OLD SCHOOL SMOOTH SOUNDS

OLDIES BUT GOODIES
1968
The Oldest Boomer is 22 years old.
Cost of the Average House $26,600
Median Family Income: $7,700
Minimum wage: $1.60/ hr.
Average Hourly Wage: $3.01
Monthly Rent: $130 average
New Car:
Alfa Romeo Spider: $3,950
Cadillac Elderado: $6,605
Gallon of Gasoline: 34 cents
Movies: “ 2001 : A Space Odyssey,” “Oliver!” “The Producers,” “Brabarella,” “Funny Girl,” “The Lion in Winter,” “Rachel, Rachel,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” Planet of the Apes,” “The Odd Couple.”

TV: Nixon Asks, “Sock it to me?” on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.” Elvis’s’68 Comeback special. “Adam 12,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mod Squad,” “Lancer,” “Here Come the Brides,” “60 Minutes,” “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “Julia,” “Mayberry R.F.D.,” “The Gohost and Mrs. Muir,” “Aquaman,” “Dick Cavett Show,” “Playboy After Dark,’ “The Archie Show,” “Here’s Lucy,” “Dean Martin Presents The Golddiggers,: “Land of the Giants.”
Music: “The Temptations, “ I Wish It would Rain.” Bobby Womack, “California Dreamin.” “O.C. Smith, “Little Green Apples.” “Sammy Davis Jr, “I’ Gotta Be Me.” Aretha Franklin , “Chain of Fools.”
From the book BOOMERS How We Changed The World by Richard A. Jordan

 Etta James  AT LAST     

NANCY WILSON – Satin Doll

Anita Baker Sweet Love

JERRY BUTLER  For Your Precious Love

20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of Jerry Butler

The Ice Man!

Samantha Sang – Emotion

Giving You The Best That I’ve Got

She is so Cool man! Just Beautiful, to behold and to hear.

Smithsonian

Norman Connors & Phyllis Hyman – Betcha By Golly Wow

Hyman sang with Pharoah Sanders and the Fatback Band while working on her first solo album, Phyllis Hyman, released in 1977 on the Buddah Records label. When Arista Records bought Buddha, she was transferred to that label. Her first album for Arista, Somewhere in My Lifetime, was released in 1978; the title track was produced by then-labelmate Barry Manilow. Her follow-up album, You Know How to Love Me, made the R&B Top 20 and also performed well on the club–dance charts.Hyman’s first solo Top Ten hit came in 1981 with “Can’t We Fall In Love Again”, a duet with Michael Henderson. The song was recorded while she was performing in the Broadway musical Sophisticated Ladies, a tribute to Duke Ellington. She performed in the role for almost two years, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical and winning a Theatre World Award for Best Newcomer.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

THE FOUR TOPS “ Still Waters Run Deep” (1970)
To the Bass – Jazz Hip-Hop/Urban Quiet Storm R&B/Soul Funk Fusion Crossover Jazz Jazz-Pop Contemporary Jazz Soul Jazz/Groove Jazz-Funk Smooth Jazz Hard Bop Post-Bop – Jazz                                                                     
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 Back In The Day Old School music had Smooth artists and Sounds

The Four Aces Lonely Girl;Tell Me Why; Heart of My Heart; Standing On The Corner; …THE PLATTERS… Smoke Get In Your Eyes; The Great Pretender; Twilight Time…Shep & The Limelites…Daddy Home; …Jerry Butter ;For Your Precious Love…..Luther Vandross Never Too Much…Berry White Can’t Get Enough of Your Love…Larry Graham One In A Million You…Norman Connors & Phyllis Hyman Betcha By Golly Wow…THE FOUR TOPS Still Waters Run Deep….Aretha Franklin Runnin’ Out Of Fools…MINNIE RIPERTON Loving You….Ivory Joe Hunter Almost Lost My Mind…..SAM COOKE You Send Me..Donny Hathaway A Song For You…DEAN MARTIN Blue Moon…Patti Page Tennessee Waltz….Mel Torme Bewitched…NAT KING COLE Unforgettable….. Roberta Flack First Time Ever I saw Your Face

Smooth Sound

Aretha Franklin -Day Dreaming

Bobby Womace

Minnie Riperton Loving You (1975)

Ivory Joe Hunter- Since I Met You Baby

Sam Cooke
Larry Auerbach, the William Morris agent, watched his new client perform for the patron of Club Elegante, a Brooklyn supper club that didn’t entirely live up to its name. It was next door to a cemetery, and the William Morris reps always joked among themselves, “If you die there, you don’t have too far to go.” On the other hand, it represented a first step toward the kind of broad [based acceptance that Auerbach, Bumps, and Sam had mapped out as their long –term strategy. To Auerbach there was definitely something about the kid. He might be stiff and restrained in his stage movements, he seemed to think he had to play it that way, but “he had such excitement and rhythm, “ even in a milieu with which he was almost entirely unfamiliar, he had such natural magnetism and charisma that Auerbach felt he couldn’t miss.
It was a five-day booking and Auerbach attended faithfully nearly every night and made suggestions. He felt like if he could just “loosen him up, [get him to] give some of his gospel training in his performance,” then Sam would really come across to a white audience that was looking for flash and excitement. But Sam had his own ideas, and in a way, the success that he had already enjoyed, the national exposure that he had gotten on The Ed Sullivan Show and, two weeks earlier, on January 5, with Sullivan’s Sunday rival, Steve Allen, only confirmed them.
Auerbach was as taken with the ked as anybody else. “I thought he was a sweet, innocent young guy. [not all] that outgoing but personable. The women were going to love him, obviously.” So when Sam pushed him in that nice, unassuming way to go on to the next level, and Grain, the older man whip rarely left Sam’s side and was generally so taciturn, strongly seconded Sam’s demands, against his own better judgment the William Morris agent gave in. He spoke to Sam Bramson, the old-time agent in charge of William Morris’ “variety” department, who in turn persuaded Jules Podell, the autocratic manager of the Copacabana, the midtown Manhattan nitery, to come out to Brooklyn to catch the kid’s act. When Podell, a drinking buddy of Bramston’s who almost never left his 10 East Sixtieth Street post, indicated a willingness to book Sam at the beginning March, Larry Auerbach couldn’t very well say no. He Knew Sam wasn’t ready yet, but he figured there would be time to polish the act, and it was, after all, the number [prestige booking in the country.
For Sam it was just further proof of the basic soundness of his plan. Clearly this was the time for the new Negro entertainer. While Sam was playing the Elegant, Harry Belafonte was appearing at Brooklyn’s genuinely elegant seventeen-hundred-seat Town and Country Club and carving out a leading-man movie career. Johnny Mathis, “the young man with the golden voice,” had two albums on the bestselling pop charts, had sung the title song for a major motion picture, Wild is the Wind and was headlining at the Crescendo in Hollywood. Even Johnny Nash, a clean-cut seventeen-year old regular on Arthur Godfrey Time, was currently enjoying a Top 40 hit with a ballad sound very much in the vein of Sam and Mathis. It was a matter, Sam explained to L.C., of not appearing too threatening. That was why he had cut his hair. If you had all that slick stuff in your stuff in your hair, he told his brother (who continued to cling to his up-swept process), the white man was going to think you were slick, he wouldn’t trust you around his daughter. “But when they see me,” he said, “I’m the perfect American boy. That’s all they can say about me.” At a time when fellow performers were naming their process (there was the “Quo Vadis,” Dee Clark” for the movie star Clark Gable), Sam was wearing his hair in a modified crew-cut, close-cropped and “natural,” brushed up in front. And he was establishing a new life for himself, along with the new look.

The Triumph of Sam Cooke DREAM BOOGIE  by Peter Guralnick

Great History, Great Read, real cool and down.

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Classic Crooners: A Romantic Collection of Original Recordings

LUTHER VANDROSS- A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME

Donny Hathaway -A Song for You (1972)

JOHNNY MATHIS Maria, A Certain Smile…Lou Rawls Your Don’t Miss Your Water, Feel Like Making Love…..NAT KING COLE Honey Suckle Rose ; Sweet Lorraine..Tom Jones Rain’ In My Heart…ANDY WILLIAMS Moon River; Born Free

“Everyone should make two fortunes- one to blow and one for old age.”

Jackie Gleason

 

“The wise person understands that his own happiness must include the happiness of others.”

Dennis Weaver

What a Difference a Day Makes  Dinah Washington

Dinah’s disk of ‘What a Difference a Day Makes’ did cross over into the mainstream [It entered the pop charts on June 14, 1959], climbed to # 9 on Billboard’s pop Honor Roll of Hits, and finished in the “Top 50 Hot Disks of the Year’ at the same time that Dinah won a Grammy for the Best R & B Record of 1959. From the [on]’ while maintaining her black following, she was recognized as a top mainstream artist.

From the book Queen of the Blues – A Biography of – Dinah Washington

by Jim Haskins

It was indeed all about hit records no, and it had been some time since Dinah had had a record in the top ten. In fact, “Tears and Laughter,” which entered the charts on February 5, 1962, was, at number ten, Dinah’s last top-ten record. All subsequent releases that made the charts were only in the top twenty. And when “t” wasn’t about records, it was about exposure on TV. Back in 1953, Dinah could have a hit with a wryly comical song called “TV Is the Thing (This Year),” which expressed the opinion of many people that television was a passing fad that wouldn’t last. Less than twenty years later, TV was the thing, period, and old-timers like Dinah had a hard time adjusting to lip-syncing for the cameras. “My last memory of her was, I think seeing her on American Bandstand,” says Patti Austin. “She was singing the last record she made with Brook Benton- I think it was Broken Hearted Melody- and she went on and lip-synced the record. At that time I hadn’t seen her in about two years, and she never, ever, matched the record- not once did my girl hit the lyrics- and I remember being so disillusioned. This is my hero, and she can’t even lip-sync her own record! How long could it take to do this-three times in front of a mirror? I remembered her being very professional all the time, and that really disillusioned me, because by that time I was making my own records and lip-syncing my own record. It was like, Come on, you’re my godmother, don’t do this in public!” Young Patti Austin, who’d practically grown up lip-syncing for television, did not understand how hard it was for a performer who’s sung live for thirty years to do so. The lack of spontaneity was just not Dinah’s style. She hated “mouthing,” as she called it, and knew that she did it badly. “I never sing a song the same way twice. The lyrics always change a bit. There’s always a fluff,” she had confessed to a Toronto reporter in 1959. Patti Austin’s awareness, now, of how the changes in the music industry cumulated during her own long career in the music industry. She was not close to Dinah Washington at this time. “We just stopped hearing from her. I think she felt that she had done all she could do, which she did-and more. And all of it was above and beyond the call of duty, and if it had not been for her, I would not be doing any of what I am doing now. Maybe it would have happened from somewhere else, but she was the reason that I am in the industry.”
From the book Queen of the Blues a Biography of Dinah Washington by Jim Haskins This book is revealing, down to earth, real cool.

Johnny Mathis Duet with Deniece Williams

Baby come to me  Patti Austin and James Ingram

                                                                                                 Patti Page – Tennessee Waltz

Mel Torme’ Betwitched ( 1950)

REAL SMOOT

In the 1940s and 1950s, women swooned over Billy Eckstine’s champagne voice and dashing good looks. Devoted fans turned out to see him in record numbers at nightclubs and theaters, and, in huge numbers, they routinely purchased his wildly popular recordings

Billy Eckstein & Sarah Vaughn

Billy “Mr. B” Eckstine, best known as a singer, led and orchestra that, at various times, included Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Tadd Mameron, Lucky Thompson, and Dexter Gordon.

Luciano Pavarotti & Lucio Dalla  Caruso

Pavarotti & Barry White – My First, My Last, My Everything

Arthur Prysock “Close Your Eyes”

What does the term old school make you think about?
James Ingram and Patty Austin “Baby Come to Me”

The Eloquence of Miss Nancy Wilson

Smooth Jazz Tribute to Luther Vandross

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