Ball of Confusion - The Temptations

Damn if that song doesn't kick like a mule on steroids.

Ball of Confusion, one of the finest singles put out by harmony masters The Temptations and written by Motown mainstays Norman Whitfield and Barret Strong, nearly didn't happen. The band were originally slated to release the anti-Vietnam number War (also penned by Whitfield/Strong), however concerns from on high at Motown mooted the release. The label worried the song's defiant stance would alienate more conservative listeners, and so War was passed on to Edwin Starr. Whitfield and Strong then wrote Ball of Confusion for The Temptations as a replacement and good God almighty thank the lord they did.

The song growls open with a bumping bassline from Bob Babbit, a member of the famous session musician group The Funk Brothers who have played on nearly every soul and Motown release worth mentioning (including Heard It Through the Grapevine, My Girl, and Ain't No Mountain High Enough). As Babbit's bass oozes out of your speakers echoing guitar lines spindle and flux from dark alleyways as The Temptations begin laying the world to rights like a group of harmony loving street preachers. And all that's before we even get to the harmonica solo from a little known musician named Stevie Wonder.

Politics you can groove to. That's what the world needs today.

Donald 'Duck' Dunn Passes Away, 1941-2012

Donald 'Duck' Dunn passed away yesterday (May 13th) in his sleep after finishing a double show in Tokyo. Duck was one of the most influential soul and R&B bass players in the history of pop music. He played on an enormous range of Stax records releases throughout the sixties and seventies including Albert King's 'Born Under a Bad Sign,' Otis Redding's 'Respect,' and most famously as part of the organ fried Booker T. & the M.G.'s. While he joined the M.G.'s after the release of their well known song 'Green Onions,' he helped define the bumping and shaking instrumental grooves the band would go on to explore, creating rhythms still built upon and sampled to this day.

Duck, nicknamed after Donald Duck by his father when he was a kid, was a largely self taught bass player. Rather than take lessons or learn specific lines to practice he would play along with records and fill in what he felt was the missing sound in the rhythm. As a result his playing is a relatively unique mixture of fluid lines, hard jazz and grooving funk that fills in the melody of a song as much as it provides a rhythm. It never draws too much attention to itself, but creates a fuller and richer sound for the song over all- the mark of a truly great bass line and player.

We've pulled out a triple bill song selection to celebrate Duck and his contribution to pop music.

The first is the title track from Melting Pot, Booker T. and the M.G.'s 1970 instrumental R&B opus.

Next the final track of McLemore Avenue,  the four part instrumental reworking of The Beatles Abbey Road. The track comprises of a medley of Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window and I Want You (She's So Heavy).

And finally from the soundtrack to Michel Gondry's 2008 film Be Kind Rewind, a rendition of standard I Ain't Got Nobody which reunited him with M.G. members Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper and Al Jackson Jr.

You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman - Terry Callier

Terry Callier has had a tough time.

Despite several critically acclaimed albums recorded throughout the late 60s and early 70s he failed to catch on commercially and finally decided to stop touring. He went back to his desk job at a local university and settled into a comfortable nine to five, his musical past for all intents and purposes a secret identity he'd left behind.

Then he was rediscovered.

Slowly he was coaxed out of hiding and back onto the road. Some moderate success followed. People were buying his albums. They were attending his shows.

Then he got fired.

When the University he'd been working at discovered his 'secret identity' they threw him out the door. The exact circumstances remain somewhat shrouded, only cryptically referred to by Callier himself in interview.

If I had to guess a reason from the sound of his music, it was for fear he'd sex the pants off of every college aged girl in a 50 mile radius. You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman is a track off of Callier's breakthrough album The Color of Love, and mother-god-damn is it a good song.

Essentially Callier's take on Midnight Rider, the track is both a musical magpie and time machine of genre and style over it's seven and a half minutes. Folk picked guitars gently caress you through the doors, shimmying bongos slap you on the back, and then one of the slinkiest and sexiest funk basslines ever put to wax spikes your drink while pushing you out to the dance floor.

Callier's voice is equal parts silk sheeted soul singer and blues wolf on the prowl. By the time the string section is duking it out with Motown horns in one of the biggest bar brawls you've ever seen, he drags you into his private back room for a quiet moment alone, before letting the whole thing roar back up again into a long hot finish.

The song can be found in two flavors: the original album mix (which is great) or a version slightly remastered by The Cinematic Orchestra for their Late Night Tales mix album. The answer to choosing between the two? Easy. Get The Cinematic Orchestra's version first, and when you realize you HAVE to hear more of this man, get The Color of Love in it's entirety. Let's give the candyman we never knew we were missing the love he deserved way back when, just a little late coming.

EDIT: If the video above has trouble loading, here's the song as trimmed by The Cinematic Orchestra.

Terry Callier – You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman