Get Ready for "Summer of Soul"
Checking out the then-current records from performers at the Harlem Cultural Festival
If you’re planning to see Summer Of Soul – the documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Roots – here’s a listening list designed to provide a bit of context, in the form of links to the albums that were current for many of the headliners. (It’s not a playlist because — hey! — these artists were very much in the album business.)
A large number of artists who appeared at HCF, which was held on six Sundays in the busy festival summer of 1969, either had recent albums out or were basking in the glow of works from the recent past. Music culture moved at a different pace then; an album could gather advocates slowly, over months or years, and then linger on through grueling saturation-level touring.
And what albums they were.
There’s Nina Simone’s contemplative solo work Nina Simone and Piano, which contains her heart-stopping rendition of “I Get Along Without You Very Well.”
There are a few World Culture Classics – Stand! the breakthrough fourth effort from Sly and the Family Stone, had been released in May 1969. Its singles – the title track, “Everyday People” and so on and so forth (sorry!) -- were inescapable by the band’s late-June appearance.
And there are other big hits: The vocal pop group The Fifth Dimension was riding high with The Age of Aquarius, the album that gave us not only the Hair medley but the definitive and still-luminous version of Laura Nyro’s “Wedding Bell Blues.”
Stevie Wonder, who headlined the July 20 Harlem Cultural Festival bill, was still working within the Motown hitmaking machine in 1969; his My Cherie Amour situates the incandescent title song (and another original, “Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday”) within a diverse program of covers.
With help from legendary bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin (and, inevitably, the orchestral sweetening added later), Wonder remakes “At Last” as a feisty soul-revue shout and delivers a wondrously lyrical reading of “The Shadow of Your Smile” made complete by a flat-out brilliant harmonica solo.
Covers were a coin of the realm at the time: Nina Simone’s other release in 1969 was To Love Somebody, a set of fussily arranged folk and pop songs including Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” and Bob Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.”
The Staple Singers’ studio effort We’ll Get Over from ’69 included a contemporaneous cover of Stone’s “Everyday People” and a string-shrouded version of Joe South’s hit “Games People Play.”
Even the tireless gospel singer Mahalia Jackson strayed into pop waters on one of her two albums released in 1969: What The World Needs Now finds her singing the Burt Bacharach/Hal David tune like it was written for her, and doing the same with a striking rendition of “Abraham, Martin and John.”
(Jackson’s other release from this year, Sings the Gospel Right Out Of the Church, is a crisp, no-nonsense production more typical of her studio offerings of the time. In other words, it’s essential listening.)
Cal Tjader, the vibraphone wizard, was also thinking Bacharach that summer: His then-current Sounds Out Burt Bacharach features smart, wonderfully inventive instrumental treatments of the hits and some lesser-known works.
In Harlem, Tjader was on a bill with two percussion legend bandleaders: Mongo Santamaria and Ray Barretto. Some critics say that Santamaria was a bit past his Latin-soul peak by 1969, but his studio works, notably Stone Soul, argue otherwise, showing a band capable of sustaining and developing an authoritative groove.
Barretto, meanwhile, was on fire, in the midst of a five-album run that celebrated and rapidly expanded the fundamentals of New York Latin music. This run began with 1968’s Acid and Hard Hands, continued the following year with Together and Head Sounds, and reached an apex with 1970’s Barretto Power.
Some records from Harlem Cultural Festival performers are notable career markers: David Ruffin was touring away from the Temptation for the first time, launching his solo career with the simmering My Whole World Ended. (Later in 1969, he released a somewhat dimmer followup, Feeling Good.)
And these days, the then-current work from Herbie Mann, the jazz flute player and world music pioneer, is almost more notable for its personnel than its content: Memphis Underground featured vibraphonist Roy Ayers and guitarists Larry Coryell and Sonny Sharrock, all of whom made significant creative contributions to the music of the 1970s and beyond.
One more title to check out: B.B. King’s Completely Well. It’s a fairly stock electric blues date, with the usual done-me-wrong narratives underscored by lethal guitar asides. It would have been forgotten long ago except for this: It contains the still-chilling studio version of King’s timeless “The Thrill Is Gone.”
Exploring this way, via a narrow slice from a single year in music, you almost can’t help comparing that moment with the present. The artists who converged on Harlem over six Sundays in the summer of 1969 were not thinking about legacy; they were simply working. Festival culture was new – for that matter, the entire apparatus that now supports the creative work of recording artists was still under construction. There wasn’t such a fixed idea of what an artist had to do to be heard.
More significantly, the art itself was much more of an open playground – there was experimentation going on, and a receptivity to new ideas that was shared by performers and their audiences. You can sense that openness, it’s part of the DNA of many of those records.
One wonders: If you took a parallel snapshot of the records made by the performers at Coachella or the Pitchfork Festival, what would the takeaway be? Would we appreciate the genius in the less-hyped talents? Or would it take 50 years for that genius to fully register?
