About a week ago I was on a comedian’s IG and he posted a gospel group performing D’Angelo‘s classic, “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” They actually did quite a nice interpretation of the song. While there’s a certain level of humor in the creative license that the church takes with certain songs, I was taken aback by an overwhelming majority of the comments expressing that there was a level of blasphemy in taking a song with a clear sexual connotation and using it for worship. That was funny to me because these people clearly must have never heard Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and other soul progenitors who walked this line to create an entire genre.
While Marvin may be credited as the one who most overtly made the sanctified sensual, I have to add Aretha to that list, hands down. This album in particular is a great example. I know she had a way with dancing with the press around this subject and she quite ingeniously led the critics on a wild goose chase when they’d try to get her to confirm it verbally, but shit, all you gotta do is listen. This album was recorded two years before she’d officially “come back” to the church to record her seminal Amazing Grace. Spirit In the Dark is so blatantly sensual and so essentially gospel, it can almost make you blush. I know I used to on this break right here when she says, “That’s how you do it / Now get on up to it / Ride Sally Ride / Put your hands on your hips ‘n cover your eyes.”
And the moves that accompanied that break were anything but holy in my house! Soooo… I rest my case. I urge you to check out the whole song. It’s a blues, really. Starts with Aretha’s signature gospel piano opening…a slow, sensual groove that picks up to a mid tempo funk groove. By the time it nears its end, there is an entire holy ghost break. Or listen to the vamp on “Pullin’” (same album)… Chiiiile.
D’angelo is from the CHURCH. So no matter what he does, you gone hear the church. So when the church decides to claim the song, y’all can’t be mad LOL… the sanctified and the sensual are quite interchangeable, whether we wanna deal with that or not. But I guarantee all your faves dealt with it.
One of the musical highlights of my 1980s reminiscences is the duets. The concept is a slippery one… duets can certainly get tripped into hokey territory, especially if the collaborations feel forced. The artists of the 80s had quite the benchmark to live up to, considering the caliber of duets past: Dinah Washington and Brook Benton, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Ray Charles and Betty Carter, and so on. Although the 80s produced more seemingly manufactured duets, the end results — more often than not — are great, feel-good records, which consisted of powerhouse artists who found themselves in collaboration, often at the height of their success.
While the classic duet formula is almost always a love song between a man and a women, some of my favorite duets are between men. Yes, the musical bromance is my entire jam. And to be honest, I feel like it’s what the world needs more of.
Over the course of my lifetime, it’s been stunning to witness the steep decline of male intimacy in Western society. The knee jerk “that’s gay” trope, especially as it pertains to men being vulnerable, creative, loving, soft or honest with one another, is deeply problematic. To that end, “gay” being understood as inherently derogatory… well, I could dedicate an entire post to that baneful ideology. But the idea that normal and healthy expressions are somehow evidence of weakness has been completely damaging to all interpersonal relationships and to community as a whole. And there’s data to back it up — data that only adds to the countless testimonies of almost anyone you or I know who has bumped up against this problem.
A study out of the U.K. reports that 51% of men have less than two close friends and that 2.5 million men are going through life feeling totally alone. Furthermore, suicide is now the single biggest killer of men under 45, and accounts for 13 deaths a day, according to the same study. Contrastingly, men who bond in healthy ways with other men tend to have less stress, and according to Psychology Today, research concludes that “a good bromance will release oxytocin in the human brain as well—and increased oxytocin can help men live longer, healthier lives. (Although some also refer to oxytocin as ‘the love hormone,’ emotionally intense platonic relationships also increase oxytocin.)” While several historical and cultural factors make this a multi-faceted, multi-layered concept worthy of exploration, healthy and harmonious relationships between men make life better and safer for all. It is well past time for reeducation and healing to begin.
While it may seem like the male duet has little to do with these heavier concepts, I think the link is actually rather closely related. It’s the many imposed, micro societal “no-nos” that police an already manufactured perception of manhood that feed the beast.
So in honor of a time when men could sport fitted pants, don long jheri curls and eyeliner… or sing a duet with a buddy without his masculinity being called into question, I present some of my favorite bromantic duets of the 80s.
Smoke Robinson & Rick James “Ebony Eyes” (1983)
Growing up, Rick James’ 1981 release, Street Songs, was a staple in my house. A funk masterpiece, it was highlighted by a now classic duet, “Fire and Desire,” featuring fellow Motown songstress and muse, Teena Marie. By the time Cold Blooded (1983) was released, he’d already proven his flair and brilliance as a writer, producer, musician and brand. With “Ebony Eyes,” he steps into the duet space again, this time with songwriting progenitor and Motown legend, Smokey Robinson. By this time, Robinson was only a few years away from his induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and he was also the king of quiet storm, even if some of his 80s efforts fell a bit flat. Together, James and Robinson scored a hit with “Ebony Eyes.” Lyrically, they trade lovestruck sentiments about a woman, whose blackness is central to her beauty. The production is lusty in the best of ways (the drums alone scream sex), yet the lyrics are a balance of sensual and sentimental, making it one of the Rick James songs we didn’t have to turn down on the stereo when over my nana’s house! Ha! A beautiful ballad that still goes hard to this day.
Phil Collins & Philip Bailey “Easy Lover” (1984)
Written by Phil Collins, Phillip Bailey and Nathan East, “Easy Lover” is the big single from Bailey’s album Chinese Wall (1984), which was also produced by Collins. The longtime Earth, Wind and Fire falsetto frontman had only recently gone solo. Collins had this scenario in common with Bailey as he too was straddling success both as a huge solo star and with Genesis, where he began as a drummer before becoming the lead vocalist of the brit-rock band in 1970. Here, he lends not just his vocals but his superb drumming to “Easy Lover.” The two Phils score a big hit (it reached #2 on the Billboard chart) with this delightful, mid-tempo jam.
Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney “Say, Say, Say” (1983)
One of two duets from these larger-than-life artists off of McCartney’s Pipes of Peace album in 1983 (the other being the much lesser known “The Man”). Released almost a year to the date after Jackson’s earth-shifting Thriller, “Say, Say, Say” was an example of their continued creative kinship. Though it would be short lived, and business complicated (and ultimately severed) their relationship soon after, this bop is untainted for me. And Michael’s vocals are superb.
Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney “The Girl Is Mine” (1982)
Another gem from the dynamic duo. Of any song on Thriller, this one is easily the most divisive: people either love it or loathe it, with the latter most always citing a cheese factor that I personally reject. The jazzy-pop-mid-bop is every bit of a feel good record as Al Jarreau’s “We’re In This Love Together,” (a likely inspiration for the Jackson classic). Further, I love the way Jackson and McCartney approach the vocal treatment, both smooth like butter, warm and ultra melodic. And who could argue against that bridge?! Cheesy? Nah. In the words of McCartney, “I don’t belieeeeeve it!”
Stevie Wonder & Paul McCartney “What’s That You’re Doing?” (1982)
Around the same time McCartney was collaborating with Jackson, he was also teaming up with Stevie Wonder, whom he met and befriended in London when Wonder was only 15. Wonder appeared on two tracks on Tug Of War, one of McCartney’s earliest solo artist recordings. While “Ebony and Ivory” was the big chart-topper from the album, my favorite is the lesser explored duet from the same album, “What’s That You’re Doing,” a funk-synth-pop jam that pulls McCartney into a realm slightly less familiar. It’s a surprising, funky song that sounds like it could have easily fit on Wonder’s Hotter Than July.
Stevie Wonder & Paul McCartney “Ebony & Ivory” (1982)
I know… I know… but it’s a classic. And so is this…
and this…
James Ingram & Michael McDonald “Yah Mo Be There” (1983)
This is a vocal match made in heaven. Written by Ingram, McDonald, Rod Temperton and Quincy Jones, “Yah Mo Be There” is an inspirational classic, and a nod to Ingram’s devout Christian roots. If a two step and a good praise hand needed a soundtrack, this is it. Sidebar: if you’re looking for where the Rockwell hit, “Somebody’s Watching Me,” likely found its inspiration, listen no further.
One of the most beautiful duets there is. Written by Vandross and veteran producer Skip Anderson, “There’s Nothing Better Than Love” appears on Vandross’ Give Me The Reason LP. Luther was at the height of his powers with yet another platinum album and a single on a movie soundtrack (Ruthless People, 1986). Hines was enjoying big successes of his own, as a leading man alongside Billy Crystal in the hit movie, Running Scared. The Broadway veteran and tap icon would score an NAACP Image Award for the role. This Side 2 ballad gets a signature treatment from the incomparable Nat Adderly and Marcus Miller. Vandross and Hines are like a hand in glove, trading phrases. Vandross, arguably one of the greatest voices of our time, doesn’t outshine Hines in the least. Instead they find their compatibility and groove with ease. I must admit, I can’t always listen to this one… I can definitely get teary. Two gems who are so sorely missed.
Michael Jackson & Stevie Wonder “Just Good Friends” (1987)
“Just Good Friends” is easily the second most underrated song on the King Of Pop’s Bad LP, with the first being “Another Part Of Me.” Written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle (“What’s Love Got to Do with It”), they perfectly tap into the musical aesthetics of both Michael and Stevie. This song brings me so much joy, as they find consistent vocal interplay. The song’s gorgeous bridge leads to a vamp-out overflowing with inspired creativity and reciprocity. Both are in particularly clear vocal form.
Michael Jackson & Freddie Mercury “State of Shock” (1983)
The duet that almost (but never) happened. There is a fantastic reference of their working on the song that’s widely accessible online, but the song ends up being recorded and released with Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger, instead. One can only imagine what happened with Mercury, and the theories around why it didn’t come to full fruition are pretty hilarious, but likely untrue. What I do know is that they were clearly fond of each other’s artistry (Queen was most definitely checking out the Jacksons, if you listen to their work around 77-78). But why these two Virgo giants didn’t pull “State of Shock” over the finish line remains a mystery. Still, if you want to hear a rarer performance of the song and feel like you’re hanging in the studio with your favorites, this is your chance. Listening to Mercury parrot Mike’s signature “Hees” and “Hoooops” is worth the price of admission.
Al B. Sure / James Ingram / El DeBarge / Barry White “Secret Garden” (1989)
I know… I’m cheating with this one. It’s not a duet. It’s a bromance 4X. This classic has been making the ladies swoon for over three decades. The bass line alone is an eternal vibe. A vast vocal fest featuring DeBarges’ signature falsetto and White’s irresistible baritone and everything in between. Written by DeBarge, Quincy Jones, Rod Temperton, and the wonderful Siedah Garrett, “Secret Garden” closes Jones’ Back On the Block, an historically essential album in that it allows us to hear some of the last work from some of our greatest musicians. “Secret Garden” extends the intergenerational theme of the album, in full bromantical glory.
Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images
I’ve been mourning the loss of Little Richard for some years now. That may sound like a pretty morbid exercise, but in my heart I had been feeling a deep sense that we may not have him on this earthly plane for long. In fact, I was oftentimes surprised — happily so — that he was still with us, but there remained this looming feeling that we would lose him . . . not in the sense that he was on borrowed time, but that we, the collective, were on borrowed time.
We didn’t really deserve Little Richard. Why do I say that? Because we — and by we, I mean America — didn’t know how to treat him. What we mistreat, misuse, undervalue, and take advantage of, we surely do not deserve. So I started posting more about Richard in the last few years. Appreciation posts, birthday posts, and mostly taking organizations to task when they would “honor” Richard in a way that was always much too modest, much too small, much too inaccurate.
There is no bush that is beat around more than that of the significance of Little Richard.
It’s more than the simple fact that America would sooner shoot off its proverbial left nut before calling him “king”. But let’s stay there for a moment.
Here is a sampling of the headlines around his passing:
“Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87” (Rolling Stone)
“Legendary Rock and Roll Musician Little Richard Died of Bone Cancer at 87” (People)
“Little Richard, Flamboyant Wild Man of Rock ’n’ Roll, Dies at 87” (The New York Times)
“Little Richard, a flamboyant architect of rock ’n’ roll, is dead at 87” (CNN)
“Little Richard, outsized founding father of rock music, dies at 87” (USA Today)
And they get worse:
“Little Richard, ’Tutti Frutti’ and ’Good Golly Miss Molly’ singer, dead at 87” (FOX News)
“Little Richard, piano-pounding music icon, dies at 87” (NBC)
“Seminal rocker Little Richard, singer of classic ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Lucille,’ dead at 87” (New York Daily News)
We Black folks have this saying: “They’ll call you everything but a child of God.” America and the white world at large have made the devaluing of Black people the nucleus of its function and advancement, and this dehumanization takes on many brutal forms: enslavement, disenfranchisement, rape, murder, separation, and more.
Other prime tenets of human devaluing of Black people are psychological and linguistic in nature. The evolution of the verbal regard for Black people in America is uniquely traumatic. From three-fifths human to nigger to jigaboo to coon to monkey to gal or boy and all the rest, they give context to not only the saying that, “They’ll call you everything but a child of God,” but the centuries-long demand, through the struggle and resistance of Black people, that you will indeed respect us, starting with our title.
“If we were made in his image, then call us by our names.” (E.B.)
“Don’t you be calling me out my name.” (Queen Latifah)
American journalists, critics, and mass controllers and manipulators of the cultural narrative have made it their full-time business to call Little Richard everything but The King. It is a title they simply cannot bear to hear ring back in their own ears. And any lie you tell yourself enough times, will eventually sound like the truth. And yet, we know that while yes, Richard is an architect, a founder, a bedrock, an influencer, an innovator, and any other synonym for these things, he was also . . . The King. And until we do right by Richard, the rest won’t matter.
While his Blackness is fundamentally central to this refusal, homophobia also plays a major role. Richard is the prototype of all those who went on to blur or defy the alpha or hypermasculine lines of gender expression. From James Brown to Jimi Hendrix to Michael Jackson to Prince to Grace Jones and on and on. But he also did this for David Bowie, Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger, Lady Gaga, Kurt Cobain, Annie Lennox, Led Zeppelin, and every punk and hair band known to humanity. Yet, Richard’s unabashed queerness would constantly serve to caricaturize him and deflate his undeniable essentiality to everything we call American music. He is not only the originator of rock ’n’ roll, but the pioneering father of androgyny in the American popular music artist. The price he paid for his authenticity, every artist to come behind him owes back to him — with interest.
Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images
Little Richard was and remains the apex of rock ’n’ roll. And he rightfully showed outrage for that creative pinnacle being given to an unmeritable white man. An imitator. A person whose artistry depended solely on what he could extract from the black artists whose work he unapologetically stole and mocked.
Crowning this white man as king was an act that was viciously, cruelly, and disrespectfully thrown in Richard’s face for decades. As a child, I distinctly remember Little Richard being on a celebrity episode of Family Feud in the late 1980s. One of the categories was “Phrases Associated With Elvis”, or something along those lines. And one of the answers on the board was “The King”. I remember the collective rage in my household around this. It was a purposeful and deliberate act of evil and disrespect, and a cruel and racist jest toward Little Richard. And this is just one of hundreds upon hundreds of slights that Richard endured over his lifetime.
Which is why it truly dismays me that white society views Richard’s bold proclamation of his true position in the landscape of American music as something brash, brazen, or arrogant, as reflected in almost every interview a white person conducted with Richard or in all of today’s headlines which make the point to emphasize that his rightful titles are “self-proclaimed” — as if to say this is not the view of the masses, but rather an uppity depiction of his own delusions.
But when have Black people in this country ever had the luxury of not having to proclaim our own humanity, let alone our own greatness? From “Ain’t I a Woman?” to “I Am a Man” to Black Lives Matter, Black people have always had to defend, demand, and safeguard our collective and individual legacies against white supremacy. Whether by roasting a myriad of rock figures on the fly, or by taking time out of an engagement of honors to hold significant space for himself by reminding a room full of white people that but not for him, they would not exist in their current capacities, Richard gave himself the glory that was refused him, by any means necessary. Little Richard’s unrepentant bearing of the truth is, like Malcolm X’s or James Baldwin’s, a supremely valiant action that should be honored right along with his musical inventions, ingenuity, and trailblazing.
We didn’t really deserve Little Richard.
Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band was quoted as saying, “Little Richard opens his mouth, and out comes liberation.” This is an important observation. In Blues People, Amiri Baraka writes of the slave citizen, “How did it do this? What was so powerful and desperate in the music that guaranteed its continued existence? But as I began to get into the history of the music, I found that this was impossible without, at the same time, getting deeper into the history of the people. That it was the history of the Afro-American people as text, as tale, as story, as exposition narrative, or what have you, that the music was the score, the actually expressed creative orchestration, reflection of Afro-American life, our words, the libretto, to those actual, lived lives. That the music was an orchestrated, vocalized, hummed, chanted, blown, scatted corollary confirmation of the history. That the music was explaining the history as the history was explaining the music. And that both were expressions and reflections of the people!”
“Black people lived right by the railroad tracks and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy and I thought: I’m gonna make a song that sounds like that.” (Little Richard)
When they steal the credit for our music, when they position imposters as inventors, when they take all measures possible to dethrone us, it is a dishonor to our ancestors. It is an erasure of our history. As my son recently proclaimed to me, “Every note has a story.” Our music, our sound, and its evolution is inextricably tied to our history, our lived experiences, and our individual and collective desires. This is true for all black music.
By most all definitions, kingship is a birthright. Richard’s ancestors of blues and gospel bestowed rock ’n’ roll to him. The only delusions of grandeur are from those who wish it simply were not so.
Long live The King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Richard Wayne Penniman . . . the One and Only Little Richard.
