A musical find

I missed the bus.  Ever since 1972, I missed the bus.

Last week, SaphireBear invited me to rummage in her old vinyl collection and see if there was any of it I’d like to rip to CD, so I went and looked, and sure enough there were ten or so albums I either didn’t have any longer or somehow hadn’t ever got round to buying, plus a few that I vaguely recognized and wondered about, so I pulled them out and brought them home.

Most of what I pulled was worth the media to burn it, with the exception of  the Dead’s Shakedown Street, which is truly just as bad as its rep, but in the middle of the bunch I found one album that blew me away:  Bill Withers’s Still Bill.  I absolutely don’t know why he wasn’t as big as Marvin Gaye or Al Green or James Brown, ’cos he had as much talent as any of them, better songwriting skills than any of them, and a label and producer who knew what to do with what they had.

This is jaw-dropping soul/funk crossover we’re talking about:  a gritty, punchy groove and lyrics that hit dead center.  Probably most of you remember the singles that came from this album, “Use Me” and “Lean On Me,” but every single track on here is just as good as those two.  I can’t say enough good things about it, and neither can any of the people at RYM who wrote reviews of it, either.  No one understands why he wasn’t a superstar.

Man, far’s I’m concerned, every other album in the bunch could have been a dud (they weren’t; see my prior entry about Elton John), and this record by itself would have made the whole thing worth my while.  Now I’m jonesin’ to find his other two studio albums on the Sussex label, Just as I Am and +’Justments.  The way this man got neglected is just a shame.

Red Edward celebrated the Sand Island of the parallelogram.  Fnord.