What's the Pre-cursor to "Retro-Soul"?
batmon
27,574 Posts
Before Winehouse/Ronson and "Hey Ya" were there any indications that this was on its way?
Did any artist/artists in the previous 2 to 3(years) try this out in R&B, Neo-Soul, Hip Hop or even in "Electronica".
What lead up to it? I know there was plenty of 70's being mined already in the 90s.
And im sure this was discussed in the many Winehouse threads in the past, I dont really wanna sift through the circle jerks.
Did any artist/artists in the previous 2 to 3(years) try this out in R&B, Neo-Soul, Hip Hop or even in "Electronica".
What lead up to it? I know there was plenty of 70's being mined already in the 90s.
And im sure this was discussed in the many Winehouse threads in the past, I dont really wanna sift through the circle jerks.
Comments
Isnt that more 70s JB steez than 60's.
The Desco stuff in the 90s was heavy on the JB sound. I'd say most of the Daptone releases lean more towards Motown.
also, this is might sound ridiculous but i remember joss stone's first album being pretty big, and that was all classic soul covers. that came out in 2003, same year as amy's first album frank (which wasn't so much retro-soul but more hip jazz vocalist). as far as i recall that album was a lot more "successful" than any of daptone's records at the time.
that sound came later though. 100 days didn't come out until 2007. if you listen to the early daptone releases, they're still straight jb/meters style a la the desco sound (with the exception of the budos records, which were their own thing).
http://www.discogs.com/label/Pure+Records+(6)
nah...im looking at right before the "style" blew up.....not ten years before.
And yeaj That Josh Stone was more Soul than Funk. But I dont think it was "Beehive/Glitzy 60's Soul"
Tony Toni Tone - House of Music???????
Yeah, it might be a bit laughable now, 80s aesthetics and all, but the influence is definitely there.
Tracey Ullman "They Don't Care About Us" has Ronette beehive vibes:
But on a pre-Retro Soul but post-Motown Soul tip, the stuff Jamiroquai put out on those early sides was very redolent of Stevie W circa Inner Visions and them.
Not what was asked for, but dammit, name every throwback soul act evarrr.
Yeah ... I was going to say Desco plus the first Daps record (though even that did include the decidedly Motown-esque ballad "Make it Good to Me" ... quite possibly my favorite song they've written.)
But I would say that even by the 2nd record, while you could still hear the JBs influence pretty heavily throughout in the guitars, the edge was softened up and the overall production (and Sharon's vocals) sounded more like a soul record. This was at a time when I was seeing them probably once or twice per month (I miss having that opportunity) and hammering their 45s on my radio show, and I remember actually wanting to hear a harder JBs edge from them. I remember the "Genuine" 45 coming out in I think '04 (very much a JBs record) and thinking that was a sign of more heavy funk to come, but then that song didn't even end up on the LP (it is now included on the recent collection Soul Time) and the album seemed to sway in a somewhat different direction.
This one illustrates what I mean. There's a definite JBs guitar part, but you could hear them moving away from that sound:
I'd also suggest stuff like the Ray Charles biopic and Dreamgirls from around this time were probably influential to some, perhaps more so than any music that was being made.
stuff like The Commitments just shows that the UK has had a long standing boner for american R&B, as far as I can tell it hasn't subsided since the 60s. But it's like saying Bugsy Malone had an influence on mid-90s bands like Squirrel Nut Zippers.
Keep Reachin' Up came out in 2005 (her first work with the Soul Investigators ... at least that I'm aware of). Though she was working with other Finnish artists such as Jimi Tenor and Nuspirit Helsinki in the early 2000s.
Be It from 03 has one throwback song(You Better Change feat the Soul Inv..) on it but its more JBs than Motown.
The rest of the album is Electronica shit.
This was 2003 at a time when Beyonce was Crazy In Love w/ Jay-Z, Pharrell was Frontin, and 50 was In The Club.
The background vocals are old-school(70's though).
Then back in the early 00s I think in general there was a shift away from that smoother 70s sound, hip hop had become more about synths and 808s and rock and indie were taking over the charts. For the loosely collected neo-soul people being a retro movement at hart, those who didn't want to just continue along the same lines had two choices; move forward in time and take influence from 80s soul, or look further back to the slightly harder style of the 60s. Seeing as the a fairly strong 'white people' element to the recent retro soul, the shift is always going to be backwards. The 60s sound is still hugely influential and popular with each passing generation, especially with the rockists. The 80s sound is far more of a connoisseur choices.
"No."
I think, if I recall the interviews at the time, it was Amy's idea to strive for that sound and IMHO Ronson got it very right, however he/the people he outsourced it to, did it.
Her "Showcased: The Facets of a Tortured Soul" vibe, whether it was manifested via her own "I AM TRAGIC" appearance or her music, warranted the reflective twangy reverb, clanking shackles and ghost-of-relationships-past tone, which the tambourine-soul treatment captured so well here.
Personally, it's not something I enjoy - I don't think bringing cheer was her aim with this set - and like anything with the same sound, it gets tiring on the ears pretty quick - but I think "Unholy War" is a great song done well.
But one has the presences of an auteur, whilst the other is pretty much clever record company work cashing in on a white girl who has a soulful voice, although not necessarily a lot more going on. Soul Seesions outsold Frank by about 300,000 copies in the Uk, so I think it's fair to say the the genreal public are more receptive to blue eyed soul being this retro throwback thing, than something more contemporary. It wasn't until Amy's next lp in 2006/7, when she hooked up with Ronson and went for the full on retro sound that she became mainstream successful.
And, of course (as stated earlier), those are the very musicians that Ronson used on Back to Black (at least the Desco guys that continued on with Daptone). So it's safe to say that without Pure/Desco/Daptone there would be no Back to Black.
and where does this fit........
The structure sounds older than 70's Neo-Soul too me, even if its more modern-ish.
It was definitely the point when the fully retro soul scene (i.e. Motown/Northern sound performed with live instrumentation and recorded in a fully analog studio) met the mainstream pop charts.
I'd concur with everyone else in saying that, if you're talking about the mid-2000s, leading UP to Amy's second album, there's no real "other artists blowing up" a retro sound beyond Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings but they weren't big commercially even if they dominated the niche they were in. If we're talking critically embraced then Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators fit there too.
Perhaps I don't understand your original question though? What is it that you're trying to figure out?
As others have noted, if you want to dissect the genealogy behind an album like "Back to Black," there's a massive number of potential influences one could turn to. Not just Daptone, not even Desco. Germany's Poets of Rhythm were on that throwback funk tip (but not so much Northern/Motown) back in the early '90s and one could argue that Lee Fields's late 1970s album was a retro-funk album of sorts. And heck, if you REALLY want to think about it, Laura Nyro and Labelle's "Gonna Take a Miracle" was a retro-soul album recorded 5-8 years after most of the songs they were paying tribute to were first released!
But if you're asking "was there anything, commercially big, in 2004 that sounded like what 'Back to Black' eventually sounded like" I'm not so sure about that. To me, the dominant sound then was more neo-soul (i.e. '70s aesthetics) than revisiting the bee hive era.
Hey O-Dub,
I was just wondering if there were other artists who did "Retro Soul" right before(within 3 years)Winehouses explosion.
There is a whole culmination of factors that lead to this but from what weve gathered it sounds like shit kinda stands on its own as a sub genre without any concise avalanche effect.
Neo Soul mined the 70s, Hip Hop juiced James Brown and many other 60s -through 90s genres but this shit here I find to be quite interesting.
Music snobs made fun of The Big Chill and its over exposure of the popular Motown work.
And now there is a sub genre( is Adele even a sub genre) making moves with a Big Chill(though modernized 60s Soul/Funk) type steez.
Im just ramblin, but there doesnt seem like theres a clear culmination like other genres. It smells like there was a hop skip and a jump to Back In Black.
I was looking for " so and so did this before this blew up" , like how Omar and Terrenece Trent D'Arby, outta the UK , forecasted D'Angelo, Maxwell, and Erykah Badu.