Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
I watched the TV with horror. George Floyd, an African-American man in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was being killed in front of the camera. I retreated to the listening room. In what couldn’t have been a coincidence, the Roon app’s “Discover” function had recommended I play What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye’s groundbreaking album, released in 1971 by Motown subsidiary Tamla.
I first heard this album when, at the start of my professional career as a bass guitarist, I was driving to a gig in Wales, playing the cassette in my car. I have always found that listening to music alone in the car is an immersive experience. Despite the background noise and the lack of fidelity, you can focus your attention on the meaning of the music in ways that aren’t always possible among the distractions of domestic life.
Despite the presence of Motown session stalwarts like bassist James Jamerson, this album, with its meandering string lines, bubbling bass, reverb-drenched percussion, and monochromatic backing vocals, sounded very different from a classic Motown recording. But as Gaye’s high tenor floated above the instrumental backing, asking what’s happening brother and who really cares, and declaring that this was such a bad way to live and that the night will bring the pains, I was drawn into the album’s message of hope, reinforced by the title song’s verses being in a major key: True love can conquer hate.
Fast-forward six months. I was overnighting in England’s North East and the morning after the gig, our drummer, Charley Charles (footnote 1), set up his portable record player in the hotel’s lounge and put on an album. The song was again “What’s Going On,” but Marvin Gaye wasn’t singing it. This man’s voice floated above a hypnotic beat, and after the verses, a series of improvisations and modulations led to a plaintive coda. This was it.
The album was Donny Hathaway’s Live, released on Atlantic in 1972, which I now own as 24/192 FLAC files from Acoustic Sounds. I knew Hathaway’s name from “Where Is the Love” with Roberta Flack, which had been a recent hit. What I didn’t know was that he was an inventive keyboard player: Live, recorded at L.A.’s Troubadour and NY’s Bitter End clubs, features Hathaway on Wurlitzer electric piano, with an empathetic band capable of laying down deep grooves. Shout-outs to Earl DeRouen, who’d played percussion on Marvin Gaye’s album and is featured on congas on Hathaway’s “The Ghetto,” and the incomparable bassist Willie Weeks, who solos in “Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything).” For weeks after my first listen to Live, musician friends would call and ask if I’d heard Weeks’s funk-infused solo.
Another six months passed. I was driving to Wales again for another gig, this time with a different band, and drummer Alan Eden (footnote 2) had inserted a cassette in the player. Again, I found myself listening to “What’s Going On.” This time it was neither Marvin Gaye nor Donny Hathaway but bandleader and arranger Quincy Jones, from his Smackwater Jack album, released on A&M in 1971 and produced by Phil Ramone.
From Ray Brown’s double-bass groove at the track’s start through Chuck Rainey’s electric bass underpinning in the verses, the Smackwater Jack treatment of “What’s Going On” doesn’t so much play down Gaye’s message as use it as a vehicle for a series of virtuosic improvisations. First are solos from flute (Hubert Laws) and flugelhorn (Freddie Hubbard) over swinging “straight fours” in the bass and drums, which lead through guitar doubled by whistling (Toots Thielemans) then vibes (Milt Jackson), both over the original beat, followed by guitar (Jim Hall) over straight fours again, and culminating in a breathtaking transcription for violin of a Thielemans harmonica solo that still raises goose bumps all these years later.
All three of these albums have been in heavy rotation for decades, but I’d always wondered why Gaye hadn’t made the song’s title a question. I now understand, belatedly, that it wasn’t a question but a statement of the reality faced by so many Americans at the end of the 1960s, and sadly, almost five decades later, still faced by them today. Until my adopted country (footnote 3) has rejected its original sin, Gaye’s, Hathaway’s, and Jones’s plea, “You know we’ve got to find a way / To bring some lovin’ here today,” will remain unanswered and unfulfilled.
Footnote 1: A wonderfully inventive drummer, Charles was to find fame with Ian Dury and the Blockheads. He passed away in 1990.
Footnote 2: Alan went on to tour for many years with singer Leo Sayer. Still active, he plays with British rockabilly trio Rockin’ the Joint.
Footnote 3: Although I was born and raised in the UK, I fell in love with the USA at the beginning of the 1960s when I was exposed to Elvis, Buddy Holly, and JFK. I became a US citizen in 2003.
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