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Joe Weaver: Baby I Love You So |
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Rhythm Blues & Soul
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Monday, 23 January 2006 10:35 |
Joe Weaver
Baby, I Love You So
Black Magic Records
By John Sinclair
Teenaged guitarist Johnnie Bassett was walking down the street in his westside Detroit neighborhood one afternoon nearly 50 years ago when he heard some kid playing piano on the front porch of a nice-looking girl's house. He followed the sound to find the personnage of a young Joe Weaver, whom Johnnie recognized as a classmate at Northwestern High School, and the two soon became fast friends. Bassett hooked up his new electric guitar with Joe's piano and the pair began to develop a formidable repertoire of popular R&B tunes and original compositions.
Weaver and Bassett began to gravitate to Hastings Street on the near east side, then entering its final days of glory as the Motor City's Black entertainment mainline, and rehearsed after school every day in the primitive back room recording studio of Joe Von Battle's record shop. Joe made some tapes of the youngsters and leased several masters to DeLuxe Records, including a groovy instrumental titled "15-40 Special" after the street address of the King recording company at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio.
One day Joe and Johnnie were walking down Linwood Avenue on their way home from an impromptu basketball game on the outdoor courts at Central High School when they heard some music emanating from a nondescript storefront, which proved upon investigation to house the offices and studios of Jack Brown's Fortune Record Company.
Jack and his wife, songwriter Devora Brown, were working with a young singer named Andre Williams and his vocal group to come up with material for their first Fortune session, and Johnnie and Joe were quickly signed up as sessionmen and musical directors for the local R&B powerhouse. Andre's first single, "Going Down To Tiajuana" b/w "Pulling Time," drew some welcome radio and record shop attention around town, and, as Joe Weaver & the Blue Notes, the fellows were kept busy for some time backing up the entire Fortune stable of artists.
But Johnnie Bassett was called into the armed forces in the late 1950s, and Joe Weaver soon joined his cousin, legendary bassist Benny Benjamin, in the house band at Berry Gordy's fledgling Hitsville USA operation, where he recorded with rising Motown stars like Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Barrett Strong, Martha & The Vandellas, and Stevie Wonder. Joe did some road work with the Four Tops, but his musical career failed to sustain him and Weaver joined the industrial workforce at the Ford Motor Company.
Johnnie Bassett was stationed in Seattle, where he played with jazz and R&B ensembles in the area and backed up touring artists like Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, Little Willie John, and Ike & Tina Turner until the mid- 60s. When he returned to Detroit, the Motor City's heyday as a blues center was over, and Johnnie spent the next 25 years toiling with organ combos, bluesmen Little Sonny, Chicago Pete and Mr. Bo, and jazz and show groups around town, backing up singers and soloists of many descriptions while continuing to grow and develop as a musician.
The long drought began to end for Bassett one night in the early 1990s when drummer R.J. Spangler heard the guitarist playing with organist Ben Baber and hooked up with Johnnie after the show. Spangler and veteran keyboardist Bill Heid quickly formed a band, the Blues Insurgents, to showcase Johnnie's fluid guitar and mellifluous voice and together began to build an avid following in the blues bars of Detroit.
A live recording was made at the Montreaux-Detroit Jazz Festival and used to secure reviews and bookings, including showcase dates in Europe. A series of fine recordings followed, including Bassett Hound for Fedora Records, the Black Magic release I Gave My Life to the Blues, recorded in 1996, and two well-received albums, Cadillac Blues and Party My Blues Away, for Cannonball Records. With Johnnie Bassett's revived career now well established, Spangler and Heid turned to extend a hand to the guitarist's long-time associates, septuagenarian vocalist Alberta Adams and the perennial Joe Weaver, introducing them to Bassett's live audiences and recording contacts. Ms. Adams was introduced with four cuts on a Cannonball Records anthology, Blues Across America: The Detroit Scene, and then signed by producer Ron Levy for her first album date, Born with the Blues, accompanied by Heid and the Blues Insurgents. Joe Weaver joined Bassett & the Blues Insurgents for his long-awaited introduction to international audiences at the 1998 Blues Estafette in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where this writer had the pleasure of bringing Joe on and off the stage for his enthusiastically acclaimed performance.
Before they moved on to fulfill their other European dates, Joe and the band went into the studio for Black Magic Records with Spangler and Heid at the production helm and laid down the exceptional program of Fortune Records classics, one new Joe Weaver composition ("It Hurt So Bad"), and salutes to Chuck Willis ("What Am I Living For?") and fellow Detroiters the Falcons ("I Found A Love") now to be found on the compact disc in hand.
After nearly 50 years as a performing artist Joe Weaver is not the least bit the worse for wear. Like his old-time partner Johnnie Bassett, Weaver is every bit as strong and vital on stage and on record as he ever was, bringing to his current work the fully developed confidence and relaxed sense of ease that only a lifetime in music can bestow.
Bassett's support is impeccable, and Bill Heid & the Blues Insurgents lay down grooves that are supple and wholly sympathetic to the ends of this music, which means to make you smile, laugh, dance and party as long as there is life in your bones.
Saxophonist Keith Kaminiski supplies the icing for this juicy musical piece of cake, shining throughout on tenor and baritone like somebody who just stumbled into the middle of a Fortune Records session ready to start cooking as soon as they call out the key.
"I Found A Love," Joe's homage to old friends Wilson Pickett & The Falcons, and his reading of Chuck Willis' "What Am I Living For?" don't challenge the original versions for emotive force but do add a nice soulful touch to the program.
Weaver's Fortune hits and musical successes, however, are revisited in great depth, with Bassett and the Blues Insurgents reproducing the classic simplicity and relaxed pulse of the originals without adding a shred of nostalgic corn to marvellous tunes like "Do You Wanna Work Now," "Looka Here Pretty Baby," "Tootsie Roll," "It Must Be Love" and "I'm On My Merry Way."
In fact, there's nothing nostalgic at all about Joe Weaver's return to disk. It's all just as fresh and exciting as if these tunes had never been cut before, and the CD is one of those rare sides that rewards each repeated listening with more and more scintillating detail.
Joe is in great voice and sings with intelligence and taste, the band swings like crazy, and everything here is just as it should be. Welcome back, Joe, and please don't go anywhere soon without us.
--Charlottesville, VA
July 15, 1999
(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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