Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

The fun in compiling a list of “favourite” albums of a year for this series resides in revisiting LPs I haven’t listened to, or maybe even thought of, for ages. And in the case of 1974, few artists released their best work that year. There is no pressing reason to play Carole King’s perfectly likeable Wrap Around Joy album when you’re much better served by 1971’s Music or, obviously, Tapestry.

Other albums on my shortlist were old favourites I had not heard for a very long time. Since I was a teenager many moons ago, I have rather gone off Supertramp. But listening again to Crime Of The Century, I recalled what I liked about them back then. To my surprise, Supertramp slipped into my Top 20 — ahead of Dolly Parton’s Jolene and John Lennon’s Walls And Bridges. Any other day, one of these two or both, might make it into my Top 20. But not today (I’ll show due respect by bonus-tracking them).

Then there are those sets I got into later in life. At some point, the venerable Whiteray of the now-defunct Echoes In The Wind blog turned me on to country-rock outfit Heartsfield. Their Wonder Of It All album earned repeated spins on my well-worn WinAmp.

Some albums, of course, pick themselves. Stevie Wonder’s Fulfillingness First Finale is one of these. Chronologically sandwiched between two masterpieces, Fulfillingness comes a bit short in critical appreciation. But if Innervisions and Songs In The Key Of Life didn’t exist, I suspect that people would speak of Fulfillingness in hushed tones. Generally, 1974 was a great year for soul albums.

By the time his marvellous Grievous Angel album came out, Gram Parsons was dead, having died at the age of 26 on September 19, 1973. The album had been recorded in the summer of 1973 and was released in January 1974. Originally it was to be credited to “Gram Parsons with Emmylou Harris”, with the cover featuring both of them. Parsons’ widow Gretchen used her powers to withdraw Harris’ billing and change the cover to feature only her husband. Sales of the album were poor, and only later did it come to be regarded as a classic in the country-rock canon.

Also ignored by the US album-buying public was Shuggie Otis’ pioneering Inspiration Information, a superb genre-defying album by a massively talented kid who was a teenager when he started recording it, and was only 21 when it was released. He played most instruments on it, wrote all songs and arranged them. On it Shuggie innovated with new technology, especially the analogue drum machine which Kraftwerk used on their Autobahn album (also featured here). Stevie Wonder and Sly Stones were fans of Shuggie’s, and Prince would later cite Inspiration Information as an influence, but Epic records looked at the bottom line and dropped him (not helped by the artist’s own loose attitude to deadlines). Shuggie Otis, who also featured on Any Major Albums of 1971 Vol. 2, didn’t release another album until 2018!

One act here featured just last month, even with the same song, albeit a different (and superior) version. Nino Ferrer was the letter  N in the Any Major ABC of France mix. Ferrer was an Italian-born French musician who traversed the genres, from European pop to R&B to jazz. A showbiz outsider by choice and design, he was nevertheless a popular figure in France. He died of suicide in 1998, aged 63.

On Nino And Radiah he collaborated with the US model, singer and erotic movie actress Radiah Frye, who dropped all for the LP’s cover. The standout track is the opener, South, which in its French version, Sud, was a hit in France. The album is an eclectic affair, with prog-rock stuff (New York), jazz-funk (Moses), Funkadelic-style funk (Vomitation), and in Mint Julep a song that draws from disco, prog and whatever the roots of New Wave were in 1974. A contender for Album of the Year.

I have in the past discussed the cover art of the Winter In America album by Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson. It didn’t include the powerful song of the album’s title — the album title inspired the tremendous track, which would come out the year after — but it featured the great rap H20gate Blues, which with updated lyrics (the modern term is, I suppose, rebooted) would still be relevant today, 50 years later.

The playlist ends with the whole Side 1 of Dollar Brand’s Mannenberg – Is Where It’s Happening. It’s a gorgeous Afro-jazz suite named after the ghetto in Cape Town created by apartheid after the forced removals of the urban District Six neighbourhood, which was populated by the oppressed “Coloured” people (it’s the term apartheid used for people of mixed race heritage). The track is not so much a celebration of the ghetto — which did become a jazz stronghold in the city — than a lament for apartheid’s ethnic cleansing. It would become an anthem in the struggle for freedom.

Dollar Brand is better known as the jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, a name he took on after his conversion to Islam. The magnificent tenor saxophone solo on the track is played by Basil Coetzee, who died in 1998 at only 54. The alto sax is played by two other greats, the late Robbie Jansen (I think the voice towards the end is his) and Morris Goldberg (the latter played on Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al).

The mix opens with a track from the album that features the Steely Dan song which inspired the name of this blog. Any Major Dude featured on a recent mix, so I’ve gone for a track which, as home video evidence shows, my son used to sing along to as a three-year-old.

And if there was only one album I may keep from 1974? I think it would be the Dollar Brand LP. On vinyl. So, what are your albums of 1974?

This mix won’t fit on a CD-R but I’ve made covers anyway, and the above text in PDF format. PW in comments.

1. Steely Dan – Barrytown (Pretzel Logic)
2. Joni Mitchell – Help Me (Court And Spark)
3. Stevie Wonder – Creepin’ (Fulfillingness First Finale)
4. Betty Wright – That’s When I’ll Stop Loving You (Danger High Voltage)
5. The Soul Children – I’ll Be The Other Woman (Friction)
6. Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan – Walkin’ In The Sun (Rags To Rufus)
7. Gram Parsons – $1000 Wedding (Grievous Angel)
8. Rusty Wier – Railroad Man (Stoned, Slow, Rugged)
9. Nino Ferrer – South (Nino And Radiah)
10. Heartsfield – House Of Living (Wonder Of It All)
11. Carole King – You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine (Wrap Around Joy)
12. Supertramp – Hide In Your Shell (Crime Of The Century)
13. Kraftwerk – Kometenmelodie 2 (Autobahn)
14. Little Feat – Oh Atlanta (Feats Don’t Fail Me Now)
15. Shuggie Otis – Sparkle City (Inspiration Information)
16. Grady Tate – Love Has No Pride (Movin’ Day)
17. Minnie Riperton – The Edge Of A Dream (Perfect Angel)
18. The Crusaders – Southern Comfort (Southern Comfort)
19. Gil Scott-Heron – H2Ogate Blues (Winter In America)
20. Dollar Brand – Mannenberg (Mannenberg – ‘Is Where It’s Happening’)
Bonus Tracks:
John Lennon – Bless You (Walls And Bridges)
Dolly Parton – Jolene (Jolene)

GET IT!

Previous Albums of the Year mixes:
1971 Vol. 1
1971 Vol. 2
1972
1973
1982
1983

More Albums of the Year
More CD-R Mixes