The Dells singing Bacharach - Anybody Know This?

[JSngry]

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=2r7...p;ref=index.php

Forget Dionne Warwick, and think Burt Bacharach -- because on this sublime little set, The Dells are singing some of Burt's greatest tunes ever -- all set to impeccable arrangements by the legendary Charles Stepney! The album's more wonderful than you might even expect -- a true high point in the career of all parties involved -- and a tremendous recasting of Bacharach's original brilliance -- taking his key compositions into the most sophisticated styles of the Chicago soul scene in the 70s! There's a sense of timing and phrasing here that's quite unique -- hardly simple covers of Dionne Warwick's approach to these hits -- and Stepney's backings feature his own Fender Rhodes, guitar from Phil Upchurch, percussion from members of The Pharoahs, and some fuller horns, harp, and strings. The Dells are equally great too -- and serve up some of the best vocals of their career -- really magnificent harmonies, and soaring solo parts that seem to even go beyond their best-known hits. Titles include "Walk On By", "Trains & Boats & Planes", "I Say A Little Prayer", "Wives & Lovers", "Close To You", "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself", "This Guy's In Love With You", "Raindrops Keep Fallin On My Head", and "A House Is Not A Home".

[etherbored]

i don't think you need to know any more than the above, really...

[JSngry]

Well, I kinda do. Because something like this can go either way without a whole lote of effort.

[Soul Stream]

Let us know how it is if you get it Jim. Looked real interesting to me, but a little pricey for curiousity's sake. If I had to bet, I'd say this is probably very, very good.

[Chuck Nessa]

Too many strikes against it for me to explore. If I miss it, no biggie.

[JSngry]

If it was just The Dells, I could pass comfortably. Fine talents, but...

The wildcard here for me is Stepney, a man who could take things in some interesting directions.

I'm of the opinion (minority, it seems), that Earth Wind & Fire's output suffered irrevocably from Stepney's death. Maurice White was a helluva talent then, but w/o Stepney in the mix, his stuff didn't have that extra creative "dimension" that it did with.

It's on DG's own label, so it should be availabel for quite a while. I'll get to it eventually, probably.

[JSngry]

Got it on a whim, arrived yesterday, playing now, and....

....yeah. Probably not for everybody, but the "zone factor" here is pretty high.

Let me put it this way - the version here of "Walk On By" is a lot shorter than Issac Hayes' (although not exactly AM-Friendly @ 4:57), but every bit as trance-y.

The DG-penned notes refer to "baroque soul", and that seems apt to me. Stepney sees no need not to remake all these familiar tunes into his own image from the ground up, and his image for them is quite interesting indeed - "pop" but not "easy". Anything but easy, in fact...

It's not all "perfect" by a long shot, "Raindrops Keep Fallin..." tries too hard to overcome the fact that the only way for that song to not be taken at face value is to play it at face value, and just ends up being silly as a result. But for the most part, this stuff is pretty damn fine.

Recommended with the caveat that if anything "on paper" about this date is an automatic turn off for you, then nothing heard on the album will change that.

But Charles Stepney...yeah. People like Charles Stepney made "pop music" interesting in all kinds of ways for people who fell outside the target demographic, if you know what I mean. Would that there were more like him today, tomorrow, and forever.

[JSngry]

Ok, Stepney...on "Close To You", not only does he do a pretty cool reharmonization, but he tags each A-section with this totally sly breakup of the time into a bar of 5/8, one of 4/8, two of 6/8, and finally one of 3/8. That's 24 beats, four bars of 6/8 (or 2 of 4/4 broken down into triplets), enough to keep the form stable interms of math and ultimate feel, but also just enough sideways to make you say WTF if you're listening and are oriented towards hearing stuff like that.

Of course, if you're not, then it'll just fell like a really groovy beat, and that's the object of the game. But so is getting the "other type" of listener to pay attention.

Sure, it's only pop, but hey...take away an intersting and literate middle, and all you're left with is a top too unrooted to be of use to anything but itself and a bottom with nowhere to go but further down.

Sound familiar?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Ok, Stepney...on "Close To You", not only does he do a pretty cool reharmonization, but he tags each A-section with this totally sly breakup of the time into a bar of 5/8, one of 4/8, two of 6/8, and finally one of 3/8. That's 24 beats, four bars of 6/8 (or 2 of 4/4 broken down into triplets), enough to keep the form stable interms of math and ultimate feel, but also just enough sideways to make you say WTF if you're listening and are oriented towards hearing stuff like that.

Phew, shit! Dells' voices up to par, Jim?

MG

[JSngry]

Dells sound fine. Recorded January 1972 in Chicago (brrrrrrrrr...., COLD), and all is well.

Nothing really "earthshaking" here, but otoh, nobody makes records like this anymore. Don't know that many people who could...

[JSngry]

Been regularly jamming this one, and I gotta say, it's a trip, mostly good.

But the more I listen to it, the more I find myself saying, "wow, what the hell IS this?", and in a good way.