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: January 16, 1956
Release: Capitol #96226
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A young man growing up in the 1980s on Long Island in a middle-class Jewish family that ignored the wide world of jazz did not often run into Frank Sinatra. If he did encounter him, it was usually in the form of Joe Piscopo (who?) doing an impression on Saturday Night Live of an old, scotch-swilling, mobbed-up tough-guy. Or this particular Long Island boy would hear the song “New York, New York” overplayed, especially at the end of winning Yankee games, which was not a good association, since this Long Island boy hates the Yankees. For the remainder of the ‘80s and into the early ‘90s, Sinatra’s image didn’t improve. He just got older. The media mercilessly showed us sad images of a man past his prime, entrenched in a tired Vegas act, doobie-doobie-dooing his way through lyrics he had sung thousands of times and yet somehow couldn’t remember.

But an older generation of fans had known a different Sinatra. They knew the suave, blue-eyed, slender Frank—the man who crooned ballads to screaming female audiences, who danced, sang and acted in movies—a man who under all circumstances was supremely cool. They knew a Sinatra who possessed that voice, which Nelson Riddle compared to the sonorous tones of a viola. Forget the Rat Pack, forget the kitschy, forget Caesar’s Palace, forget the whole mob-delivering-the-1960-election-in-Chicago-for-Jack-Kennedy-on-Frankie’s-say-so thing, forget that Mia Farrow abusiveness thing. Take that all away and you still have the voice. Man, that cat could sing.

So this Long Island boy got older and started discovering jazz, especially bebop and classic small-group jazz. And that’s all I listened to until I started tuning into the greatest jazz radio station in the world, WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM, out of Newark, New Jersey (you can pick it up in New York City, where I live). It was while listening to WBGO that I discovered Duke Ellington and Count Basie’s great big-band swing music. A WBGO Sunday afternoon program entitled “Singers Unlimited” introduced me to Ella and Bessie and Billie and Hendricks and all the other singing greats. I noticed that Sinatra popped up sometimes, and that the DJ gushed over songs like “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “All of Me.”

I had listened to those songs, but still, I resisted them. To my ironic, unfortunately postmodern ear, Sinatra—though obviously not bad—also sang such old saws as “My Way” and “Strangers in the Night,” way over-enunciating his vowels. I struggled against Ol’ Blue Eyes, deciding that he was just not artistic enough.

But at about the same time, postmodernism itself rehabilitated Sinatra. While he was close to death as both a living person and a symbol, pop culture’s pendulum swung back (as it always does), and the swing craze of the ‘90s happened. Neo-swingsters started loudly singing the praises of the Rat Pack. The movie “Swingers” gave the movement a larger audience. Bombarded with new evidence of Sinatra’s coolness, I was ready to really hear his music. The time had come to buy my first Sinatra CD. But which one, I wondered? The consensus seemed to be 1956’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers.

The title is a reference to an album released earlier that same year, Songs for Young Lovers, a late-night classic filled with ballads arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle, with whom Sinatra had only been working for a few years at Capitol Records. That album had been a hit, so they decided to follow it up with a record of dance music (some songs for swingin’ lovers). While the expression “swinging lovers” has taken on an entirely new meaning over the past 40 years, back in 1956, “swingin’ lovers” simply referenced those who were hip enough to dig Sinatra and Riddle’s cool (and danceable) interpretations.

Today Sinatra is even regarded by young people as one of the greatest singers ever. But still, until recently, I had one reservation: listening to Frank Sinatra makes you feel so good. Any devotee of Miles Davis and his introspective Kind of Blue muted-trumpet sound might have a hard time reconciling himself with these songs. Swinging lovers aren’t pensive, nor do they get blue. They’re too busy swinging, whether that means dancing or having sex, or just, well, swinging. And because these songs sound so effortless, it seems that Frank never paused to think too hard. It’s as if he just plows through all the key songbooks: Porter, Gershwin, Mercer, Kahn, etc., with supreme cockiness, sure in his ability to record the ultimate version of any given standard.

But when you listen to this album (again and again), and hear the superb renditions of “You Make Me Feel So Young,” “Love Is Here to Stay,” and “How About You?” they’ll never get out of your head. Sinatra did, in once sense, make the “best” versions of these songs. Sure, Billie Holiday’s “Love Is Here to Stay” can make you feel melancholy, mourning for love lost. But Frankie doesn’t do that. With Riddle’s big string orchestra behind him, and with the ecstatic horn section blaring, he plays the tunes totally on the level. Flouting everything that comes after him, the words mean what they say. These songs for swinging lovers still offer us something rare in today’s world, where it’s hard to take anything at face value. It’s perhaps Sinatra’s most amazing accomplishment.

According to Riddle, Sinatra did not just dash off these songs. On the contrary, he was a perfectionist, demanding from his orchestra what he demanded from himself: a hard-driving attitude and tireless work ethic that would spice up a song and make it tight. And you hear it, particularly on such prime cuts as “Makin’ Whoopie” and “Pennies From Heaven.” Knowing about all the hard work put in, you can hear the wealth of experience behind the music, and contemplate what would be Sinatra’s long road ahead. But forgetting about all that, you can just listen to the songs, hearing only the joy in the moment. Joy and mastery. That’s what Sinatra was all about.

Date: 1975
Release: ASYLUM #2-2008
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A timeless live-in-studio performance by one of the most original artists of the past 30 years. This album has the distinctly bohemian feel of a smoky Greenwich village café transplanted onto the blooming desert wasteland of the Los Angeles metropolitan region. His lyrics are random and poetic, sketching out shifty characters and strange misadventures straight out of Waits‘ “narcotic American night.” Jazz backed and swaggering, Waits lures you into his lurid underworld of all-night diners and forgotten truck stops. Nighthawks resounds with the intimacy of a small night club caught in the midst of an inspired after-hours session. Waits swings and rhymes over walking bass lines, lightly brushed cymbals, and breathy saxophones, creating an atmosphere heavy with smoke and the clang of empty bottles. Opening the album with a comically bleak “Emotional Weather Report,” Waits sets the tone of what is to follow, singing with self-effacing candor about his alcohol drenched loneliness and desperation. “Eggs & Sausage” aches beautifully with a hunger that can’t be satisfied by the greasy fare and heartburn of late-night dives.

He sings about obsessive love in “Nobody.” Despite his reluctant vulnerability, Waits is no sap, and his schtick is always that of the tough guy loner. He proclaims the virtues of his go-it-alone philosophy in “Better Off Without a Wife.” He tells epic tales of the bazaar, such as the engrossing “Ballad of Big Joe and Phantom 309.” Having packed the studio audience with sympathizers, Waits knows he is singing to the choir, as he launches into comic spoken-word interludes between songs that tear the house down. This is a great album for playing poker, shooting dice, or going on a lost-weekend tour through the underbelly of America. Waits’ genius and theatrical charm are in strong evidence, and at 70 minutes in length, the fun goes on and on. Throw away your books on tape and pop this into your deck!

Date: 1999
Release: Soul Brother Records #SBPJ1
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Leon Thomas possessed a voice that went far beyond what was once thought possible in singing. His trademark yodeling (for lack of a better term) turns jazz “scatting” on its head, transforming the art of song into a deeply cosmic exploration of the soul. On Anthology’s two most rewarding tracks, “Prince of Peace” and “The Creator Has A Master Plan (Peace),” Thomas’ instrument-like voice soars to a plane of higher spiritual consciousness, becoming one with the transcendent saxophone sounds of Pharoah Sanders. According to Thomas, it was during his partnership with Sanders that he spontaneously invented his unique style of singing:

“I didn’t know where it came from. I realized that the ancestors had arrived and had given me what we call throat articulation…This voice is not me, my voice is ancient.”

Anthology compiles the finest recordings Thomas made for the legendary Flying Dutchman label from 1969 through 1973. Sadly, this is the only available work of his still in print. Soul Brother Records cherry picked 12 of Thomas’ best songs from his most creative period, making this collection a must hear introduction to his music.

Track after track, drummers Roy Haynes and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie keep a solid beat behind such A-list innovators as Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Sharrock, Lonnie Liston Smith, Larry Coryell, and Joe Farrell. Relentlessly passionate and original, the music on Anthology covers a lot of ground: Gil-Scott Heron flavored political grooves (“Just In Time To See The Sun,” “Shape Your Mind To Die” and “It’s My Life I’m Fighting For”), heavy soul-blues (“C.C. Rider”), and avant-garde jazz scatting (“Song For My Father” and “Bag’s Groove”). At the time these recordings were made, Thomas was poised on the verge of stardom. Santana even briefly brought him in the band in 1971. But somehow his career ran aground by the mid-70s, perhaps due to the collusion of commercial radio programmers and stadium rock promoters, who together succeeded in keeping much of the best music under wraps. Thomas passed away in 1999, remaining till the end an uncompromising underground figure, celebrated in obscurity, still ripe for rediscovery.

Date: 1971
Release: Virgin #40641
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“For Francoise Hardy, at the Seine’s edge…”

–Bob Dylan, Another Side Of Bob Dylan

Unlike escargots, beautiful French women are not an acquired taste, especially when they can sing. A melancholy and sensual chanteuse, Francoise Hardy made a name for herself crafting lush love songs of great sophistication. Often characterized as aloof, the quietly self-possessed Hardy never allowed herself to be marketed on her abundant sex appeal. Disregarding her looks, she built a following strictly on the strength of her singing and songwriting talents. Although released in 1971, La Question endures as her most spare and seductive album. “Viens” opens the record with a dramatic flair designed to grab the listener’s attention. The title track follows, establishing the album’s elegant dreamlike mood. On such songs as “Chanson D’O,” “Mer,” and “Doigts,” Francoise’s breathy voice lulls you deeper into a deliciously languid state.

The mysterious Tuca (aka Valeniza Zagni da Silva) accompanies Hardy on acoustic guitar, co-arranging and co-writing most of the songs. Although largely unknown, Tuca was a talented musician who released two obscure albums in her native Brazil, Tuca and Dracula, I Love You, both of which remain impossible to find. Tuca’s chararacteristically delicate and uncluttered arrangements help define La Question, with her subtle touches of bass and strings beautifully accentuating Francoise’s sultry vocals. In several places, Hardy substitutes melodic humming in place of singing, wordlessly articulating the emotional essence of the song. “Bati Mon Nid” features a particularly catchy chorus of “la-la-la-la-la’s,” and the record ends with another refrain of “la-la-la” on “Reve.” A timelessly romantic album overflowing with after-hours ambience, this is the perfect disc to put on when snuggling close to the one you love.

Date: 1973
Release: Hi Records #1650
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If Al Green was the king of ’70s Southern Soul, then Ann Peebles was his queen. A righteous feminist singer in the tradition of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, Peebles made a name for herself singing and writing about women’s all too familiar knowledge of the darker side of love. Her ferocious hit “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down” served notice on all cheating men that some sisters weren’t going to always turn the other cheek. Sung in a voice menacing in its restraint, this vengeful opus delivers in overtly angrier tones the feminine message of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”: treat us good or watch out! But Peebles wasn’t only concerned with giving men the big payback. Written in partnership with her husband Don Bryant and Memphis deejay Bernard Miller, “Until You Came Into My Life” features Peebles softly singing of a happier kind of love to be shared with the right man. Fortunately for us, her contentment with love is brief. Peebles is at her gritty best when singing bittersweet songs on love’s blues–a fact made amply clear in her riveting masterpiece of heartbreak, “I Can’t Stand The Rain.” Called the “greatest record ever” by John Lennon, I Can’t Stand The Rain deliciously blends blues, gospel and pop into an incomparable Memphis soul stew. Understandably her biggest hit, the song peaked at #6 on the R&B charts in 1974.

Song for song, I Can’t Stand The Rain represents the cream of Memphis based Hi Records’ creative output, standing right alongside anything Al Green ever recorded for the label. Under the nimble direction of Hi Records head Willie Mitchell, the brilliant Hi house band laid down simmering grooves for Peeble’s vocal explorations. Backed by the scorching horns of Stax veterans Andrew Love and Wayne Jackson, the fluid rhythms of the Hodges Brothers (guitarist Mabon “Teenie,” bassist Leroy “Flick” and keyboardist Charlie), the unstoppable beats of drummer Howard Grimes, and the supporting vocals of singing team Rhodes, Chalmers and Rhodes, there was really no way Peebles could lose. Here was the same winning sound that drove Al Green’s records to the top of the charts.

Yet despite all its strengths, I Can’t Stand The Rain was not the massive success it should have been. Over the years the album faded into relative obscurity, though it remained quite popular in Europe. If not for British label Dennon Records, one of the finest female soul records of all time might have tragically remained out of print. Fortunately this powerhouse of early ’70s Southern Soul is back again for all to enjoy.

Date: April 3 – 4, 1961
Release: Blue Note 24546
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No two musicians defined the first half of the Jazz Century more than Duke Ellington & Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. Duke was the dashingly elegant mad-genius of composition, a black Mozart who imbued jazz with an emotional sophistication and wit that will never be surpassed. Louis almost single-handedly popularized the art of the solo, liberating jazz from the rigid rules of ensemble playing and giving individual musicians a chance to express themselves. Unmistakable in sound, Satchmo’s presence strongly defined every session he recorded on.

The reasons are simple: when Satchmo put the trumpet to his lips and blew, a brilliant ray of sunshine would radiate from his soul, bathing the world in its exquisite light. Satchmo was a positive man overflowing with emotion, and his supreme goodness can be felt in every note he played and every line he sang. So it should come as no surprise that the collaboration of Duke & Louis would result in these recordings of tremendous warmth and humanity. Here was one of the greatest pairings in the history of popular culture — more romantic than Bogart and Bacall, more exciting than Barnham and Bailey, more swinging than Sinatra and Riddle.

While Satchmo can’t help but steal the spotlight, he graciously opens the album with the acknowledgement that the music is only happening at “Duke’s Place.” Duke makes Satchmo feel right at home, providing a sublimely swinging accompaniment while occassionally stepping out to show Pops his own chops. A few seconds of listening and you can’t help but feel a part of the great mood that pervaded these sessions. Playing the Ellington songbook with the master himself was a refreshing change of pace for Satchmo, who had been endlessly cycling through his greatest hits night after night to adoring audiences.

His enthusiasm shines through in his spectacular trumpet solo on “Black and Tan Fantasy.” Satchmo even reveals a deeply introspective side on several of the album’s ballads, particularly on “Solitude,” “I got It Bad And That Ain’t Good,” and the rare “Azalea.” Playing with Satchmo was also tremendously inspiring for the Duke, who composed and recorded the appropriately titled “The Great American” on-the-spot.

These landmark sessions contain unrivaled versions of many familiar Ellington songs. An essential American classic, the album swings to the tune of true genius. Spend the extra money and get the 2000 reissue for superior sound and previously unreleased bonus tracks.

Date: September 17, 1969 (recording)
Release: Verve #2668
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Heavily accented, hesitantly breathy and child-like, Astrud Gilberto‘s vocals never fail to seduce me. As I play her records (particularly this one), I obsessively pore over the album photos, falling for the sweet faced girl with the adorable voice. An accidental star with no professional training, Astrud was catapulted to fame after singing on the bossa nova crossover hit, “The Girl From Ipanema.” The story is that her then husband, Brazilian singer-songwriter Joao Gilberto, was in the studio with saxophonist Stan Getz, when producer Creed Taylor suggested they record “Ipanema” in English in order to give the song a better chance at cracking the charts. By sheer luck, Astrud was the only Brazilian in the room with a sufficient grasp of the language to give it a shot.

Her singular and unaffected voice — tinged with a slight sadness and a little off-key — held such widespread appeal that the song became a unexpectedly massive hit in America during the summer of 1964. Astrud’s spontaneously recorded vocals almost single-handedly sparked the bossa nova craze, allowing her to launch a career that would span several decades and yield a nice handful of influential Sixties pop records.

Beginning in 1965, Astrud recorded a series of superb albums for Verve, culminating with her final album for the label, September 17, 1969. A bold departure from the jazzy bossa nova sound of her previous recordings, the album lovingly covered the very best that the late-’60s had to offer: The Bee Gees (a sped-up version of “Holiday”), The Beatles (a wide-eyed “Here There And Everywhere”), The Doors (an incredibly kitschy “Light My Fire”), and Harry Nilsson (a better-than-the original “Don’t Leave Me Baby”). With her quavery tone and sultry innocence, Astrud somehow manages to infuse these psychedelic pop songs with her gently tropical, Brazilian feeling while at the same time embracing their more mainstream, Anglo-American sound.

Her cover of the early Chicago classic, “Beginnings” rocks hard, but over a sizzling Latin groove that stretches out over eight exhilarating minutes. In contrast to these magnificent bossa-salsa-psychedelic-rock-pop covers are several string-laden, almost syrupy, Brazilian-spiced ballads like “Think Of Rain” and “A Million MIles Away Behind The Door” (which was from some forgotten Paramount Production called “Paint Your Wagon”). While not quite as infectious as the covers, the album’s softer songs are still endearing in their undisguised schmaltz.

Despite its many strengths, September 17, 1969 turned out to be Astrud’s last album for Verve. Over-saturated by a glut of lousy bossa nova albums recorded by has-beens and hacks, the American public had lost interest in Brazilian artists by the late ’60s, turning their backs on such major talents as Antonio Carlos Jobim, and unfairly ignoring Astrud’s incredibly great offering. While her star still shone in her native Brazil through most of the 70s, Astrud gradually vanished from the music scene until 1984, when a boss nova revival swept the UK and put “The Girl From Ipanema” back in the charts once more.

Date: 1994
Release: Columbia
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If Grace (and Jeff Buckley‘s premature death, for that matter) teaches us one lesson, it’s that music has the boundless potential to impassion performers and listeners alike! Buckley’s career as a solo artist started back in the early ’90s in New York’s smaller clubs and coffee houses. Word of his diverse and captivating performances—in which he deftly peppered sets of his own songs with those from artists as distinct as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and MC5—buzzed about town, garnering him an avid enough following to support the release of his solo EP Live at Sin E in 1993.

For the full-length Grace, however, Buckley formed a band, enlisted the help of veteran engineer/producer Andy Wallace, and set out to, in his words, give back something the musical community who’d given him so much. The result: ten gripping tunes that explore the age-old themes of love, loss, yearning, life, and death. Bolstered by a full band, Buckley has room to explore his heavier and more complicated musical influences. The lead track “Mojo Pin,” for example, begins with Buckley floating his supple falsetto over an instrumentally sparse space that crescendos in a Zeppelin-tinged torrent of driving staccato drumming, pulsing guitars, and wailing operatic vocals. “Eternal Life” has an aggressive and distorted immediacy, taking the album on a grungier path. The tabla that complements the singer’s distant, eastern-influenced, and meandering vocals on “Dream Brother” end the album on a contemplative, ethereal note.

Still, for most critics, the true beauty of this album is embodied in Buckley’s moody, solitary, and sweet rendition of Leonard Cohen‘s “Hallelujah.” Although Jeff’s gone now, this album stands as a powerful and enduring legacy to his talent as a performer.