Feeling Good (PRA Records)
Joe Sample & Randy Crawford
Released August 21, 2006
Top 10 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll 2007
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k4ianuuzEtjuesYAfnXOQLRybqsclW7n0
Spotify:
About:
Joe Sample is recalling the impact that Randy Crawford’s voice made on him, inspiring him to write the song that gave Crawford her major breakthrough, Street Life.
“I just fell in love with that instrument she has,” says Sample. “After she asked me to work on her first two albums for Warner Brothers, whenever I met her I’d tell her, ‘Girl, I love you.’ And she’d tell me, ‘Boy, you’re crazy, you’re a married man.’ And I’d tell her that that didn’t mean I couldn’t like her singing.”
Down the phone line comes the sound of those scenes being re-enacted. Randy, Sample tells me with the restraining manner of someone holding a restless puppy and a conversation simultaneously, is just off a transatlantic flight and is jetlagged.
Thus, leaving aside uncharitable thoughts about whether newts suffer from jetlag, it appears that Randy’s contribution today will be restricted to what might best be described as backing vocals. Except, that is, when she takes the lead on a suitably Crawfordesque, personal rendition of Frankie Valli’s My Eyes Adored You as Sample continues his tale of artistic admiration.
By the time Sample got the call to appear on Crawford’s Warners debut, Everything Must Change, in 1976, the Georgia-born former Cincinnati church choir girl had already worked with production Svengali, Quincy Jones. She’d also recorded with alto saxophone star Cannonball Adderley and toured with George Benson.
Sample, who had been on an upward sales curve with the Crusaders for the previous few years, felt that there was a big star waiting to emerge from the shadows, though.
“I thought about it a lot, how I was going to present a song that would do Randy justice and that would fit naturally into the Crusaders’ style, too,” he says. “And eventually, by 1979, I was ready. I had something I felt confident about.”
Street Life, he says, was a monster to organise and record. For a band that was used to setting up a groove and producing the goods quickly in the studio – and a band whose individual musicians were also prominent members of the LA session mafia – the Crusaders were taking an inordinate amount of time getting the song right, Frustrations set in. Bassist Wilton Felder just couldn’t seem to settle on a suitable part and was reduced almost to tears.
Crawford adds, with some Southern belle sassiness, that she thought they had her hanging around in the studio for ten hours waiting to sing because they liked the way she looked.
“Finally, everything clicked,” says Sample. “Which is just as well because Randy was about to walk out on us. We added some strings and it was one of those moments of creating music when everything we thought of worked, and I felt instantly when I heard the playback that we’d nailed it.”
The first confirmation of this for him was when he heard Street Life on the radio for the first time and the deejay described it as an epic piece of music.
“I was driving along and I just said ‘Whaaaaat!’,” he says. “Then a bit later I pulled up at a red light and it was playing again, and the guy in the car next to me had the same station on and actually leaned over to turn up the volume. I tell you, that was a tremendous feeling, seeing a complete stranger respond to your music that way at close quarters.”
Sample wrote further songs for Crawford, including the seductive One Day I’ll Fly Away, a not inappropriate sentiment since Street Life launched her as the star he had foreseen. With busy careers individually, they followed their own paths. Until, that is, Sample came up with another career-changing idea for Crawford.
“Throughout the 1990s I’d hear Randy from time to time singing at festivals and concerts where we were both appearing, and I could tell she wasn’t happy, just from the way she was singing,” says Sample. “She had these backing musicians who were playing far too loud and she was fighting to overcome the volume, which just wasn’t right. I mean, she’s the star – it’s her people have come to hear.”
Having reverted to acoustic piano and encountered similar volume problems, Sample sympathised and suggested that Crawford work with his jazz trio. The title of their first album together, Feeling Good, says Sample, tells it like it is.
“Number one, we enjoy working together,” he says. “Number two, we’re friends – and you have to be friends on a tour like this European trek we’re on or else it becomes a war zone. And number three, I just see my role as giving Randy all the space she needs to utilise that voice. As her accompanist, I try to make her very, very happy – because that’s when she sings her ass off.”
Crawford agrees, adding that Sample sets things up for her so that all she has to do is, indeed, “sing my pretty l’il ass off.” And as anyone who caught her on Later with Jools Holland, recorded later that same day, will have noted, that’s exactly what she does.
The Herald
Track Listing:
1. Feeling Good (Leslie Bricusse / Anthony Newley) 04:03
2. End of the Line (John Edmondson) 03:28
3. But Beautiful (James Van Heusen) 03:53
4. Rio de Janiero Blue (John Haeny / Richard Torrance) 05:07
5. Lovetown 04:27
6. See Line Woman (George Bass) 04:57
7. Tell Me More and More and Then Some (Billie Holiday) 02:57
8. Everybody’s Talking (Fred Neil) 03:53
9. When I Need You (Carole Bayer Sager) 04:13
10. Save Your Love for Me (Buddy Johnson) 03:21
11. Last Night at Danceland (Will Jennings / Joe Sample) 04:15
12. All Night Long (Curtis Lewis) 05:20
13. Mr. Ugly (Norman Mapp) 03:18
Personnel:
Randy Crawford: vocals
Joe Sample: piano
Steve Gadd: drums
Christian McBride: bass
Dean Parks: guitar
Ray Parker, Jr.: guitar
Anthony Wilson: guitar
Luis Quintero: percussion
Recorded at Avator Studios, NYC
Additional recording at Capitol Studios, LA & 333 Studio, NYC
Producer: Joe Sample and Tommy LiPuma
Recorded and Mixed by Al Schmitt
Additional Engineering: Bill Smith, Rob Mounsey
Assistant Engineer: Paul Smith
Mixing Assistant: Steve Genewick
Mastered by Doug Sax
Edited by Brian Montgomery
Photography by Steven Silverstein
Art Direction: John Cabalka
Review:
After a quarter of a century in the Warner Bros. camp and five years on the recording sidelines, Randy Crawford drew a circle back to the beginning, reuniting with keyboardist Joe Sample. In turn, the old Crusader put together a genuinely distinguished rhythm section, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Steve Gadd, and called upon Tommy LiPuma to produce the disc. That combination ought to guarantee a certain floor of competence from the get-go — and it’s great to report that this disc always rises above it, sometimes considerably above it. By this time, both Crawford and Sample were established veterans — and the music they make here seems to come so easily from within, with only minimal backing and nothing getting in their way. Gadd puts out a propulsive beat on brushes that pushes the title track along just fine — and his work on “See Line Woman” and “Last Night at Danceland” generates something resembling the irresistible Crusaders groove, giving Sample something to trip lightly and soulfully through. Every track seems to change style with a smooth movement of the clutch — the slinky R&B funk of “Lovetown,” the gentle Latin beat of “Rio de Janeiro Blue,” the pure mainstream piano trio jazz of “But Beautiful,” the heavy blues atmosphere of “Tell Me More and More and Then Some,” a trip back to the 1960s’ Top 40 with “Everybody’s Talking” (dig Randy’s fervent high note that Harry Nilsson once hit in falsetto). A very gratifying release — considering how tempting it would have been to crank this out on autopilot.
Richard S. Ginell (AllMusic)
