{"id":650,"date":"2011-11-21T04:58:52","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T09:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=650"},"modified":"2011-11-21T04:58:52","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T09:58:52","slug":"album-review-shirley-brown-woman-to-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/11\/21\/album-review-shirley-brown-woman-to-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Shirley Brown – Woman to Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHello? May I speak to Barbara?\u201d With that ominous spoken intro, Shirley Brown kicked off the hit song (#22 pop, #1 R&B in 1974) \u201cWoman to Woman.\u201d The album to capitalize on that success was also titled Woman to Woman<\/em>, and featured the hit plus nine other tracks (including the minor R&B hit \u201cIt Ain\u2019t No Fun\u201d). With able support from Stax sessioners (Duck Dunn<\/strong> and Al Jackson<\/strong> from the MGs<\/strong>, plus guitarist Bobby Manuel<\/strong> and Marvell Thomas<\/strong> on piano), Brown delivered her smooth and soulful vocals.<\/p>\n

Stax founder Jim Stewart<\/strong> produced the session (a rare occurrence by this point in Stax\u2019s history), and the songs were provided mostly by house writers. Reliably evocative brass and string arrangements give Woman to Woman<\/em> an unmistakably Memphis feel: that\u2019s The Memphis Horns<\/strong> and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra<\/strong>, so what else could one expect?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a subtle Caribbean flavor on \u201cLong As You Love Me,\u201d vaguely reminiscent of Johnny Nash<\/strong>\u2019s 1972 monster hit \u201cI Can See Clearly Now.\u201d The understated slow-jam \u201cStay With Me Baby\u201d successfully folds gospel elements into a sexy number. The proto-disco vibe of \u201cI Can\u2019t Give You Up\u201d sounds like a hit, and the sultry \u201cBetween You And Me\u201d serves up some stirring strings to back its Shaft<\/em>-y guitar and funky electric keyboard work.<\/p>\n

The 2011 Concord remaster (the original was issued \u00a0<\/span>on Stax imprint Truth Records) appends five bonus tracks, and while Brown is in fine form on the album-proper \u2013 specially on her soaring, gospel-inflected vocals near the end of \u201cIt Ain\u2019t No Fun\u201d \u2013 the real undiscovered gems here are the bonus cuts. Almost certainly dating prior to Woman to Woman<\/em>, four of the five bonus tracks are from a session that finds Brown covering Aretha Franklin<\/strong> to winning effect. It\u2019s especially interesting to hear her reading of \u201cRespect,\u201d successfully combining the female vocal style of Aretha\u2019s version with an updated take on Otis Redding<\/strong>\u2019s original via unknown Stax sessioners. \u201cRock Steady\u201d is a departure: a funk jam with some especially tasty bass work. The track suggests that Brown could have easily pursued a different direction with equal success. And the reissue\u2019s sole previously-unreleased track, a slow, bluesy reading of Stevie Wonder<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cSigned, Sealed, Delivered, I\u2019m Yours\u201d weds Brown\u2019s talking-intro formula to the classic, creating something wholly original in the process.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, though Brown long ago left Stax (well, Stax left itself), these days she remains active, purveying a winning style that hasn\u2019t really changed all that much in the ensuing thirty-five years. Some of that credit must go to Frederick Knight<\/strong>, composer of \u201cIt Ain\u2019t No Fun\u201d and writer of some tracks on her most recent outing (2009\u2019s Unleashed<\/em>). But in the end it\u2019s Brown\u2019s distinctive no-nonsense heartfelt delivery that is the enduring hallmark of her work.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHello? May I speak to Barbara?\u201d With that ominous spoken intro, Shirley Brown kicked off the hit song (#22 pop, #1 R&B in 1974) \u201cWoman to Woman.\u201d The album to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}