The complete Mythology Syl Johnson

[LouieB]

As long as we are talking about old material and how cool the Numero Group is(okay we really weren't), I got my copy of the complete Syl Johnson yesterday, which I pre-ordered a few weeks back and it is really cool. Not that I have actually listened to it yet, but I plan to soon. Five LPs, four CDs, a great LP sized book, all in a nice box, plus an extra 45 thrown in for good measure. Let's hope the Numeros get a Grammy nomination for ths one.

 

 

LouieB

[LouieB]

Finally got around to listening to the first 2 and half LPs. Pretty damn cool stuff. As expected it is somewhat derivitive, but they guy really could put it all out there.

 

LouieB

[LouieB]

This one fell like a rock, but I have listened to all of it and it is pretty good, if sometimes derivative. Syl is playing the OTS tomorrow night and been getting some nice PR including this nice article from Greg Kot today.

 

 

LouieB

 

Soul great's 'Mythology' rings true

'Complete Mythology' boxed set documents overlooked '60s legacyGreg Kot

 

Music critic

 

Syl Johnson is sitting in the South Side offices of his Numero Group record label and examining a 40-year-old portrait of himself in a rare moment when he wasn't playing a gig, running a recording session or working a day job. The face in the photo is partially shaded, slightly ominous, deadly serious, staring down at the camera as if to say, "I've got better things to do than stand around posing for photographs."

 

"That's a guy who didn't drink, who didn't smoke, who didn't chase women, who was never very far from music," Johnson says when asked about his younger self. "I was good. Like Obama — he was a community organizer, right? — I knew how to organize. You couldn't organize and be a whiskey head."

 

The organizer appears on the cover of "Syl Johnson: Complete Mythology" (Numero Group), a four-CD, six-LP boxed set that is in many ways the Chicago label's crowning achievement, and quite possibly Johnson's as well. It documents the earliest portion of his career in Chicago as a quadruple-threat singer-musician-songwriter-producer who released quality music at a steady rate but never quite ascended to star level. Johnson trafficked in every style of the day, presaging some trends, piggybacking on others. "I've got to get over," Johnson sang on a 1965 single, and he worked all the angles: soul and funk, but also blues, pleading ballads, a hint of pop, protest music.

 

He scored a handful of hits, notably "Come on Sock it to Me" and "Different Strokes," but didn't really break through nationally. When "Come on Sock it to Me" hit in 1967, he was working as a truck driver. It wasn't until he went South in the '70s to Memphis and began recording for the Hi Records label, home to Al Green and producer Willie Mitchell, that he peaked as a commercial artist with a cover of Green's "Take Me to the River."

 

Yet his Chicago recordings for a few labels during the '60s endure, sampled in later decades by countless hip-hop artists for their irresistible blend of Southern grit and urban strut. Born Sylvester Thompson in Mississippi in 1936 before arriving in Chicago in 1950, the future Syl Johnson found work in the clubs and at recording sessions as a harmonica player and guitarist.

 

His recording career began in the late '50s as a series of accidents: The head of Vee-Jay Records overheard him goofing around in a studio on a Bobby Blue Bland song and was impressed with the guitarist's high, keening voice.

 

Johnson didn't think of himself as a singer, but Vee-Jay pushed him to write some songs. After cutting a homemade demo of a song called "Teardrops," he hopped off a bus on the South Side to deliver the track to Vee-Jay. During the nine-block walk to the label, he passed the offices of King Records, the home of James Brown, and on a whim walked in and presented his demo. It was greeted enthusiastically by the label's renowned talent scout, Ralph Bass, and he asked the fledgling singer to return in a few days.

 

"I came back to the studio and there was a band rehearsing my music," Johnson says. "I said, 'What are you doing?' They said, 'We're going to record you for King Records.' We started playing 'Teardrops' and I thought, 'Wow!'"

 

It was King who decided that Sylvester Thompson would now be known as Syl Johnson, and he cut a number of fine singles for the label's Federal subsidiary, but none of them connected. Johnson says he should have realized that he would never get the same attention as Brown, the label's biggest star, but he knew nothing of the record business back then.

 

"I was into D-minor," he says of one of his favorite musical keys. "James Brown was down there too. He depressed my ability to excel. The record company always looked to him first."

 

Of course Brown was already a proven hitmaker, and Johnson was just learning about the nuances of studio recording. But Johnson was determined to distinguish himself from his competition.

 

He came to Chicago steeped in blues, and for a time worked with the great blues guitarist Magic Sam. Soon Johnson branched out into soul, funk and R&B, helping define the Chicago sound of the '60s.

 

Though he insists that a track such as "Your Love is Good for Me" presaged the Hi Records sound that Al Green would own in the '70s, Johnson says there were distinct differences between what he was doing in Chicago and how he would later sound under Willie Mitchell's production guidance in Memphis.

 

"In Memphis, that was straight, fatback rhythm, more laid back," he says. "My sound in Chicago was more syncopated, like the bass line on 'Come on Sock it to Me.' That's uptown, Chicago-style soul."

 

The innovations cut both ways. He wasn't above putting his own spin on whatever happened to be charting at the time, whether riffing on Sam and Dave in "Ode to Soul Man" or Phil Spector in "Falling in Love Again." But by the time he became the signature act on the Twilight (later Twinight) label, he had evolved into a fully formed artist. His second album, "Is it Because I'm Black," is a soul classic, anchored by the seven-minute title track and brimming with sumptuous orchestrations, Johnson's impassioned vocals and sophisticated song craft.

 

But the label was already collapsing under the weight of a payola scandal, and Johnson's career again stalled. Recognition equal to his talent always seemed to elude the singer, at least until the hip-hop generation rediscovered his music.

 

Now he ponders the treasure trove that "Complete Mythology" contains, ripe for re-evaluation and appreciation, and smiles.

 

"How do I feel about it?" he says. "Like justice has been done. Justice."

[LouieB]

Great show Saturday night....

 

LouieB