WAKE UP EVERYBODY AND FAMILY REUNION: 360 DEGREES OF SOUL
Liner notes taken from the Wake Up Everybody album ---Kenneth Gamble, 1975
The generation gap is another evil plan. The result of which divided the family structure therefore creating a halt to the flow of wisdom from the wise to the young and stifling the energy of youth which is the equalizer to wisdom and age. Being of truth and understanding of all things, we must recapture the family structure---Mother, Father, Sister and Brother and give respect to everyone. Remember the family that prays together stays together. Put the unity back into the family. There is a message in the music......
Liner notes taken from the Family Reunion album--Kenneth Gamble, 1975
Forty-three years ago, Philadelphia International Records' cadre of musicians, songwriters, producers and arrangers combined to craft classic material for flagship groups Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes and The O'Jays. The result was an astonishing run of four gold #1 million-selling albums all released in a single year. The first two entries--To Be True and Survival, released in early '75 went gold and made it to the top spot of Billboard's Soul Albums chart and made it inroads to the pop charts as well.
PIR urged listeners to "understand while you dance." The label's songs delivered message oriented music that spoke directly to the community. Besides typical themes of love and romance, the albums covered topics absent in today's black music: class warfare, betrayal from fair-weather friends, hypocrisy and social inequity.
PIR house band MFSB gave the songs a distinctive character. Their grooves and rhythms added drama and intensity to Give The People What They Want and Where Are All My Friends. Spare and measured tones framed How Time Flies and I Hope We'll Be Together Soon's wistful introspection impeccably. Thrilling performances by lead singers Theodore Pendergrass and Eddie Levert anchored the Blue Notes and the O'Jays, sealing their reputations as soul music's premiere vocal outfits.
In November '75 PIR label heads Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff upped the ante with Wake Up Everybody and Family Reunion. The album covers features strong imagery that spoke volumes. Wake Up Everybody's abstract cover depicted a mountain in the shape of a Black man with a flower growing out of his head--- depicting the power of physical strength and mental transformation while Family Reunion featured The O'Jays surrounded by diverse images of faces from around the globe.
The albums exposed social shortcomings of post-Civil Rights America and offered solutions. During slavery, coded Negro spirituals spoke to the internal Black condition. In 1975, PIR offered up bold indictments, stridently urging that their community know better and do better. Critics labeled the music as paternalistic and heavy-handed and much too serious for entertainment. Lyrics like"they played a game of divide and conquer/ever since the world began/ separated the people so they couldn't understand'' didn't sit well with those accused Gamble of filtering his personal beliefs through his artists.
What the critics didn't understand was that theses lyrics weren't just food for thought, they were a road map to survival. They captured 360 degrees of the human condition. The bitter and the sweet. The joy and the pain.
To Be True and Survival's seminal dance tracks (Don't Leave Me This Way and I Love Music) and motivational working-class anthems (Livin' For The Weekend, To Be Free To Be Who We Are and Unity) coexisted with majestic gospel-tinged ballads and sexy love ballads (Stairway To Heaven and You Know How To Make Me Feel) forming a cohesive package providing fans with the ultimate listening experience.
Wake Up Everybody and Family Reunion weren't just kindred spirits in terms of similar release dates. The albums featured enduring anthems with staying power--- aural heirlooms passed down through the generations. Surviving the middle passage of industry tastes and media formats. The music remains part of our cultural DNA through sampling, television and film.
Written by lyricists Gene McFadden, John Whitehead, and composer Victor Carstarphen, Wake Up Everybody captured their poetic flair for merging social commentary with stories of the human condition. In Pendergrass, the trio found a perfect foil for their music. He dispensed sage-like wisdom on future solo compositions Somebody Told Me and Cold, Cold World and articulated despair on Where Are All My Friends and Bad Luck. Press pictures and albums presented the sharp-dressed Blue Notes as calm, cool, and collected brothers. On wax, McFadden-Carstaphen-Whitehead cast them into R&B troubadours who sang like the weight of the world was on their shoulders.
Picture Pendergrass at dawn, surveying Philly like a modern-day Musa/Moses on a solitary mountaintop. Rolling piano keys and soulful organ chords signal a call to prayer as he nudges society awake from its mental slumber. Recognizing the world is slipping away into a Sodom-like sea of war, hatred, and poverty, Teddy stresses that there is no time for looking back. The old ways are extinct and the future is within our grasp.
His gentle admonishment of society cornerstones grow stronger and stronger as the track gains momentum. No one is safe from his wrath including unscrupulous businessmen and activists sucking life out of the community or fake preachers misleading their congregation.
He uses tough-love with the drug addicts and casts out dope dealers like money changers in the temple. Using his multi-tracked voice as a trumpet of reason, he enlists all races and creeds to join his crusade to bring comfort to the old and deliver knowledge, wisdom and understanding to the young........
“My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. "Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.” ----Hosea 4:6
"Let there arise out of you a party of people
inviting to all that is good, enforcing what is right and eradicating what is
evil. And it is they who are successful. And be not as those who divided
and differed amongst themselves after clear proofs had come to them. It is they
for whom there is an awful torment.”
Surah ali-Imraan:104-105
Family Reunion album track Stairway To Heaven, offers ecstacy as a respite from life's weary road (''taking the load/of this whole world/off our shoulders/the door is wide open") before ascending into a much deeper consummation between man and woman.
As Eddie Levert and Walter Williams trade-off lead vocals, they match Stairway's conceptual push and pull between sensual pleasure (''still in our moment of pleasure/we're going to find the pirate's treasure") and spiritual refinement ("I'm talking 'bout heaven right here on earth").
Their invitational chants of don'tcha wanna go revive the steal away refrains from the Negro spirituals. Gamble and Huff's lyricism and the O' Jays stellar performance transforms this six-minute opus into a historical narrative of Black Music's creative evolution---bridging gospel's sacred reflections and R&B 's carnal inflections.
"He will restore the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the hearts of children back to their fathers"
Malachi 4:6
Family Reunion's title track opens with a grand intro courtesy of the MFSB Orchestra. Eddie Levert---perfectly cast as the patriarch basking in the glow of his family, shares cherished moments and acknowledges those who have transitioned. Instead of mourning their passing, he celebrates their lives with honor with a sense of ancestral genuflection.
"If grandpa was here/I know he'd be smilin' from ear to ear/
to see what he has done/all the offsprings from his daughters to sons."
Levert drops jewels that never lose their sparkle. The message is clear: a man's true wealth lies not in money but in his family. As the song goes into a vamp, Eddie constructs his monologue like an Egyptian pyramid. Brick by brick. Line by line. He breaks down the family structure explaining the connection between sons and fathers and daughters and mothers. As he embraces all members of the Universal Family regardless of race, color or creed, Levert offers a humorous aside (and common denominator): "Cuz we all bleed!" Before the arrival of future rap giants Public Enemy and Rakim, Philly International compositions effortlessly straddled the lines of conceptual simplicity and complexity.
Back in
1972, The O'Jays' debut album Back Stabbers, explored fragmented
relationships betrayal, infidelity and hypocrisy. In 1973,
their potent follow-up Ship Ahoy's title track captured the Mid-Atlantic slave trade down to the
creaking slave ships and cracking whips.
Family Reunion closed out a thrilling thematic chapter two years later. Gamble and Huff's visionary creativity couldn't have been more perfectly timed. When Alex Haley's novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family arrived in '76, these seminal albums were perfect bookends and even greater prequels to the television miniseries that followed---solidifying Philadelphia International Records' visionary genius.
Wake Up Everybody and Family Reunion extended both groups' winning streak of #1 albums. Philadelphia International was at the peak of its creative powers but changes were on the horizon. Core MFSB members would depart the label for greener (and more lucrative) pastures. Weary of singing message music, the O'Jays shifted to more ballads and uptempo songs, continuing to earn gold or platinum records for the rest of the decade.Family Reunion closed out a thrilling thematic chapter two years later. Gamble and Huff's visionary creativity couldn't have been more perfectly timed. When Alex Haley's novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family arrived in '76, these seminal albums were perfect bookends and even greater prequels to the television miniseries that followed---solidifying Philadelphia International Records' visionary genius.
New writing teams and musicians helped the label forge a new direction. When disco and funk began to overtake conscious music in popularity, Gamble and Huff never lost sight of their mission. Their albums toned down the serious content a bit but still inserted songs like Show You The Way To Go, At Peace With Woman, Let' Em In (containing sampled speeches of Malcolm X and MLK), and Let's Circulate The Dollar.
Wake Up Everybody became the fourth straight gold album for Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes. It was still on the charts when the group collapsed under the enduring weight of conflict between leader Melvin and Pendergrass. The Blue Notes never recovered while their departed lead singer embarked on a solo career surpassing his previous success with his ex-group members.
Pendergrass' debut album showed flashes of Wake Up Everybody's inspirational sentiment with songs like You Can't Hide From Yourself ("the truth is the light/that comes shining from within"). Ironically, it was a McFadden-Whitehead-Carstarphen ballad---Easy,Take It Easy, Got To Take It Easy that put him on a path to become a R&B sex symbol with songs like Turn Off The Lights and Close The Door, Pendergrass always paid homage to Wake Up Everybody as the song that was the most meaningful to him as a singer.
Added to a short list of unofficial 70's Black national anthems like Donny Hathaway's Someday We'll All Be Free and McFadden and Whitehead's Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now, Wake Up Everybody and Family Reunion would continue to resurface over the next three decades.
Wake Up Everybody was featured in a run of United Negro College Fund commercials during the late '70s. In 1999, a remake of the song was featured in the film Life. In 2004, Wake Up was revived for a voter campaign compilation album of the same name featuring the hottest hip hop/R&B acts in the record industry.
Family Reunion was prominently featured in 2006's Madea's Family Reunion. In 2008, John Legend and the Roots released a Wake Up Everybody single and concept album inspired by the 2008 presidential election. The Wu-Tang Clan would remake their own versions of both songs for their 2014 A Better Tomorrow album confirming their enduring significance.
As Wake Up Everybody and Family Reunion continue to live on, many of the creative forces behind the songs have sadly passed on. O'Jay William Powell. Original MFSB Orchestra members. Arranger Bobby Martin. Pendergrass. John Whitehead and Gene McFadden. Victor Carstarphen and Bunny Sigler. Blue Note tenor Jerry Cummings and his predecessor Lloyd Parks are the last men standing. Pendergrass, Harold Melvin, Bernard Williams, and Lawrence Brown have all transitioned. Powell's initial replacement Sammy Strain retired from the business while Levert and partner Walter Williams are still together after six decades----soul survivors from Philly International's golden era---still play to loyal audiences at sold-out shows.
R&B's conceptual genius and social commentary tend to get lost in its stylistic alter-ego which makes Levert and Williams' long-serving tenure as historical gatekeepers of Black Music's legacy of musical social commentary so critical.
Wake Up Everybody and Family Reunion represents the best of a creative tandem from in and around the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection who united to collectively deliver entertaining and uplifting message music.
Comments
Post a Comment