The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 473
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 232: Ohio Sabbatical 14
June 1988
Sam & Dave, Best
Atlantic A2-81279 [1987 - SS] / Columbia House Record Club
I had this one in high school and listened a lot. I remember singing You Don’t Know at an end of the year party senior year. Barb Harter was there. This took place in somebody’s back yard. During that last couple of weeks of high school I ended up at people’s houses that I had never been to before. There was a party at the house of somebody who lived on Lake Cable opposite the beach. In fact, a few of us, including Barb Harter, swam across the lake the night of that party. It was easy but, of course, I never drank in high school. It’s the sort of stunt that if you try while drunk, you can end up drowning. We just decided to swim across the lake and we did. There was another party at Barb Hartung’s house and that was probably the only time I was in there. There was one at somebody’s house who lived somewhere out there just beyond where Hartung lived and the one where we were sitting around a fire, I think, where I sang the Sam & Dave song.
Sly & the Family Stone, Greatest Hits
Epic EK 30325 [no date - SS] / Columbia House Record Club
I had the Stand album. Sex Machine was one of early long songs and one of the first psychedelic souls songs - along with the Chambers Bros.’ Time Has Come Today. [The first was I’m Going Home on Aftermath. The first time the DC5 went over 3 minutes was on I Like it Like That. I Need Love was the song and we even noticed lines like, “If you see me with another girl and that starts complications, don’t be angry, baby, please be patient.” But I saw right away that it was long and that it was an innovation. I’m Going Home was long and meandering for the sake of being long and so was Sex Machine, which was more of a groove or pre-funk tune. It took the Doors to construct a coherent 10 minute song with focus.] I remember buying it at the recommendation of Larry, a guy on the basketball team who also showed up in Mrs. Wheeler’s Spanish class. He was, along with Picot, the only other person at Jackson with an appreciation of soul music and so I would have paid some attention to his recommendation. I don’t recall which song he was recommending but I already liked Everyday People and Stand so I might have bought it anyway. I also remember playing it either at or on the way to some of our basketball practices during junior year. Someone must have had the tape.
Note: One of my favorites on this album at the time turned out to be the B side of one of their big hits. (I don’t recall having any singles.). I Thank You reached #9 in early 1968. The B side was Wrap It Up, another song by the great team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter, Stax’s Holland - Dozier - Holland. Wrap It Up features that great Stax horn section, the Memphis Horns, as much as it features the vocal. The horns blast right in and carry the song right through verse and chorus. It’s one of those tracks that might have been a hit on its own and might even have been a bigger hit as an instrumental. I Thank You, by the way, was notably covered by many others including Bonnie Raitt and Z.Z. Top. Maybe I’ll get to that comparison at some point.
AUDIO INSERTED: Sam & Dave, Wrap It Up
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels
Note: Sly is a good study in the evolution of a song. Not surprisingly, since he gain a reputation for missing gigs due to substance abuse, “high” was a theme with him. The big finally at Woodstock ’69 was their extended version of “I Want to Take You Higher.” That was the single they had on the charts at that moment but it only reached #60. There were better songs to come and they went “higher.” The version of I Want to Take You Higher that I have has been trimmed by a minute and a half or so compared to the six-minute plus album track on Stand!. It was trimmed down to just three minutes for the original single, probably too short to get too high. The Woodstock performance, however, actually accomplishes their goal.
AUDIO INSERTED: Sly & the Family Stone, I Want to Take You Higher
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels / Promo / Photo
Sly had been developing the theme but musically and lyrically since their second album, Dance to the Music. He’s clearly still looking for the right beat. It starts off slightly stilted almost as if they’re making fun of straight-laced white non-users. Then it turns funky for the “higher” chorus only to go back to the start but overall it’s a catchy tune and you can see why Sly kept working on it.
AUDIO INSERTED: Sly & the Family Stone, Higher
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Sleeves / Labels
On the same album, Dance to the Music, they use the theme again half way into the lengthy Dance to the Music jam. The “hey music lover” that they used at Woodstock comes up and then they go into that spectacularly energizing horn arrangement against the “higher” refrain that again they played at Woodstock includes “up up and away.” The two ideas of Dance to the Music and Higher and woven neatly together and turns a twelve minute dance track into a song worth listening to all the way through. It’s a very interesting harbinger of things to come and they certainly made good on the promise.