Woman of the Ghetto

As you may recall from my earlier post, Marlena Shaw is a hidden American musical treasure. In the 1974 she produced an album called  "Who is This Bitch, Anyway?" I cannot tell you just how incredible cool this singer is. Her vocal skills aside, her politics are red hot.

Or at least were. I'm on a mission to see her in concert, so I can get up close and see what she's like now that she must be seriously old now.

It's quite a thing to find a singer of this calibre after all these years of not having any idea she ever existed. Her ability to create mood, memory, and political awareness in a single song is exceptional.

There are few singers who achieve this. I can think of The Jam (“Going Underground”), The Clash (“¡Sandanista!”, and Nina Simone (“FourWomen”). Janis Ian had a brief brush with brilliance with "Society's Child," and there was always Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit." But "Woman of the Ghetto" has an urgency that you cannot mistake.

With lines sung to an unnamed "legislator" about just what he needs to know when passing laws that impact her, a woman of the ghetto, she just tears it up.

How do you raise your kids in a ghetto?

How do you raise your kids in a ghetto?

Do you feed one child and starve another?

Won't you tell me, legislator?

—Marlena Shaw

To a moment to enjoy this musical interlude: "Woman of the Ghetto."

I heard this for the first time and thought about Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and his remarkably un-Christian remarks about poor folks who use foodstamps. I mean with the recession of 2008, it’s as if he had complete and total amnesia, and didn't even realize WHY a spike in the use of foodstamps might occur.

Thanks to Shaw, I couldn't help but see through the haze of his "pro-American" chicanery:

“No program in our government has surged out of control more dramatically than food stamps,” said Sessions. “And now, nothing is being done at it, about it. Nobody is looking under the hood. It had doubled in the last three years. It had quadrupled from 20 billion to 80 billion in the last 10 years.

“When it started,” he said, “it was one in 50 people on the food stamp program. Now, it’s one in 7. Lottery winners, multimillion-dollar lottery winners are getting food stamps because that money is considered to be an asset, not an income.”

—Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) Oct 20, 2011

50 people, Mr. Sessions? Really? Oy vey.

At any rate, one of my favorite electro-lounge groups, St. Germain sampled "Woman of the Ghetto" (from Live at Montreux) in "Rose Rouge" on Tourist (2000), and her voice in that sample has resonated with me for over a decade. Then one day, I’m on Spotify and there the whole song was.

My aural life shifted, and now, I can barely get her out of my mind. The funny thing is that her version of Diana Ross' “Touch Me In the Morning” was a huge disco hit in the late ‘70s, and I cannot even compare these songs. That’s just how versatile Shaw is.

Every Once in a While we all Need a Little California Soul

California Soul

I don't tend to rave much about California. It's a nice place to visit, wouldn't wanna live there. You've all heard me say it before.



But hey, what do I know? I moved to Washington, D.C. to find people who were more in touch with reality and could see the forest for the trees. And what did I get? A bunch of over-educated folks who know more than anyone else, but who are so busy with their lives they don't have time to feel or get in touch with their soul.

So, today, I bring you "California Soul" by Marlena Shaw who seems to be having something of a come back on Spotify, which has been playing her back-catalogue on my "Waltz for Koop" station. One forgets just how exceptional this low-profile Blue Note artist's work is (She's still recording, believe it or not.)

And frankly, ever since we lost Fontella Bass last year, I;ve been feeling the need to recognize the other, extraordinary backup singers, low-profile artists who didn't bask in the fame and glory that Diana, Martha, and the many others did. But these singers took a terrific place in the pantheon of new music pros who sampled and rediscovered these artists, like The Cinematic Orchestra who repurposed these voices for the sounds of the early 21st century. From "Rescue Me" to "All That you Give," California Soul takes you back to where we should be, even if we are living in D.C.