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Isley Brothers: It's Time For Love-Beautiful Ballads |
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Rhythm Blues & Soul
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Wednesday, 18 January 2006 19:04 |
The Isley Brothers
It's Time For Love: Beautiful Ballads
By John Sinclair
"You know those old, old love songs?" my wife Penny says, listening to this compilation with me. "These are like the new old love songs, the ones everybody'll be singing for years to come."
Listening to the Isley Brothers croon these beautiful ballads from the 1970s and 80s, one can almost see the young Ronald, O'Kelly and Rudolph Isley cruising the nighttime streets of the 50s in a smooth massive convertible, grooving to the sounds of love coming through the car radio and singing along to the songs of the day, soaking up the musical influences which would inform their entire career.
Billy Ward & The Dominos on Federal Records, Rudy West & The Five Keys on Aladdin, Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters on Atlantic, Lowman Pauling & The "5" Royales on Apollo were dominant forces on the R&B charts in the early 50s with their tantalizing mix of jump tunes and aching ballads. They inspired a whole new wave of vocal groups that would set the mark for the mid- 50s and carry the Black ballad to the shores of white America by the end of the decade.
The genre reached its peak with the offerings of the Moonglows and the Flamingos, two Chicago-based groups produced by Willie Dixon and recorded by the Chess brothers which created indelible masterpieces of Black balladry. Songs like "Sincerely," "Most of All," "When I'm With You," and "In My Diary" by the Moonglows, "I'll Be Home," "The Vow," and "A Kiss From Your Lips" by the Flamingos set new standards of excellence for vocal group records which have since perhaps been equalled but never surpassed.
When rhythm & blues finally broke through the race barrier in 1955 to wipe out an entire generation of Americans with its energy and brilliance, Black vocal group music crossed over to the same audience that thrilled to the frantic antics of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino.
Doo-wop was a big part of rock & roll during the second half of the 50s, culturally as well as musically. Teenage Americans of every stripe, from Black to white, began to organize their emotional lives around the sounds emanating from 45 rpm singles like "In the Still of the Night" by The 5 Satins on Ember Records; "Why Don't You Write Me" by The Jacks on Modern; "Goodnite Sweetheart Goodnite" by The Spaniels on VeeJay; "Only You" and "The Great Pretender" by The Platters on Mercury.
Young bodies pressed tight together in dim basement recreation rooms or in the back seats of cars, grinding slowly to the rhythms of "I Only Have Eyes For You" by the Flamingos and "Since I Don't Have You" by the Skyliners. Teenage lovers spent those long hours apart thinking thoughts of love and devotion derived from the provocative lyrics of Black balladry and came together at last to the texts of "The Ten Commandments of Love" by the Moonglows and "One Summer Night" by the Danleers.
By the end of the 1950s, the vocal group sound and its literature of love had permeated the consciousness of young America quite like nothing before, giving voice to the inchoate romanticism of a restless generation which found little to sustain its spirit in the blandishments of the popular culture of its parents.
Within the next five years teenage Americans of the caucasian persuasion would be given by the Beach Boys and the Beatles a music strictly their own, made by persons of their own background who had assimilated the sounds and concerns of the music of the African-American ghetto and transmuted them into something that would fit within the mental and emotional confines of a burgeoning suburbia.
But the Black ballad would provide a vital form for ghetto romanticism throughout the 1960s and into the 70s, continuing to fill a void in the lives of young Black Americans where innocence and anticipation were otherwise absent. Singers with roots in the doo-wop culture of the 50s persevered in their efforts to fashion up-dated forms from their own experience, and by the mid- 70s the Black balladry tradition was thriving in full revival.
Led by the works of the Spinners, the Chi-Lites, the Dramatics, the O'Jays, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, the vocal group revival included in its proud ranks the reconstituted Isley Brothers, whose singing members had been together since the early 1950s.
Starting as fellow members of an early- 50s Cincinnati gospel group, Ronald, O'Kelly and Rudolph Isley moved to New York in 1957 and crossed over to rhythm & blues, making their first single for Teenage Records. During the next decade they scored with numbers like "Shout," "Twist and Shout," and "This Old Heart of Mine" for a variety of small labels and then, in 1969, brought in as full partners their younger brothers Ernie (guitar and drums) and Marvin (bass) and brother-in-law Chris Jasper (keyboards) to become a fully self-sufficient unit, composing and producing a series of pop recordings on their own label, T-Neck Records.
Distributed first by Buddah, where their initial single was the smash hit "It's Your Thing," and after 1973 by Columbia Records to the widest possible audience, the Isley Brothers' releases climbed chart after chart. They reached a new peak in the mid- 70s with the Fight The Power album and their gigantic ballad, "For The Love of You."
But the Isley Brothers hits weren't everything worth hearing. For each record that gained the attention of the across-the-board pop marketplace, there were several that served the group's proportionately larger African American audience with the kind of sounds they especially craved--slow, sweet, soulful love songs to bring some much-needed escape from the realities of urban life in America.
What they got, in the sound of the Isleys singing, the billowy clouds of music on which their voices were carried, the coaxing reassurance of the lyrics they intoned, came in the form of a warmly secure musical environment where one may lay back and relax to one's heart's content, free of care and worldly strife, floating on a vast sea of music and love.
And you know what? These tunes work just as well today, in a "real world" gone even madder, where they aren't so much songs as fragrant oils for the entire body, not so much to be heard in the ear as to be felt from head to toe, soothing as a lover's tender caress and titillating as a warm tongue licking the skin.
This music is balm for the body and solace for the mind as well, sounding inside the brain like the voice of your sweetheart whispering softly, "baby, everything's gonna be all right, I swear it is."
So slide this disk into the player and press the repeat button. Then turn down the lights, put another log on the fire, light up some incense, replenish your favorite bedside refreshment, slip off those flimsy underthings and crawl into the sack with your main squeeze, because it's time to get all the way down to love with the sweet sweet sounds of the ever-loving Isley Brothers.
Are you ready for the time of your life? Oh, make me say it again girl--you're all I need, oh yes you are. You're the key to my heart, you're beside me everywhere I go, I once had your love (and I can't let go). Let's fall in love, don't say goodnight, it's time for love, don't let me be lonely tonight. Lay lady lay, choosey lover, misty lady, set sail with me--let's voyage to Atlantis, all in my lover's eyes, brown-eyed girl, hello it's me.
Are you ready? Every woman, every man, join the caravan of love. Come on board now, because this is right where it starts--with the most beautiful ballads of the brothers Isley, circa 1971-1985, presented here in stunning array by producer Leo Sacks for your intimate late-night bed-time dining and dancing pleasure. Enjoy!
--New Orleans
March 1994
(c) 1994, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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