Terry Callier - Occasional Rain
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Cadet/Verve 06251 7664883 ****Callier (v, g), Charles Stepney (org, harpsichord), Leonard Pirani (p), Sydney Simms (b), Bob Crowder (d), Kitty Haywood, Minnie Riperton, Shirley Wahls (v) and Earl Madison (c) Rec. 1972 Although he can lay claim to the soul folk crown with as much authority as anybody, the Chicago singer has always had a more complicated DNA. ‘Ordinary Joe’, the fine opener on this much sought-after collector’s item makes it clear that Callier can swing like Nina Simone and “blues you like Joe Williams.” In his whole aesthetic there is a sense of the importance of his native Chicago as an essential confluence of many strands of black music. And yet the combination of Callier’s plaintive songwriting and Charles Stepney’s devastatingly ethereal arrangements produced a quite unique sound here that was not that far removed from the sublime gothic gospel of the Rotary Connection. In other words, the general mood here is sombre.
The songs are intense, moving laments on betrayal, broken lives and lost loves, rendered with an emotional charge that moves beyond any superficial melodrama. Callier ever so slightly recalls the very urbane folk singer Len Chandler in so far as he can distill raw emotion in a lyric without resorting to overwrought melisma. Adding a crystalline grace to the arrangements, the bulk of which shift skillfully between blues and gospel harmony, is the soprano unison singing of Kitty Haywood and Minnie Riperton. The ghostliness of their tone is simultaneously haunting and soothing.
All of which makes this period in Callier’s discography a fascinating one. On the one hand the association with the ingenious Stepney produced a sound canvas that was unique for its quasi-operatic secondary colours, yet at the very core of this music is Callier the storyteller, who could convincingly perform any of the songs with nothing more than an acoustic guitar.
This strong narrative drive in the music is what makes Occasional Rain such a timeless classic, a work of art that nonetheless has a sure footing in popular culture. For its immense human depth nothing is more popular or more cultured than the blues.
Kevin Le Gendre