. "He once told me about the time he and Nina Simone were on a tour bus together, when they heard JFK was shot. But like all great men, Richie had an ability to make people feel relaxed around him. It didn't matter who he met, he always did this sort of self-deprecating bow. I think it was his way of showing love and respect, showing that everybody mattered... I remember him meeting our mums backstage (they were fans from 1968): they'd be in bits, and he always looked genuinely moved by their strength of feeling."
Another beautiful rich and deep voice now. Grandma's Hands was originally written by the soul great Bill Withers about his own grandmother, Lula Galloway, and it is a wonderful and touching song, but the original version is simple and spare and short, only two minutes long. The song has been covered many times, but perhaps never better than by Gil Scott Heron in this wonderful semi-orchestral version from his 1981 album Reflections. Grandma's Hands by Gil Scott Heron.
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Gorgeous. Just as Bill Withers grandmother had been a keen influence on his life and upbringing, so had Scott-Heron's grandmother Lillie Scott. Scott-Heron's parents were the New York based opera singer Bobbie Scott and the Jamaican-born sportsman Gil Heron, who had established a successful career playing football -- soccer if you must -- in Canada. But when Scott-Heron was just three, his father was signed by the Scottish football club Celtic, becoming one of the very first professional black footballers in Britain. They separated and little toddler Gil was sent away to live with his maternal grandmother in Jackson, Tennessee. He didn't meet his father again for another 23 years.
Until her death when he was just 12 his grandmother was the bedrock of his early life. Though she had no formal education herself, he said later, she was a God-fearing woman with high ideals, strong principles, and most of all, a belief in the power of learning. And she scrapped, scrimped, scrambled, scrunched, scrubbed, scratched, scuffled, slaved, and saved until somehow all four of her own children had graduated from college with honors." And she instilled that same love of learning in her little grandson.
She was also the biggest influence on his musical development. She bought him his first piano from the local junkman for $8, and encouraged him to play gospel and blues songs for meetings of her sewing circle. "I began to listen to the radio," he told the BBC in 2010, "and try to pick out what they were playing by ear. There were a lot of blues progressions that I was able to give some life to on the piano, there, and I enjoyed it very much." In later years he would decline the honorifics heaped on him by fans and journalists for being the Godfather of Rap of whatever, and say "I'm just a piano player from Tennessee. That's what I was really trying to do: play some piano and write some songs."
Time now to get those feet working again. In a few minutes, the glorious Chic and My Feet Keep Dancing. But first, an infectious track from the Danish pop duo Junior Senior, who enjoyed a big dance hit across Europe in 2002 with this track. This is Move Your Feet.
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Now I warned you right at the top of the show that there might be a little bit of objectification coming up. So three tracks now that skirt just a little close to the boundaries of political correctness, but are still fabulously entertaining. There's no body shaming here, just a pure celebration of shape and size whether it's big or small, from Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, followed by Louis Prima and finally The Heptones. Just enjoy.
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Well I think we can agree that they don't write 'em like that any more. Three fantastic tracks that celebrate a the different shapes that make up the world.
Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five with I Like 'Em Fat Like That from 1946, followed by Louis Prima with Sam Butera & The Witnesses and Closer To The Bone from 1957 and Fattie Fattie by The Heptones, released in 1967.
To close the show this week, a fantastic stomper from the soul and R&B singer Syl Johnson, who became a minor star in the mid to late 1960s for his uncompromising songs about the challenges facing America's black community. His 1967 single Different Strokes did much to popularise the phrase Different Strokes for Different Folks which later lent its name to a long-running and ground-breaking TV sitcom about a wealthy white American family who adopt and raise two black kids alongside their own daughter. Johnson's follow-up Is It Because I'm Black became an anthem of the era with its proud and defiant affirmation of black identity, and was widely covered by other artists. By the 1980s, though, Johnson was happy to go for slightly easier topics. I'm going to play the title track from his 1982 album.
It's actually an update of a song originally recorded in the 1940s by Etta Johnson, Nellie Lutcher and many others, and addressed lustfully by a woman to a man. The song was Fine Brown Frame : "Oh he's got a fine brown frame / I wonder what could be his name / He looks good to me and all I can see / is his fine brown frame". So just proof as if it were needed that objectification isn't always from the male point of view.
All Syl Johnson did was reverse the gender of the singer and the subject, and add a little Ms to the title. This is Ms Fine Brown Frame.