RSSConsumer Guide by Review Date: 2007-07-12
2007-07-12
Howard Tate: Get It While You Can (Verve, 1967) Macon-born and Philadelphia-raised, Howard Tate never went Top Ten even on the soul charts but is remembered along with James Carr as the great lost soul man. "Ain't Nobody Home" became a B.B. King perennial, "Look at Granny Run Run" was the best thing to happen to senior sex till Levitra, and "Get It While You Can" was taken up as a showstopper by none other than Janis Joplin. The album didn't chart at all. But Tate had a supernal falsetto shriek to complement his rough howl, and writer-producer Jerry Ragovoy knew how to milk them both -- among other things, by adding two blues standards to his own sharp songs, which even for a guy who retired on "Piece of My Heart" got pretty peaky here. [Rolling Stone: The 40 Essential Albums of 1967]
The Who: The Who Sell Out (Decca, 1967) While making a full meal of their most delectable concept, a pirate-radio broadcast, the Who's finest album exemplifies how pop this famously psychedelic year was. The mock jingles -- for pimple cream, deodorant, baked beans -- are pop at its grubbiest. The fictional singles, typified but not necessarily topped by the actual hit "I Can See for Miles," are pop soaring like the dream of youth it is -- exalted, visionary, even, in their crafty way, psychedelic. All the rest is English eccentricity. [Rolling Stone: The 40 Essential Albums of 1967]