Song of the Week: These Ain't Raindrops

James Carr and the surprise expansion of a golden era

It can be easy to feel like the mountain of music is tracked out, a ski hill at 4pm on a busy Saturday, the good stuff gone, no more fresh snow to be found. This can feel especially true when it comes to a specific period and genre of music.

Case in point: I love soul music from the mid-to-late 50s until around 1972-73. I tend to think of my Peak Soul Favorites as starting around Ray Charles¹—”I’ve Got A Woman” went to #1 in 1954²—and stopping somewhere around, let’s say, the time disco started³. No offense, disco. It just changed the way people looked at, danced to, made, and produced music. Things got too smooth for me right around there.

(This is not to say I don’t love some albums, songs, or artists from before or after this window of time. Of course I do. It’s just to say that I have an extra dose of affection for the sound and feel of recordings during this period, that if an R&B song comes from that period there’s a markedly higher chance I’m gonna connect with it.)

It’s not controversial in the least to suggest there was real magic in those years. The list of artists creating pantheon songs in those years is preposterous: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, The Drifters, Otis Redding, Martha & The Vandellas, The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Gladys Knight, The Jackson 5, Etta James, Sly & The Family Stone, Ben E. King, Booker T & The M.G.’s., Barbara Lynn, The Impressions, Irma Thomas, Junior Walker, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Percy Sledge, Sam & Dave, Stevie Wonder, Bettye Swann, The Isley Brothers, Al Green, The Staple Singers, Bill Withers, Donny Hathaway, Jackie Wilson, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, Roberta Flack, Nina Simone (genre-hopper, she was), Bettye LaVette (underloved in her time, tbh)…

I mean, that list is ridiculous. And very much not exhaustive! (I know I missed a bunch of the doo-wop and girl groups, among probably loads of others.)

So, looking at legend-packed paragraph like that, it’s easy to think of music from a certain period as a finite thing, something you can dig and get to the bottom of. A known quantity with clear boundaries, a known discography with nothing to surprise you except the occasional b-side from the vaults or studio outtake version of a hit song that surfaces later. It’s over, after all.

Which is why it was extra-delightful when one day I stumbled upon the music of someone I’d personally never heard of: James Carr.

I went in utterly blind⁴,⁵ only to find Carr’s music flaunts all the hallmarks I love about the era—the groove and swing of the drums & bass guitar, the natural sound of the room and musicians, soulful raspy church-influenced style of singing (the phrasing!), simple percussive guitar parts, punchy horn arrangements, hyper-efficient pop song length (almost every song clocking in under 3 minutes), lots of heart, the way it sounds like a bunch of people in the same room at the same time, everything. How had I, someone who puts way too much self-identity weight on at least a passing knowledge of popular music, missed this?

It turns out the well is deeper than I thought. It makes me want to scour all the other corners, to unearth another hidden gem.

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I picked “These Ain’t Raindrops” as a starter because I love it so much, but would recommend pretty much any song⁶ off of Carr’s tragically-titled⁷ 1968 album You Got My Mind Messed Up. The full album is so, so good, top to bottom. It holds up to most any Otis or even Aretha or Marvin record. For real. Those aren’t fighting words. Not even remotely controversial, to me.

So, yeah, I thought I’d heard pretty much the extent of what 1959-1972 soul had to offer me.

How arrogant. Ignorant, too. I now realize, of course, that there are likely stores upon stores of underground, forgotten greatness awaiting.

Maybe even in 90’s grunge music!

(Nah.)

1. Like some of the most iconic artists in music history, Ray Charles isn’t just R&B. He transcends genre. Some of his early stuff could justifiably be filed with prominent vocal jazz records of the era, in a similar vein to Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald. Calling a spade a spade, though, he lived and thrived in R&B, where he had 86 hits and ELEVEN chart-toppers. But he also hit #1 on the country charts and his 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country And Western Music (my personal favorite) was his first album to top the Billboard 200. He had a song go #1 on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart too. And don’t forget the too-general-genre of “pop” as, for a time, Ray had the third-most charting singles on the Hot 100, behind only…any guesses?…. Elvis and James Brown.

2. “Confession Blues” went to #2 on the R&B charts in 1952, but—to me—the iconic sound of Ray Charles truly kicked off with “I’ve Got A Woman”, leading into songs like “What’d I Say (Part 1)” and “Hit The Road Jack.”

3. Sometime after Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly, from 1972, is where I start to be less connected, less riveted by the stuff happening in popular R&B.

And, for the record, I am not constitutionally anti-disco. It’s not a preferred genre for me, by any means. It just doesn’t speak to me much, I don’t seek it out, but I do have some favorites, leaning especially towards the songs where disco and funk overlap. I’m not a total sourpuss…

4. deaf?

5. Or so I thought, until today, when I realized that I had heard the song “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man” way back in 1995 when I was zealously buying anything Elvis Costello put out. He released an album, Kojak Variety, where he covered some of his favorite “lesser-known” songs, backed by a stupid-good band:

James Burton (Elvis Presley’s guy) on guitar
Jerry Scheff (also Elvis’s guy and Orbison’s and, get this, under credited for THE DOORS) on bass guitar
Jim Keltner (everyone’s guy) on drums
Larry Knechtel (of the storied Wrecking Crew and soft rock titans Bread) on piano & organ
Marc Ribot (one of a kind NYC dude) on guitar
Pete Thomas (The Attractions and tons others) on drums

My favorite songs on that record were actually “Strange”, “I Threw It All Away”, “Must You Throw Dirt In My Face”, and “Hidden Charms”, but I remember digging “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man” now. Totally fit the vibe of the album.

6. “The Dark End of the Street”, Carr’s best-known song, went to #10 on the R&B charts and #77 on the pop chart, and seems like the prototype for a good chunk of Van Morrison’s catalog (interesting because it was also featured in the 90’s movie The Commitments, about soul-music-loving Irish kids). Check out how Carr delivers the line “they’re gonna find us.” Hoo-ee.

But what about the title track? It should be a classic. Same with “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man” (a sibling to the soul classic “You Left The Water Running”).

7. Some sad background (and context for why you or I may never have heard of Carr):

Carr suffered from bipolar disorder, making the name of the song and album all the sadder. He suffered mental breakdowns onstage, was hospitalized more than a few times, and it obviously hindered his ability to achieve the fame of some of his peers.

The heartache in his voice was not an affectation. It ran deep.

He only made four albums in his lifetime. One in 1967, the next in 1968, all hampered by his mental health struggles, making it hard for him to achieve any kind of momentum. And then there was a massive gap until he found himself back in the studio in 1991 and 1994, for albums that weren’t up to the artist he had once been. Tragic.