Charles Wright Article
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usually only read the OC Register for the Fry's ads, but saw this on there today: http://www.ocregister.com/news/charles-wright-rb-1842082-express-yourselfSong of the soul manCharles Wright's 'Express Yourself' hit big in the '70s, then faded. The first of two partsBy PETER LARSENThe Orange County RegisterYou're the son of a Mississippi sharecropper back in Jim Crow days ??? that's the blues.You grow up with 13 brothers and sisters in a run-down closed-down funeral home in Clarksdale. By the city dump, a pig pen and the railroads. That's the blues, too.But the blues is resilient. It's about "keepin' on a-keepin' on" when times are hard and the road uncertain, which is pretty much how Charles Wright lived his life.After earning his birthright to the blues, Wright found his musical gift as a teenager singing doo-wop in Los Angeles in the '50s. With an upside-down-and-backward electric guitar he made sweet soul music in the '60s.And with the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, scored some funky success as that decade turned into the '70s, with hits such as "Do Your Thing," "Spreadin' Honey" and "Loveland."And always, soaring above all the rest, "Express Yourself," with its unforgettable loping bass line and exhortations to do just what the title says.It's a song that you know ??? even if you don't know that you know it. It's been used to sell Burger King Whoppers, dinners at Red Lobster, Hanes underwear, Gatorade and Botox. It's been used to set the mood in movies such "Remember the Titans," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and "Yours, Mine and Ours." It even shows up on the soundtrack of the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."Not that many years ago, though, it looked like the music industry had turned its back on Wright and all the music that he'd made, leaving the almost-always-upbeat man beaten down and ready to call it quits.Until hip-hop, in a roundabout way, saved his life.The opening bars of this story ring out in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues, where iconic musicians such as Son House and John Lee Hooker got their starts, and Bessie Smith met her maker.It's where Charles Wright was born, where he somehow managed to grow up without much exposure to the hometown sound."The man who was the landowner, he had somehow convinced my father that the blues was the devil's music," says Wright, now of Fullerton, when asked about how much his birthplace had shaped his future career. "My grandmother lived across the street from Muddy Waters ??? occasionally I got to hear Muddy Waters rehearse ??? but that was about all I got out of living there."It was a hard life, and one day, after seeing the good life a daughter enjoyed in Los Angeles, Wright's mom announced she was taking the younger kids and moving west.At 12 years old, Wright and half his family caught a train heading for Union Station.In Los Angeles, Wright found a new world of rhythm and blues on the radio. Jesse Belvin was a hometown star, and after finding his number in the phone book, the teenager called him up."I told him, ???Mr. Belvin, you sing so beautiful, I want to sing just like you!' " Wright says. "He said, ???Get your own style, boy, and leave me the (bleep) alone!' "But Belvin eventually let him hang around rehearsals at his house, and eventually, Wright scored a local hit of his own, "Eternally," by the TwilightersIn the '60s, he went to work as an A&R man for Del-Fi Records for a few years, practiced his unorthodox guitar-style ??? a left-hander, he plays the guitar upside down without changing the order of the strings ??? and eventually decided to form a new group, a soul group he called Charles Wright and the Wright Sounds.Comedian Bill Cosby and a record producer named Fred Smith showed up at their show one day, Wright says, and soon after invited them to back Cosby on his debut musical album and later concerts.Smith came up with a new name ??? the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band ??? and Warner Brothers signed them, looking smart when "Do Your Thing" sold more than a million singles and reached No. 11 on the charts in 1969.It was that song, Wright says, that led to their biggest hit."We were performing ???Do Your Thing' at Texas A&M and it came to an abrupt end," he says. "And they're stomping and cheering, so something made me say, ???Express yourself!' And I just kept saying it."I went to the hotel that night and started writing it, and by 12 o'clock the next day I had finished it."It's a loose, funky, upbeat vibe, like a band playing at a party ??? and his band wanted nothing to do with it."I brought it to the horn player, and he said, ???Man, we don't want to play that (stuff),' " Wright says.On the single released in 1970, Wright plays guitar with Melvin Dunlap on the bouncing bass line and James Gadson on the drums. It reached No. 12 on the charts, got a Grammy nomination ??? and contributed to the end of the group, Wright says."Even though they never thought it was a hit, when it came they got the big head and started saying they were responsible for it," Wright says of the egos of some band members after the song came out."Its success caused the band to come apart."Time passed and though Wright continued to make music, the rewards ??? and the royalties ??? got smaller and smaller as the '70s and '80s unfolded.Down-hearted and a little bitter at where he was, Wright told his wife, Eva, he was thinking it was time to give up music and get a real job for the first time in his life. She worked at a Hollywood bank and knew a guy who owned a trucking company that might be hiring.Wright called him up, told him his name, said he'd been a musician but now needed a steady job."And he said: ???Are you the real Charles Wright? Man, I can't give you this job.'"I said, ???I need this job,' " Wright says, describing his effort to convince the man he was done with music. "He says, ???I'm not going to let you drive a truck.'"So I got fired before I got hired."To be continued ... i'll post the other part when it shows up
Comments
"I went to the hotel that night and started writing it, and by 12 o'clock the next day I had finished it."
How about that, there's a TX connection to the song.
Yeah I thought it odd as well.
Nor was there mention about any of his time spent as a studio musician.
How are you not going to mention Dyke and the Blazers?
I thought it had been proven already that this band was unrelated to the Watts Band...
Was it supposed to have?
I'm a fan of that minutiae too, but you're forgetting - Wright had a career of his own. It's not like his story stops and starts with the sessions he played for other people. Yeah, they glossed over his session musician days, but then again, I don't judge Lou Rawls by the fact that he's singing on a couple of Sam Cooke hits. So why should a Charles Wright article hinge on Little Caesar & the Romans?
For a general-interest newspaper, the story looks good so far.
When he's not playing on them, that's how. (I think there were other Watts Band members on those records - plus Leon Haywood on organ - but from what I've heard, Charles Wright himself wasn't on those records. I stand corrected if that is so, but I've read that it isn't.)
They were most definitely the same band. Remember "Spreadin Honey"? It was a Soul Runners 45 and also a song featured on the first Watts 103rd album.
There's considerable confusion over who discovered who. From what I've read - and this may be incorrect - the Soul Runners needed a vocalist and Fred Smith (who lead the SR) discovered Wright. Other people state that it was the other way around but I'm inclined to believe that the core musicians, who were a part of the Watts 103rd, had already had a prolific recording career - as the Soul Runners, as members of the Dyke/Blazers studio band - prior to Wright joining on as a vocalist. The timeline around the name change gets muddled however.
I'm not suggesting the article had to hinge on this but since the author is pulling details - equally obscure - from Wright's past, it would seem relevant to spare all of a sentence to note that his band was one of the more storied collections of talent in Los Angeles funk history. The way this article makes it sound, it's as if Wright created or discovered the Watts Band when, really, I'm pretty sure it's the inverse.
I can't even be certain Wright is on the first 103rd St. Band album (but it doesn't have a personnel listing unlike their later albums). His name doesn't lead the band until the "Express Yourself" album which was the group's fourth album if I'm not mistaken.
Also, and this might be a nitpick, but the article makes it sound like the group broke up after "Express Yourself" but it doesn't mention that they, as a group, put out "You're So Beautiful" as an album a year after "Express Yourself."
I mean, can one talk about "Sex Machine" and James Brown and NOT talk about the Pacesetters' evolution into the original JBs?
Maybe you're thinking of the *other* Soul Runners, who have the 45 "Green Thumb"/"What Can I Say" on Patches records. They had nothing to do with the Grits N Cornbread Soul Runners, who were the pre-Watts band.
My copy of it is credited to the Watts 103rd... and is a single on Keyman. Supposedly Bobby Womack is playing guitar on this track.
The liner notes on that Wright/Watts best-of skips the Soul Runners' thing altogether, saying that Charles Wright led the Wright Sounds and kept adding musicians as time went on. Who knows? Just the mere fact that (a) Fred Smith is the only member (was he?) pictured on the back cover of album #1, and (b) "Spreadin' Honey" was later recycled as "Patchwork" by Society's Bag on Warner Bros. (around '71, I'm guessing) lets us know that the Watts Band had mysterious origins.
And I seem to recall reading (in a '93 or '94 ish of Goldmine) that the Dyke tracks with Watts Band members on them would have been around '68 or '69. By which time Wright and the Watts Band would have been off and rolling.
Myself, I always assumed that the band kept working sessions even during their hit heyday. Seems like no two Watts Band had the same lineup, and there's a couple of album sleeves where there are more members pictured on one side than on the other...
I believe so. By the time the track made its' way to Keyman, it was promoted to A-side. The flip was "Charley."
http://www.ocregister.com/entertainment/charles-wright-s-1842724-express-yourself
'Express Yourself' keeps playing for Fullerton man
Song became something akin to a musical 401-k for musician Charles Wright.
Second of two parts | Click here to read part one
By PETER LARSEN
The Orange County Register
Charles Wright spent his life making music, and for a long time, both the life and the music provided him with many joyful rewards.
But by the late '80s, all the old hits ??? songs such as "Express Yourself" and "Do Your Thing," recorded with the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band ??? were nearly forgotten.
So he tried to get a real job as a truck driver, but the company owner ??? who remembered those good old songs ??? refused to hire Wright. A musician like you shouldn't be driving a truck for me, he told him.
That didn't answer the question about how Wright would pay his bills. But fate was about to change Wright's luck.
"About a week later, my son calls me up and says, 'You got a hit record!' " Wright says, remembering his initial thought: Hit record? I don't have any record out at all.
It's by N.W.A., his son Dennis told him. They're doing your song.
The founding fathers of gangsta rap, N.W.A. at the time were one of the most controversial, talked about acts in all of music ??? but Wright says he didn't really know them.
So he stepped outside his home in Cerritos to go find this new record, when suddenly he heard his own voice blasting out of the house next door.
"I said, 'That's my song!' " Wright says of his conversation with the kid next door. "He said, 'Nah, Charles, these guys are hip, you're old school.' "
But it was his song. Ice Cube ??? then part of N.W.A., now known more for his acting ??? had sampled the unforgettable bass line and Wright's vocal on "Express Yourself," and wrapped a rap around it.
After working out a financial arrangement with the group for the use of his song, Wright was no longer looking for work behind the wheel of a truck.
"That was the only song on there" ??? the N.W.A. debut, "Straight Outta Compton" ??? "that was clean enough to be a single, so I made some good money on that," he says.
And more money was soon to come, thanks to the song that came to be something akin to a musical 401-k for Wright.
Sparked by the N.W.A. single, nostalgia for the funk of the early '70s and the easy adaptability of the phrase "Express yourself," more and more people sought permission to use it in movies and television commercials.
"The idea of the song and what it says is what makes everybody keep coming back for the song," says Paulette Hawkins, vice president of licensing for Warner Chappell Music, ticking off national spots for companies such as Nike, Burger King, Kohl's Department Store and Gatorade.
"The ad agencies take it, and put it in such a way as to show the persona and the product expressing themselves," she says. "With Botox" ??? a current commercial ??? "the idea is that you get to smile, you get to have a pretty face."
Movie soundtracks have used "Express Yourself" too, to signal the time and place of the story or to set a tone or comment on the action.
"It's such a great song," says Julianne Jordan, whose Music Soup business does music supervision for movies including the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie flick "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."
"There's this crazy fight scene with Brad and Angelina, and they're kicking the hell out of each other ??? it's a really, really brutal fight scene," Jordan says. "We put ('Express Yourself') up against the picture, and the combination kicked ass ??? it's so funky, just full on, and you recognize it right away."
Wright ??? who makes a nice piece of change whenever the song is licensed ??? says he's just fine with its many uses. While some see "Express Yourself" as a "liberation anthem," he says that wasn't on his mind at the time.
"A lot of people tell me it's a national anthem for freedom, which is great," he says. "But I was just writing a song that I thought was marketable. Though I always try to write songs that will bring people together."
As for the song casting a huge shadow over everything else he's done, Wright says, "I promise you, I'm not the least caring about that."
With the safety net the song provided, Wright continued making music. At his home in Fullerton is his studio upstairs, filled with a grand piano, a drum kit, guitars and amps. On the walls are random bits of memorabilia: the plaque "Express Yourself" got with its Grammy nomination, an autographed photo of jazz singer Sarah Vaughn, thanking Wright for their work together.
It was there he recorded a new album, "Finally Got It Wright" ??? available at cdbaby.com ??? released earlier this year.
It features mostly new songs, along with an updated "Express Yourself," a spin-off about safe-sex titled "Protect Yourself" ??? the idea a suggestion from Stevie Wonder, Wright says ??? and a cover of "Goodnight My Love," a hit for his boyhood idol, Jesse Belvin.
On the cover, there's a declaration: "Played by human beings, not by machines." When asked about it, Wright shares one of his other passions, advocating for young people to learn to play real instruments, not just laptops and samplers.
It pains him, he says, that for most of his recent shows the concert promoters ??? at events such as the recent Watts Summer Festival ??? don't offer a budget big enough to bring a live band.
"It hurts me so much," he says. "Because it keeps me from showing the kids what it's like to have a band."
So he preaches from the stage to the young people in the audience ??? pick up a guitar, a drum, a horn, and learn to make it sing.
"I remember doing a concert a few months ago, and when I got through, there were some young rappers on the show before me, who were following me around. And they really wanted to know (how to play)."
Just being in a band, making music together teaches things that sitting in a bedroom, creating music on one's own, does not, Wright says.
Like the song says ??? express yourself.
"I could make records all day long by myself," he says. "But I'd sound alone, too.
"And I wouldn't have accomplished anything."