Date: 2009
Release: STRUT
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Of all the conversations I had with my then-fiancé, the most important one in my mind involved Christmas. We were raised in two different faiths, though neither of us are particularly religious as adults. But I had to be sure. Religion I can get by without, but the tradition of dead trees in the house and songs about reindeer–that’s important.

“Sure,” he said, “we can have a Hanukkah bush.”

“You’re not getting it. It’s a Christmas tree,” I replied. “And the music, I have to listen to the music.”

Fortunately my powers of persuasion are strong, and so every year we get our tree from the Boy Scouts up the street and put on the Vince Guaraldi or the Bing Crosby or the Frank Sinatra Christmas records until we can’t take it anymore. Last year’s discovery of the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s Christmas album infused some fresh music, but the cheese-ridden holiday selection remains appalling. No, I do NOT want to hear Andrea Bocelli or Christina Aguilera sing holiday classics. And don’t get me started on the “Very Special Christmas” series.

So when the good people at Strut sent along In the Christmas Groove: Stone Cold Soul From Santa’s Basement, I was cautiously optimistic at best. Compilations, especially of the holiday variety, often fall into the trap of including at least one weird or outrageous track, almost as if the producer wants to prove his credibility–”look at this crazy shit I found that you didn’t!” Would Christmas Groove be filled with obnoxious, brassy pseudo-funky versions of “Jingle Bells”? Is there such a thing as a good, soulful, holiday album?

Yes Musthear, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as soul, drum beats, and bass grooves exist. And so this disc is going into heavy holiday rotation. How could it not, with songs like “Santa’s Got a Bag of Soul” and “Getting Down for Xmas”? (Both, incidentally, are even better than their titles suggest.) No weird-ass novelty songs; no celebrity nonsense. Just solid grooves to get you through the season.

Previews and more are at http://www.inthechristmasgroove.com

Date: 2009
Release: STRUT
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If the name sounds familiar, it may be because Astatke was heavily featured on the Ethiopiques album series (Volume IV is always on heavy rotation during the summer months here at musthear.com HQ). The third record in Strut’s “Inspiration Information” studio collaboration series features a pairing between one of Africa’s great bandleaders, Mulatu Astatke, with the British-based Heliocentrics collective.

Fortunately, this is one “old meets new” project that truly captures the sound of mutual respect. One of Ethiopia’s foremost musical ambassadors, Astatke (he was the first African student at Berklee College of Music) helped create a particular Ethio-jazz sound that flourished during the “Swinging Addis” era of the late ‘60s. No slouches themselves, The Heliocentrics have become one of the UK’s most prominent collectives of musicians, inspired by everyone from Sun Ra and James Brown to David Axelrod.

Here’s a digital promo of album via Strut’s site.

http://www.inspiration-information-3.com/

You can also download a free podcast featuring Astatke discussing the record here.

Players:

• Mulatu Astatke – Piano
• Malcolm Catto – Drums and Piano
• Jake Ferguson – bass and Thai guitar
• Mike Burnham – Modular Synth and Effects
• Jack Yglesias – Flutes, Percussion and Santur
• Adrian Owusu – Guitars, Oud, and Percussion
• James Arben – Clarinet, Tenor and Baritone Sax
• Ray Carless – Alto, Tenor and Baritone Sax
• Max Weissenfeldt – Vibes and Percussion

Date: July 1973 ( recording)
Release: Blue Thumb #BTS62
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Born and raised in the hell of South African apartheid, Hugh Masekela triumphed over oppression by wielding what Fela Kuti referred to as the weapon of the future–music. The young Masekela was first introduced to the trumpet (his future weapon) by anti-apartheid activist Father Trevor Huddleston. In a few short years, Masekela had developed into a raw but powerful player. Beginning in the mid-’50s, he was one of the most sought after musicians in all of Africa, partnering up with such luminaries as pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand) and singer Miriam Makeba. Finding solidarity and a spirit of resistance in their music, Masekela and his contemporaries took inspiration from America’s more politically outspoken black artists, particularly Miles Davis and Paul Robeson.

American jazz was looked upon as a very high African art. We were living an urban life, and our only role models were African Americans, and their experiences as we understood them from films and records.

Irrepressibly talented, Masekela knew that no amount of foreign inspiration could help him to overcome the obstacles facing a black man in his native country. As his star rose, he strained against the shackles.

Our music was always a basic political threat. We were all relegated to a third class existence, but we excelled in music, and our talent was one thing they couldn’t take away. We were blocked a lot, by the white musicians’ union, and we hardly ever got paid, but it was all done out of love…When I was 19, I had already peaked in South Africa, but there wasn’t much to ‘peak up to’.

At the urging of Makeba and the sponsorship of Harry Belafonte, Masekela left his homeland and went into exile. He enrolled at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music in 1960, with Belafonte picking up the tab and buying him a new flugelhorn. For the sensational young African musician, New York opened up to him a whole new world of possibilities.

The excellence of people like Miles Davis and Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan, that could only be achieved in the States. And by the time I got my passport, Sharpeville and the uprising were in full flow, and I knew that with my temperament, I would have soon been killed, imprisoned or forced into exile anyway.

In New York of the early and mid-’60s, Masekela was celebrated and befriended by the giants of jazz, who were drawn to the unfiltered sounds of Mother Africa flowing through his trumpet. African-American musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Cannonball Adderley were busy incorporating African concepts into their music, while their young African protégé was struggling to develop the technical virtuosity needed to play American be-bop and hard-bop. As he polished up on his chops, Masekela’s playing began drifting away from its African roots. But no matter how hard he tried to keep up, Hugh was no Miles Davis. In his autobiography, Miles recall some sage advice he gave Masekela:

Every time I saw him I told him to just keep on doing his own thing rather than trying to play what we were playing over here. After a while I think he started listening to me, because his playing got better.

As the ’60s wore on, Masekela began to move with the times. He updated his image by playing trumpet on the Byrds hit “So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star” and performing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. The next year he hit it big on his own with “Grazing In The Grass,” which went to #1 in both the pop and R&B charts. Riding on a waning wave of popular success, he returned home to Africa in 1970, joining Makeba for a tour of Guinea. It was there that he first met Nigerian Afrobeat king Fela Kuti and the Ghanian band Hedzoleh Soundz. Kuti was setting Africa (and soon the world) on fire with his James Brown influenced brand of Nigerian jazz-funk. Kuti’s large ensemble of musicians plunked down thick chunks of interlocking rhythms over which his saxophone (and his stable of female dancers) could endlessly groove. Like the pre-New York Masekela, Kuti’s playing was incredibly soulful but technically limited.

Having overcome his own technical limitations, Masekela brought to the table a certain level of musicianship that was previously missing from Afrobeat. He felt incredibly recharged being back in Africa, ready to reconquer the continent and take the music higher. Shedding his adopted American style, he plunged deep into the Afrobeat. He hooked up with the Hedzoleh Soundz, an extremely talented band known for blending the ancient rhythmic traditions of their native Ghana with American jazz and Latin music. For Masekela it was a perfect fit, and his playing never sounded more organic, reflecting the joy of finally being able to express every bit of his musical genius through his African soul. “I found a certain vitality in Afrobeat. Playing with the band (Hedzoleh Soundz) was like being on a big fat cloud. You couldn’t fall off.”

Recorded in Lagos, Nigeria in 1973, Introducing Hedzoleh Soundz represents the culmination of Masekela’s career-long efforts to fuse the improvisational drive of jazz with the ageless rhythms of Africa. No real equivalent of this record exists anywhere. It is one of the most perfectly realized excursions by a notable jazz musician into an authentic form of African music. And no other indigenous Afrobeat or Afro-jazz-funk album surpasses the musicianship and creative energy of this one. Masekela’s trumpet rides upon a roiling sea of African rhythms, awash with ideas and emotion. The music draws you in so completely that the need to flip the record feels like a rude awakening.

The hallmark of a great album is that it kicks off with an opening track so compelling that it forces all those within earshot to shut-up and listen. “Languta” not only accomplishes that, but actually overrides all voluntary muscle control, causing the listener to spontaneously break into dance. At the same time, a dumb, blissed-out smile spreads uncontrollably across the face as one is exposed to the volatile tribal rhythms of the Hedzoleh Soundz. A rash of goose bumps rolls across the skin in reaction to Masekela’s blistering trumpet runs and belted out African vocals. The mind struggles to steady itself against the fast swirling waves of echo-effected trumpet that brings this possessed song to its Afrodelic climax. Not likely to be confused with background music, this song heralds the record’s journey into the dark heart of the funk.

But with the darkness comes the light. Deeper into the album, “Nye Tamo Ame” dances like a tropical ray of sunshine upon the soul. You’d be hard pressed to find any music that feels this good. I don’t speak a word of Zulu or Ghanian, but I know in my heart that Masekela and the Hedzoleh Soundz are singing about something sweet, spreading a musical message of love that bridges the language barrier. Smile, this is not just music for the feet.

More exceptionally powerful songs follow, thick with bass and percussion, hypnotizing minds and shredding time to ribbons. Back where he started, Masekela revelled in the joy of making African music, forgetting the past ghetto pain, the obligatory displays of technical prowess, the commercial pressures–liberated in the exuberance of the moment. “Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow,” pronounced the P-Funk prophet George Clinton in 1970. That same year Hugh Masekela left Nixon’s America to embark on a spiritual homecoming, a soul expanding African journey that resulted in his Introducing Hedzoleh Soundz. Ahhhh…those were the days.

Date: 1971-1972
Release: BGP #107
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In 1971-1972, a handful of long-haired brothers representing Sounds of Unity and Love asked the world two simple questions: “What Is IT?” and “Can You Feel IT?” Miles Davis provided the perfect answer in his autobiography, which begins with an authoritative command to “LISTEN!” Duke Ellington had a deep understanding of what IT is, insisting that “IT Don’t Mean A Thing, If IT Ain’t Got That Swing.” And James Brown let everybody feel IT when he proclaimed, “Say IT Louder, I’m Black And I’m Proud.” While IT may have also been the sinister brain in Madeline L’Engle’s science-fiction masterpiece, A Wrinkle In Time, in the hands of S.O.U.L., IT was just that.

And if, by some sad miracle, you still can’t feel what IT is after listening to these two S.O.U.L.. offerings, then you should turn for help to psychologist Carl Jung’s classic, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul. For the lyrics of S.O.U.L..’s self-titled song tell it like it is, when bassist and vocalist Lee Lovett belts out, “You can’t fake it / If you want to make it/ You gotta have soul / S-O-U-L, what’s that spell!” This song is basically a musical re-enactment of the scene from the Blues Brothers, when Belushi and Aykroyd suddenly feel the spirit in the ecstatic black gospel church of Reverend James Brown.

In many ways the spirit of James Brown presides over the funky grooves of S.O.U.L..’s first album, 1971′s What Is It? Although short in length, this album is a heavy, soul-drenched, seven course feast of raw funk power, guaranteed to blow your mind without expanding your waistline. In Europe, where S.O.U.L.. enjoys a major cult following, the jazz-funk instrumental “Burning Spear” remains in heavy rotation on the radio and in the clubs. Featuring a heart-stopping drum and flute break, “Burning Spear” is the band’s go for broke stab at CTI-style early ’70s fusion. While he may not have the chops of a first-rate player, flautist Gus Hawkins reveals on “Burning Spear” that he’s certainly got the feeling. And that, in a nutshell, is what makes the music of S.O.U.L.. so rewarding.

These guys were not brilliant songwriters or musicians, but on those counts they didn’t seem to care. They had a contagious energy that couldn’t be stopped, and they clearly enjoyed expressing themselves through music. While they never scored a major hit-single, their soulful impulses were always crowd-pleasing. In 1970, they won a battle of the bands contest sponsored by the May Company department store in Cleveland, Ohio, along with local radio station WHK and Musicor Records. This feat garnered them $1,000 and a recording contract with Musicor. The band went into the studio and recorded What Is It?, which surprisingly entered Billboard’s Top 40 on the Soul Album chart. Four of the album’s seven tracks are covers, ranging from Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s “Express Yourself” to Herbie Mann’s “Memphis Underground.”

Never sounding too derivative, the selection of songs is varied enough to highlight the band’s versatility. On their second album, Can You Feel It?, the sound is a lot more refined, but never slickly polished. Covers give way to outstanding originals. S.O.U.L.. had matured as a band, and yes, you can feel it. Newcomer Bernard (Beloyd) Taylor’s electric guitar moves forward in the mix, growling fluidly with a tone and style similar to that of Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel. The vocal harmonies and arrangements take inspiration from the later sounds of the Temptations and Spinners. The songwriting is strong and thoughtful, particularly on such message-heavy tracks as “Do What Ever You Want To Do” “Peace Of Mind,” and “Love, Peace And Power.”

The album kicks off strong with the inspired title track and nicely wraps itself up with the lush flute instrumental, “Sleeping Beauty.” All in all, this is a more finely crafted album, showcasing the band at the height of their soul powers. More successful than What Is It?, the album remained on the soul charts for five months. After that, S.O.U.L.. released a few more records before finally splitting up. As is the case for much of America’s greatest music, S.O.U.L.. continues to be neglected domestically while its following grows ever stronger overseas. I call on my fellow Americans to do the right thing–get IT!

Date: 1970 (original release)
Release: Stang #1005
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Introducing the Whatnauts is the kind of hard-to-find album that makes you pee in your pants when you uncover a copy withering away at some Goodwill, yard sale, or flea market. Scavenging for their recordings is what you had to do until the late ‘90s when no fewer than three CDs of the Whatnauts’ music finally hit the streets. Obscure beyond reason, the Whatnauts were comprised of Garnett Jones, Billy Herndo, Gerald “Chunky” Pinckney, and a guy identified only as Ray, who disappeared after this album. They were masterful purveyors of heartache-soul. They were also producer George Kerr’s pet project. A short list of Kerr’s previous credits includes: the O’Jays’ (“Look Over Your Shoulder” and “I’m So Glad I Found You”), the Moments (“All I Have” and “Lucky Me”) and Linda Jones’s “Hypnotized.” He later produced the Skull Snaps’ acclaimed album on GSF Records.

Introducing the Whatnauts features the Baltimoreans’ first four singles (from 1969 to 1971) plus three other tracks, all recorded on Sylvia and Joe Robinson’s Stang label. This is wrist-slitting, throat-cutting, misery-loves-company music. The crawling “I’ll Erase Away Your Pain” (#14 R&B/1971) is the centerpiece, with lyrics like “Little girl, please stop your crying / Cause I’ll erase away your pain.”

Breaks in the pain come with “Message From a Blackman,” (their debut single on All Platinum/Stang’s subsidiary A&I Records) with its accompanying B-side “Dance To the Music,” and “Souling With the Whatnauts,” a frolicking instrumental. Those songs had many, who never saw the Whatnauts’ perform, believing that they were strictly a funk band. Radio DJ’s in the ’70s frequently used “Souling”—the B-side of their Stang debut “Please Make the Love Go Away,”—for bumper music.

But the LP’s main theme is pain, pain and more pain. Garnett wails like he’s being tortured on “What’s Left To Give (After Giving It All)”; you can’t help but empathize with him as he sob-sings Wesaline Kerr’s heartbreaking lyrics. As pitifully poignant is the stark, wistful “I Just Can’t Lose Your Love.” And “She’s Gone to Another” is the mother of pain; the 2:11 tear-jerker floats precariously on a gloomy rhythm bed topped by morose harmonies and a wretched lead vocal—it’s probably so short because Garnett broke down in the studio (if he didn’t, he sure sounds like he did). Songs like this make Introducing the Whatnauts a must hear for falsetto lovers and smooth harmony aficionados.

Since they didn’t write their own songs, studio skills and a hot live act were essential in getting others to craft material for them. Michael Watson (guitar), Curtis McTeer (bass) and Donald McCoy (drums) buoyed a sizzling Whatnauts’s band that was more advanced than All Platinum’s original house band. George Kerr used them in the studio on the Whatnauts’ and his own recordings (remember ’3 Minutes 2 Hey Girl”); which is why the Whatnauts’ recordings are more polished than early tracks of their label mates, the Moments.

Of their three albums (and 10 singles) on Stang Records from 1970 to 1974, Introducing the Whatnauts is the creamiest. All three albums plus six bonus tracks, two versions of their number 25 R&B hit with the Moments, “Girls” (English and French), and a 1982 single “Help Is On the Way” that sold 90,000 copies are now available on The Definitive Whatnauts Collection on Deep Beats Records. For smaller doses of their unique heartfelt soul check out either of their two Collectables Records’s CDs: Message From a Blackman or I’ll Erase Your Pain.

Date: Aug 16, 1971
Release: Prestige 10035
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As a teenage Jimi Hendrix fanatic, I discovered What It Is by sheer luck. Although typical of the early ‘70s Prestige look, the album cover caught my pre-jaundiced eye with its angular shot of Jones wailing on his huge guitar, a look of pure pleasure on his face. I figured, hey, this guy rocks(!)…and Hendrix liked jazz…and its from that same time period…and…uh…the guy’s got a cool name…. So I bought the damn thing. Lucky me. Little did I know that this small purchase would help spark an expensive life-long obsession to seek out all equally great but obscure musical gems (and later, to turn that obsession into a profit-free website). A milestone in my musical self-education, I had really no idea that jazz could sound quite like this.

Here was a record I could (and did) play for my high-school friends, who in spite of their rigid rock tastes, couldn’t help but be moved by the Boogaloo. From the deep-soul groove of “Ain’t No Sunshine” to the funk-quake of the title track, this album was sinking its hooks into impressionable ears. Just like the S.O.U.L. album What Is It, “Boogaloo” Joe Jones’ What It Is IS a funky miracle anchored by the hard-hitting drumming Bernard “Pretty” Purdie and the spirited-sax of the once tasteful Grover Washington Jr., and of course, the aggressively soulful guitar leads of Jones.

A hearty Grant Green-ish mix of early-‘70s pop covers, low-down & dirty blues, and raw-funk jams, this classic album goes a long way towards explaining the cult following Boogaloo enjoys among DJs and collectors. What ever happened to this guy? He recorded his final album in 1975, and a couple years later dropped off the radar. Prestige has reissued this What It Is along with an earlier date, No Way, on Legends of Acid Jazz: “Boogaloo” Joe Jones, Vol. 2. Buy his music while you can and help bring the Boogaloo back. And, if you’re still out there Mr. Jones, please know we love you!

Date: May 30, 1972
Release: Right Stuff #29144
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Recorded in Memphis in the blackest of soul styles, Bobby “The Preacher” Womack’s Understanding overflows with raw energy and emotion. Blurring the lines between Southern soul, funk, and gospel, the album’s rough edges reflected something fundamental about life in Black America and the need to reach for something higher. Womack had learned well from his idol Sam Cooke that the people wanted to hear about something besides love. In the gritty “Simple Man,” Womack preaches to his brothers and sisters:”Hang on in there…we don’t live on a hill, but we stand just as tall.” At the time he wrote the songs for Understanding, Womack was a man of considerable talents who had too little to show for it in the way of successful solo records.

An always in demand studio musician, Womack’s influential guitar playing helped define such eternal classics as Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home,” Wilson Pickett’s “Funky Broadway,” Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools,” and Sly Stone’s “Family Affair.” By 1972, his singing and songwriting had matured to such an extent that only an act of God could have kept him from storming the charts. “Woman’s Gotta Have It,” one of the album’s three Womack originals, shot up to the very top of the R&B charts in that golden funk summer of ’72. This mid-tempo soul-funk ballad starts off with a sensuous bass line straight out of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? With its simple message about how to keep a woman happy–”You gotta giver her what she wants when she wants it / Where she wants it / And how she wants it”–the song touched a chord with audiences like few other Womack songs ever have.

A bubble gum-soul cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” was released as the follow up single to “Woman’s Gotta Have It.” While it managed to impressively crack the white-dominated Pop Charts, its mellow B-side “Harry Hippie” was embraced as the “black side” by black radio, driving it into the R&B Top Ten (and, surprisingly, into the Top 40 on the Pop Charts). “I Can Understand It” is the album’s funkiest and most complex track, made with timeless production values: a driving and loudly mixed bass/drum groove, a tight gospel chorus of soul sisters, lush touches of strings, and Womack’s belting vocals and fuzz guitar. While this compelling Womack original never charted, New Birth turned it into a No. 4 R&B hit when the band covered it in 1973. His most consistently satisfying album, Understanding captures Womack at the peak of his powers. This is the one to get.

Date: 1974
Release: UBIQUITY
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Ubiquity Records has once again unearthed an unbelievably obscure funk recording that spins with genius quality from beginning to end. The Turner Brothers were no slick big-studio come on, some ’74 pre-disco pseudo-funksters decked out in full blaxploitation regalia and grinning for the cameras. They were the real deal, straight out of the Deep South, serving up a fat sound drenched in the heavy grease accumulated through years of playing dive bars and barbecue joints on the legendary Chitlins Circuit. Act 1 was put out on the band’s own label and was a huge regional success, helping them to secure tours with the likes of Rufus Thomas, The Chi-Lites, The Ohio Players, and other hard hitters. Here was a tight and experienced bunch of players brimming with talent and soul power. The band comes on strong, kicking the album off with the hypnotic rhythms of “Running In The Rain.”

The album continues with the raw and gritty vocals on “Every Time I’m Near You.” Swirling keyboards, thick bass lines, break beats, and funky guitar all come together on the band’s incandescent tribute to the zodiac, the instrumental “Sound Of The Taurus.” The standout track, “Cause I Love You,” sounds like the Jackson Five on funk steroids, throbbing with a groove fatter than anything little Michael ever sang back in the day. This song should have hit the charts, but without the backing of a major label, it slipped through the cracks. Rescued from oblivion, this album stands as one of the most unfairly obscure funk gems to be released before disco swept the land.

Date: 1973
Release: Warner Brothers
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For many years, I was haunted by a sound. I instinctively knew what it was, how it felt in my heart, but I had no idea what musician or band had created it and I never seemed to stumble across it, on oldies radio or otherwise. It was a melancholy, slightly kitschy yet soulful sound, rooted deep in the corners of my oldest memories from my Seventies childhood. It was the sound of Seventies street soul; big afros, good vibes, summer nights and making out on the first date. I never thought I’d hear that sweet, sentimental groove again, but it’s all there on Tower of Power’s self-titled 1973 release.

One of the strongest albums by the sprawling, multi-ethnic jazz-funk band, Tower of Power features several butt-shaking, roof-raising boogie-funk workouts, but it’s the slow-groove ballads that define the sound I’d long searched for. When I hear “Will I Ever Find A Love?,” “Clever Girl,” “Both Sorry Over Nothin’,” and the exquisite “So Very Hard to Go,” I float away into a Seventies soul bliss. There is something so completely charming and endearing about these songs, a vague wistfulness only heightened by their relative obscurity and lack of iconic status.

Unlike the classic soul sounds of Aretha and the Jackson 5, these tunes haven’t sold Pepsi or appeared on countless soundtracks. Instead, they rise from a hazy, lazy, dusty-vinyl ether, crackling from the car radio on the way to get a soft-serve cone on a July night, or from a clock-radio AM station as we reach first base on a bean bag chair. It’s just that sound. And the super-tight funk jams — “Soul Vaccination,” “Get Yo’ Feet Back On the Ground,” and “What Is Hip?” — round out what could only be considered a very tasty time capsule of unassuming Seventies soul. Track for track, confident and romantic, Tower of Power is timeless.

Date: Oct 27, 1972 (release)
Release: Motown #157354
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What happened to Stevie Wonder? The second-coolest blind piano-playing soul singer in rock history, he was also one of the smartest, most talented and engaging songwriters this side of John Lennon, and he wasn’t, and still isn’t, self-absorbed and egotistical. (And unlike the first-coolest blind piano-playing vocalist, Ray Charles, Stevie never shilled for the state lottery.) After being a Motown prodigy and, among other things, co-writing “Tears of a Clown” with Smokey Robinson, Little Stevie Wonder came into his own.

In a brilliant stretch from 1971 to 1976, he made six albums: Where I’m Coming From, Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, and Songs In The Key Of Life. Those six remarkable albums–the latter a double disc of tremendous proportions, filled with funk anthems and sweet ballads that is in many ways a culmination–really are of a single piece, a grandly radical, artistic, political statement of pain and anger and joy uttered during a difficult time for the world and for American blacks especially. For those five years, he was the preeminent creative force in American music, unrivaled in every way.

And then the former Steveland Morris started sucking. The 1980s were not kind to Stevie Wonder. He adopted the sated and bloated sound of his contemporaries, generating over-produced pablum. I suppose it was inevitable. Who among the giants of Sixties and Seventies rock and pop retained their edge through the ’80s? Maybe Neil Young. Perhaps Lou Reed, though both of those men had to retreat into an angry shell to weather the decade.

So Stevie’s not alone, but there was absolutely no excuse for 1984′s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” on the Woman in Red soundtrack. Maybe that was what Orwell was warning us of. So the thing to do, of course, is just hope idly for a return to form, ignore everything he did after 1976, and be grateful we still have those five records. And we should be eternally grateful for 1972′s Talking Book.

Even though Stevie plays almost all the instruments on the album, the opening track,”You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” the hit (covered by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald), begins with two verses sung by studio singers going solo for the moment. It’s significant for its humility, and then Stevie comes in and takes over. It is such a goofy song, with its neo-bossa-nova beat, its bar mitzvah organ, its pah-pah-pah-pah background vocals, but it is also irresistible. There’s so much joy and love in it, as in “Isn’t She Lovely,” on Songs In The Key Of Life. When Stevie sings a ballad, he absolutely means it, and we feel that.

Then we immediately get a kick-ass funk bass line on “Maybe Your Baby,” an ominous, paranoid, driving song whose massive groove sets the stage for “Superstition.” That song, by now a classic-rock cliche is, in the context of the album, one of the best songs in the set, ust in sheer terms of production alone. It’s masterful, from the slap-bass groove to the rising horn refrain to the splitting-hair lyrics about the crucial difference between religion and superstition for this pious man: “When you believe in things you don’t understand, and you suffer.”

If you’ve never heard a full Stevie Wonder album from this period, it’s hard to imagine the mood he creates by the juxtaposition of ballad and funk, of the tension between subject matter and musical mood. Take “You and I (We Can Conquer the World),” a piano torch song (complete with weeping electronic violins) that is followed by “Tuesday Heartbreak,” a hand-clapping dance number. Strangely enough, he writes this upbeat song about a breakup. He employed this approach throughout this era, and the results were nothing but exhilarating. Just listen to “Joy Inside My Tears” on Songs In The Key Of Life and you’ll understand.

We also, inevitably, get a little social commentary here, in the form of the ingenious “Big Brother,” a thankfully subtle song about Stevie’s frustration with all the suits running the country. It’s a sort of proto-”Living in the City,” which later appeared on Innervisions. Stevie part of a rare goup of artists able to pull off the social commentary thing in the Sixties and Seventies without it compromising the art. Things would change, as evidenced by 1985′s unfortunate (but well meaning), “We Are the World.”

The climax of Talking Book comes appropriately at the end of the album, with “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever,” perhaps my favorite Stevie song. It builds like the Beatles “Hey Jude,” starting out unassumingly, simple, but with great tension. This slow setup initially makes you wonder where the song is going, if anywhere. Then after a minute and change, you suddenly get a quick snippet of that hugely satisfying chorus. He pulls you back to the unresolved minor chords for another whole minute, then just unleashes the rest of the song into the endlessly repeated chorus. Stevie does his own background vocals, and from there the song is engineered to be simple aural ecstasy. I get chills every single time I listen to it. But wait! He doesn’t stop there. No, he closes out the song with a quick burst of spirit-lifting funk. There were never cliches for this man in those days, never. After gladly being manipulated for four minutes, hearing him pull back and sour a little makes me so grateful that I generally have to press play on the CD player and go through it all again.

Especially now, when Stevie Wonder seems to be the flavor of the month among such neo-soul (isn’t that just soul?) celebs such as Alicia Keys, India.Arie, Macy Gray, and Jill Scott (although she’s good), it’s much better to go back directly to the Stevie Wonder fountainhead, putting on an album that, if released today, would be hailed as revolutionary. Talking Book, I think, is the best of those five essential Stevie albums, and, without resorting to hyperbole, all of them are worth owning and listening to weekly, at least.