#717: Junior Walker is God!

...OK, well, maybe he's not THAT great, but most of the songs on Junior Walker and the All-Stars' ESSENTIAL COLLECTION are excellent upbeat mid-'60s R&B/party music, some of the best and most motivational stuff I've heard in months. This coming in right after THE VERY BEST OF BOOKER T AND THE MG'S made September a pretty good music month for me.
Course I bought the CD just so I could hear Junior's "Take Me Girl, I'm Ready" again for the first time since 1971 -- and it's OK, not a letdown. The shock was that practically everything else on the CD is BETTER....
I already knew about "Shotgun," a Top 5 hit for Motown back in 1965 -- but nearly all the rest of ESSENTIAL COLLECTION I hadn't heard before. So if you're looking for some back-to-basics motivational R&B with some excellent sax, ESSENTIAL COLLECTION will Do The Job.
"I'm a Road Runner" lays out Junior's basic approach -- direct, no-nonsense R&B riffs with some good gruff sax and Junior's all-purpose shout/scream to keep things moving. In the same high-quality nothing-but-fun vein are "I Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Pucker Up Buttercup," "Anyway You Wannta," "Nothing But Soul," and "Shake and Fingerpop." Some of these went Top 40, some are real solid B-sides.
"Probe Your Mind" expands the sound just a bit, into jazzier areas. "Moody Junior" is pretty good stuff too -- if you can get past the show-offy piano in the opening, which keeps trying to turn the tune into that old crooner's standard "The Impossible Dream."
I admit some of the later tracks are just a bit too mellow-soulful for me, if you know what I mean. But even the trendy early-'70s "Right On Brothers and Sisters" is tolerable, and a couple of the other later tracks aren't offensive, even if the energy level is down just a bit. I have yet to play all of Junior's version of "Urgent" -- though his sax on Foreigner's original was the only thing that made that song worth hearing. I'm also gonna have to play "What Does it Take (To Win Your Love)," which I see also went Top 5. Junior's version of "How Sweet it is (To be Loved by You)" is even lamer than James Taylor's.
So: 13 listenable tracks out of 18, value for money as far as I'm concerned. And test plays at work have confirmed that the best stuff will Keep You Moving. Audience reaction to this and THE VERY BEST OF BOOKER T has also been positive, with several customers commenting that it was good to come into the store and hear some good happy-music playing again.
For me, old R&B is about the only thing that's been able to keep me moving at work lately, so much so that I hauled in all the old Motown, R&B & early-'70s Soul stuff I had at home, hoping it would keep me going through the past week. & it worked pretty well. I'm to the point now that I've started to like The Contours' "Do You Love Me?" just for the energy level, plus I played old stand-bys like '60s Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, The Spinners, Sly, and my comedy buddies Parliament -- "P-Funk" and "Dr. Funkenstein" keep me laughin' while I'm movin'. And that's gotta be a good thang....
Is this any way for a white kid from Idaho to act...?

The Record Store Book is now past 57,000 words, and I am STILL coming up with new stuff to toss into it. Closing in on that magic 60,000-word/200+ pages figure that I hope to hit. Still have yet to re-read the whole thing -- got 10 pages into it last week before I had to take a break due to work, and by the time I got back to it I had new stuff to add. Though I hate it, so far my work schedule has forced enough breaks to keep me fairly fresh so I don't get too bogged-down in the book to be able to see it.
Old friends should hereby be warned that practically EVERYTHING I can remember from 1978-82 has somehow found its way into the book -- it's now more a memoir than a lightly-fictionalized tale from my past.
In short: It's still working and I'll keep you posted....

NEWS: King Crimson biographer Sid Smith's POSTCARDS FROM THE YELLOW ROOM website and DGM LIVE have both announced that King Crimson has reformed as a 7-piece band with three drummers and is looking toward touring in the fall of 2014.
Announced members of the band include longtime KC guitarist/lynchpin Bob Fripp, bassist Trey Gunn, drummer Pat Mastelotto, early-'70s KC member and longtime session-musician saxophonist Mel Collins, and singer/second guitarist Jakko Jackzyk. Longtime guitarist Adrian Belew is not a member of the announced band and reportedly was not asked to join....
As someone who saw the Crims live in Seattle in 2003, I think it's too bad Belew wasn't invited to take part. He was a solid frontman and he contributed a ton of great lyrics and lots of cool guitar to KC since 1980. But he & Fripp have reportedly had their clashes in the past....