BOBBY WOMACK: COMMUNICATION (1971)
1) Communication; 2) Come
L'Amore; 3) Fire And Rain; 4) (If You Don't Want My Love) Give It Back; 5) Monologue
/ (They Long To Be) Close To You; 6) Everything Is Beautiful; 7) That's The Way
I Feel About Cha; 8) Yield Not To Temptation.
Although his previous records were hardly the
epitome of commercial success, fate still smiled on Bobby and got him a nice
promotion in the early 1970s — for his next record contract, Womack was
rewarded with United Artists, and a possibility to record with the cream of the
crop: the regular team at Muscle Shoals. Not that his older band was worth any
serious criticism, but they were kind
of old-fashioned, and in 1970, whether you were black or white, you had to
change and adapt, or be ready to go down.
That same year, Bobby also played guitar on Sly
& The Family Stone's There's A Riot
Goin' On, learning how to behave in a hotter, crazier, funkier environment,
and the results are immediately obvious on the very first track of his new
album: ʽCommunicationʼ is a sleazy, steaming guitar groove that could be very
easily mistaken for a mating call, if the lyrics did not explicitly refer to the
idea of improving social relations through the power of communication and
mutual trust (well, on the other hand, one does not necessarily exclude the
other). Wah-wah riffage, distorted wailing leads, brass fanfare, Bobby at his
screeching best (still a few notches below James Brown, but a decent substitute
in case of need) — if this is a graduate exam in Funk School, I'd give senior
student Robert Dwayne Womack a solid A, hold the plus for disciplinary reasons.
In general, however, Communication cannot be pigeonholed as a «funk album». Apart from the
opening track, everything else is much more traditional: smooth, non-syncopated
mid-tempo R&B grooves alternating with slow soulful ballads. As it always
happens with Bobby, tracks are regularly loaded with small surprises, but
«small surprises» are not «major stylistic revolutions»; the general difference
is really in the backing band, which always seems on the verge of launching into
something different, but in the end, stays where Bobby wants them to stay. On
ʽGive It Backʼ, for instance, they fiddle and fuss around for about ten
seconds, even starting out with the first bar of ʽBaby Please Don't Goʼ (that
might actually be Bobby himself), then straighten out for the album's
second-funkiest, but still «lite-dance-funk»-oriented groove.
The biggest hit from the album, and the song
that genuinely restored Bobby's name on the chart of public conscience, was
ʽThat's The Way I Feel About Chaʼ, a credible, but not particularly
outstanding, love anthem whose major point of attraction might not even be the
vocal melody and the repetitive chorus, but the melodic lead parts played by
Jimmy Johnson, who does not get to have an instrumental break, but still takes
the opportunity to solo all the way alongside Bobby's singing. This adventurous
approach from the Muscle Shoals people is certainly an improvement over the
competent and devoted, but not too initiative-oriented, style of Bobby's
Memphis band.
In a particularly risky and bold approach, the
man allocates almost ten minutes of Side B to an extended version of ʽClose To
Youʼ, the first half of which is actually given to a half-spoken, half-hummed
«monologue» in which Bobby apologizes
to his audience for going «commercial» — quite an apt thing to do on a cover of
a Burt Bacharach song that had just been turned into a monster hit for The
Carpenters. With this cover, Bobby sets out to illustrate the major point of
the monologue — that «music is music», and that, no matter what sort of
material you sing or play, what really matters is the amount of soul you put
into it.
To be honest, I am not sure that he is
completely right on the issue — in fact, I'd probably take the slick,
straight-jacketed Carpenters version of the song, pre-packaged and calculated
as it is, over Bobby's sincere attempt to «ruffle» it up here and make it live
and breathe. You can't really bring the stillborn back to life — you can stuff
the stillborn and make it into an imposing, eerie waxwork, but you can't make
it walk and talk, and ʽClose To Youʼ is one of those songs I'd rather hear as
stiff and mechanical, because they are more memorable that way. Still, at the
very least, Bobby's stance makes sense, and it is curious and instructive to
hear him cover the song the way he does it. Whatever be, these nine and a half
minutes are not wasted.
Without discussing the other songs (most are
covers of not particularly strong material, and it is not clear if you will
ever really need yet another individualistic
version of James Taylor's ʽFire And Rainʼ), I will simply conclude that Communication is an uneven, but curious
and rewarding «transitional» album, worthy of its thumbs up but not quite on the same
level with the stuff that would follow. The most important thing about it is
that the shift to a major label had not, in any way, silenced or muted the
individual voice of Bobby Womack — on the contrary, just like Marvin Gaye and
Stevie Wonder at about the same time, the man's primary concern always rests on
one crucial issue: how to remain inside the machine without turning into a part
of the machine. He does not exactly resolve
that issue — Communication has its
fair share of «genericity» — but he is willing to give it a bigger try than
ever before.
Check "Communication" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Communication" (MP3) on Amazon
"the results are immediately obvious"
ReplyDeleteYup. While I find the earlier WB songs very bland this one (Communication) rules, especially the popping bass. Quite a few black artists tried to kick ate least as much ass as the white usual suspects in Britain.