Lydia Pense v Janis Joplin

[JSngry]

All of the above.

This was supposed to have been a poll. All the answers, especially the correct ones, are Lydia.

Bottom line - unless you live for drama and not music, Lydia renders Joplin wholly unnecessary.

Game over, thanks for playing!

Edited July 10, 2010 by JSngry

[Dave James]

Agree 110%. Lydia Pense and Cold Blood. Great singer, great band. No contest, they relegate Janis to an afterthought. I bought my first LP of theirs back in 1970. It was called Cold Blood and includes my all time favorite C.B. tune, I'm A Good Woman. The first 30 seconds or so of that song is so kick ass, you about fall out of your chair. That was followed by Thriller and then Sisyfus with the tremendously jazzy tune Funky On My Back. I'll never figure out why this gal and that band never got any bigger. It sure wasn't for lack of talent.

Edited July 10, 2010 by Dave James

[kenny weir]

All of the above.

This was supposed to have been a poll. All the answers, especially the correct ones, are Lydia.

Bottom line - unless you live for drama and not music, Lydia renders Joplin wholly unnecessary.

Game over, thanks for playing!

Been a long, long time since I listened to Cold Blood, but the 4-disc set of their first five albums has been on my wishlist for a while. Mainly by way of nailing down loose ends in my San Francisco interests. And I was always interested in the horn-laden aspect of the city's '60s/'70s flowering. Still am. Didn't see them when I first got there (1977), but did see a trio lineup of Stoneground at the Keystone Berkley. Great!

Can't abide Janis myself, but I think talent got her and legions more famous - but drama kept them there and made them legends ...

Elvis ... Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich for instance.

Tina Turner ... Laure Lee, Betty Harris, Shirley Brown and dozens more.

*********

Here's the personnel lineup of the Cold Blood box: Pretty cool, eh?

Bennie Maupin - Clarinet (Bass), Sax (Tenor)

Bill Atwood - Trumpet, Flugelhorn

Bill Baker - Sax (Alto), Sax (Baritone)

Bob Ferreira - Flute, Sax (Tenor)

Bobby Shew - Trumpet

Bobbye Hall - Percussion, Conga

Brenda Gordon - Vocals (Background)

Brooks Hunnicutt - Vocals (Background)

Carl Leach - Trumpet

Chepito Areas - Conga, Timbales

Chuck Bennett - Trombone

Chuck Findley - Trumpet

Coke Escovedo - Percussion, Timbales

Danny Hull - Flute, Sax (Tenor)

Danny Kootch - Guitar

David Luell - Sax (Alto), Sax (Baritone), Sax (Tenor)

David Padron - Trumpet

Don Menza - Flute, Piccolo, Sax (Tenor)

Donny Hathaway - Organ, Piano

Ernest Diridoni - Tuba

Frank J. Davis - Drums

Gaylord Birch - Drums

Gordon Messick - Trombone

Gwen Edwards - Vocals (Background)

Holly Tigard - Vocals (Background)

Jerry Jonutz - Sax (Alto), Sax (Baritone)

Jim Horn - Flute, Sax (Tenor)

Joe Williams - Drums

John Mewborn - Trumpet, Trombone (Valve)

Larry Field - Guitar

Larry Jonutz - Trombone, Trumpet

Lydia Pense - Vocals, Vocals (Background)

Max Haskett - Trumpet, Vocals, Vocals (Background)

Mel Martin - Flute, Sax (Baritone), Sax (Tenor)

Mic Gillette - Trombone, Trumpet, Flugelhorn

Michael Sasaki - Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar, Guitar (Electric)

Mick Gillette - Trumpet

Mike Andreas - Sax (Tenor)

Pat Coulter - Vocals (Background)

Pat O'Hara - Trombone

Paul Cannon - Guitar

Paul Hubinon - Trumpet

Pete Christlieb - Flute, Piccolo, Sax (Tenor)

Pete Escovedo - Conga

Peter Welker - Trumpet, Flugelhorn

Raul Matute - Organ, Piano, Keyboards, Piano (Electric), Clavinet

Rigby Powell - Trumpet

Rod Ellicott - Bass, Percussion

Sandy McKee - Percussion, Drums, Vocals

Skip Mesquite - Flute, Sax (Tenor), Vocals (Background)

Smith Dobson - Piano, Piano (Electric), Vocals (Background)

Steve Cropper - Guitar

The Memphis Horns - Horn

The Pointer Sisters - Vocals (Background)

Tish Smith - Vocals (Background)

Tommy Cathey - Bass

[Bright Moments]

love the way she belts out "your good things about to come to an end" on the sisyphus album!

[paul secor]

Derivative 1 or Derivative 2 - I'll pass on both.

[AllenLowe]

I beg to differ - Lydia Pense sounds like she's trying to sound black - I have never heard a black singer who sounded anything like Joplin, who needs to be heard both very early and very late to be heard at her (quite amazing) best. Watch the movie Festival Express for the late stuff, watch the Big Brother documentary for the early. Think what you will of her (and I like her a lot) but her idea of singing was a very original interpretation of that particular tradition.

Pense is ok but sounds, to me, like a few too many others.

Edited July 30, 2010 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

I guess we have different opinions/concepts/whatever of what "sounding black" is. I don't think that either Joplin or Pense "sound black" at all - or that either are trying to. Going into a style and trying to sound as if one is speaking as a member of a different race are two radically different concepts, and I see no indication that either woman was naive enough to think otherwise.

I do think that Joplin forced things too much for my taste, damn near always, and that Pense wasn't forced at all - and that she's gotten even more better with the passage of time. Joplin's dead, so....Game Over on that opportunity.

I've seen Festival Express (more than once, actually) and the post-Big Brother bands are a lot "better" (if not as eccentrically organic) , which makes Joplin sound "better", and I don't question her sincerity one iota, but at the end of the day, her drama is not mine, and she just doesn't sing well enough to make me want it to be.

Mileages can, will, and should vary on that one.

[Hot Ptah]

I like them both, and find much of merit in both. I don't think it needs to be an either/or thing with them.

[AllenLowe]

I agree, and there is a period of Joplin where she's working too hard - but in Festival Express she sounds like she has taken it down a notch, and it just flows beautifully.

it's funny, but I didn't like her for years, but suddenly, in the late 1990s, she just sounded right to me.

Pense is good, but I just find a certain individuality is missing, to my ears.

[JSngry]

The thing that makes Pense unique to me is the lack of, for lack of a better term, "markers" in her lines. Most white people (not just women), when they try to work in a "black idiom" (which only sometimes equates to "trying to sound black", that's a sucker's game to be sure, but lord knows the world is full of suckers...) just can't get that phrasing to flow from Point A to Point B without leaving a lot of "markers" along the way. Pense doesn't do that, never did, at least on records (which is all I know) and actually has gotten better at it over the years. In this regard, I find her very unique in her niche, very unique indeed.

That said, she doesn't "sound black", becuase her movements are far more rooted to the straight 4 time underneath her than what is popularly recognized as a "black feel" in popular music. But then again, and this is just my speculation, maybe it's the fact that she's never tried to break out of/away from that that allows her to flow so smoothly within her own zone. It's when shit gets forced that it starts to smell funny... And fwiw, anecdotally, I've known far more African-American musicians who dig Cold Blood in general (and Pense in particualr) than have dug Joplin at any point. What that proves, exactly, is....nothing. But I've hears a lot of respect for Pense from people who otherwise cut no slack towards people who have worked the same field.

Now, timbrally, no, she is not as unique as Joplin. But I would encourage anybody who is interested to revisit her work and listen to her singing for things other than timbre. It's there that her uniqueness becomes quite apparent, at least to me.

I'm become convinced that listening to singers is quite often more challenging than listening to instrumentalists. Maybe it's because I can't sing worth a damn, or maybe it's just because I've lived in an instrumental world and thought instrumentally damn near my entire life. But....I'm just sayin'...