Turn again, my daughters, go your way
Morning Mixtape, Vol. 1
Here are some songs for y’all this morning. If you’re logged in to Spotify (including a free account), you should be able to hear all the tracks below in full. Let me know if you’re having an issue.
Some connective tissue here but not a strict theme, just some voices jostling around the last week hunkering down with the fam. Perhaps you went wild Saturday night, perhaps not. But it is quiet and light now, a new day. It feels like Sunday morning, still. If you want to take it easy, maybe these voices will jostle you, too—some sisters, mothers, cousins, daughters, and friends for all the mornings after. Whither thou goest, I will go.
Track list and liner notes
Irma Thomas – “Take a Look”
Two Gospel Keys – “You’ve Got to Move”
Urgent shuffle of Church of God in Christ singing on display here with Emma Daniels and Mother Sally Jones, itinerant street singers originally from Atlanta but recorded in New York.1 This is one of the earlier recorded versions of this Black spiritual, likely recorded in 1946 and released in around 1948, a couple years before Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s version.2
Lijadu Sisters – “Erora”
This song hypnotizes me. Nigerian identical twin sisters Kehinde and Taiwo Lijadu were 1970s Afrobeat legends. They moved to the U.S. in the 1990s and were living together in Harlem when Kehinde passed away in November 2019. Check out these interview/rehearsal clips of the twins at their peak.
Sammi Smith – “This Room for Rent”
Underrated talent in the Outlaw Country crew (Waylon Jennings called her “Girl Hero”). This is an all-timer performance. Kind of a slinky, dead-eyed “The Grand Tour.” One of my favorite songs from a killer country soul vocalist.
Dusty Springfield – “No Easy Way Down”
Hayedah – “Soghati”
One of the biggest songs in Persian pop music history. Hayedah began with traditional Persian music before branching out to pop in the 1970s. The phrasing and texture in her voice is remarkable; she has an absolute genius for melodrama. She fled Iran shortly before the Islamic Revolution—which banned women singing solo in public—and lived in the U.K. and then the U.S., where she died in exile in 1990. “Soghati” means souvenir.
Linda Ronstsadt “(Up to My Neck in) High Muddy Water”
Speaking of genius performers in the melodramatic tradition, here’s Linda Ronstadt in her country-hippie phase.
Susana Baca – “Maria Lando”
I was introduced to Susana Baca and this song via the 1995 Afro-Peruvian Classics: The Soul of Black Peru compilation. There is something about it. All of Baca’s music is recommended.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Marie Knight, Sam Price Trio – “Up Above My Head I Hear Music in the Air”
Helene Smith – “I Am Controlled By Your Love”
B-side for Miami soul singer’s 1966 45 “Thrills & Chills.”
Karen Dalton – “Reason to Believe
Velly Joonas – “Kaes On Aeg”
Estonian musician and artist with groovy vibrations from behind the Iron Curtain. This was recorded sometime between 1980 and 1983.
Plains – “Problem With It”
This is the only new song on the list. Plains is a duo project with Jess Williamson and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. If you like Waxahatchee, as I do, you will like this. If not, you won’t.
Shira Small – “Eternal Life”
In 1974, Shira Small made a record, The Line of Time and The Plane of Now, as her senior project in high school. She grew up in East Harlem, but then attended a Quaker boarding school in Newtown, Pennsylvania. All 500 copies of the record were given to students and faculty of Newton’s George School.3 Strange, earnest folk-psych. Recommended. Hat tip Chances with Wolves, ep. 101.
The Roches – “Losing True”
New Jersey blood harmony, my spirit guides.
Malvina Reynolds – “I Don’t Mind Failing”
The song of hers you definitely know is “Little Boxes,” made famous by her pal Pete Seeger. She was born in 1900, an old-school folk singer and activist. In addition to her protest songs, she also wrote children’s songs, including for “Sesame Street.” She made her acting debut at age 72 on “Sesame Street,” playing Kate the folk singer.4
Nico – “I’ll Keep it With Mine”
Jean Ritchie – “Barbara Allen”
Their thumping version of the traditional “Can’t No Grave Hold My Body Down” is great and may have inspired the white Pentecostal preacher Brother Claude Ely’s “There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down” (though Ely family lore has it that he wrote his own version). In any event, Ely’s “Ain’t No Grave” performance is an American masterpiece. Ely also recorded a rollicking rendition of “You’ve Got to Move” in 1953. I wrote at length about Ely and “Ain’t No Grave” for the Oxford American a few years back.
The Willing Four recorded a version in 1944 in a classic gospel quartet style, the first recording I’m aware of. Worth a listen. They were out of Chicago, where this buttoned-up Baptist style was especially popular, an urban gloss on Southern roots music. I associate the movement in “You’ve Got to Move” with the physicality of the holy rollers in the COGIC/Pentecostal communities, so it’s interesting to hear it slowed all the way down in this more formal interpretation. Mississippi Fred McDowell recorded his blues version (“You Gotta Move”) in 1965, which inspired the Rolling Stones cover version in 1971 on Sticky Fingers. Meanwhile, the folklorist Ruby Pickens Tartt wrote down the lyrics for “You got ter move” as part of her WPA fieldwork in Sumter County, Alabama, in the 1930s. Wish we could hear what she heard!
She didn’t mind fading into obscurity. In a later interview she said, “I was such a flotation device, going with every single flow. I would’ve self-destructed.”
Reynolds died before I was born but I wish I could have met her and made her my honorary auntie. Mostly you can tell why that is from her songs, but also…I came across this a few years back, and I just love her: “I have a very acid edge toward many aspects of modern life, and I’m pretty outspoken about it,” she said at a workshop for children’s music in 1977. “I don’t mind crossing swords with people when I disagree with them, and I’m not your nice old grandma. However, I always make it clear that the reason I have this sharp cutting edge is because I do care for people. I care about children, and I think the world is ripping them off, taking away their natural environment and much more than that—the natural progression of their tradition—and leaving them stripped, uneasy, uncomfortable, and in deep trouble. And it’s because of that that I’m so sharp.”