Monday, May 24, 2010

Howard Tate - Look AT Granny Run




Happy Monday. going to stay funky leading up to the 45 sessions this Friday and here is a really great and funky tune to get your week started. Man, this thing is just great great great! This a real funky number that is miles ahead of the funk game as this thing came out in 1966 long before most were anywhere near as funky. So dig in and Look at Granny Run Run!

As for Mr. Tate here is the 411:

Howard Tate (born August 14, 1939, near Macon, Georgia) is an American soul music singer and songwriter.
He moved with his family to Philadelphia in the early 1940s. In his teens, he joined a gospel music group that included Garnet Mimms and, as the Gainors, recorded rhythm and blues sides for Mercury Records and Cameo Records in the early 1960s. Tate performed with organist Bill Doggett and returned to Philadelphia.
Mimms, leading a group called the Enchanters, introduced Tate to record-producer Jerry Ragovoy, who began recording Tate for Verve Records. Utilizing top New York City session musicians such as Paul Griffin, Richard Tee, Eric Gale, Chuck Rainey and Herb Lovell, Tate and Ragovoy produced, from 1966 to 1968, a series of bluesy soul-music recordings that are regarded as some of the most sophisticated of the era. "Ain't Nobody Home" (1966), "Look at Granny Run Run" (1966), "Baby I Love You" (1967), and "Stop" (1968) all written or co-written by Ragovoy, were well received by record buyers. "Ain't Nobody Home", "Look At Granny" and "Stop" charted pop and top 20 R&B.
Janis Joplin performed another single, the title track from his first album, "Get It While You Can", during this time. The album was regarded as a classic by aficionados, but it failed to sell in large quantities. However, Tate's reputation among critics was high. As Robert Christgau writes in his review of Tate's Verve material, "Tate is a blues-drenched Macon native who had the desire to head north and sounds it every time he gooses a lament with one of the trademark keens that signify the escape he never achieved. He brought out the best in soul pro Jerry Ragovoy, who made Tate's records jump instead of arranging them into submission, and gave him lyrics with some wit to them besides."
Tate, working apart from Ragovoy, made an album called Howard Tate's Reaction that was released in 1970 on Turntable Records. Produced by Lloyd Price and Johnny Nash, it was distributed in minute quantities, and critics felt it lacked the flair of his Verve material. Still, as Christgau writes, "Tate's voice is potent enough to activate more inert material." The record was reissued, as Reaction, in 2003. Ragovoy and Tate reunited for the 1972 Atlantic Records Howard Tate, which included more songs by Ragovoy along with Tate's versions of Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" and Robbie Robertson's and Levon Helm's "Jemima Surrender." Again, the album was acclaimed by critics and virtually ignored by listeners.
After recording a single for Epic Records and a few songs for his own label, Tate retired from the record business in the late 1970s. He sold securities in the New Jersey and Philadelphia area, and in the 1980s developed a dependence on drugs, ending up living in a homeless shelter. In the mid-1990s Howard Tate began counselling drug abusers and the mentally ill, and worked as a preacher. A Jersey City disc jockey discovered Tate's whereabouts early in 2001, and in spring 2001 Tate played his first date in many years, in New Orleans. He then began working with Ragovoy on an album that was released, as Rediscovered, in 2003. It was regarded as a return to form and included covers of songs by Elvis Costello and Prince as well as a new version of "Get It While You Can."


Howard Tate - Look AT Granny Run

7 comments:

The Hound said...

Howard Tate played at a bar I own a piece of (Circle Bar) in New Orleans in 2003 w/Lil Buck Senegal's band along w/Herb Hardestry from Fats Domino's band backing him up. In fact, he was in the office getting changed when I proposed to my wife. He was totally fantastic. Jerry Wexler got many of his production ideas from the Verve LP (Get It While You Can, the title track of which Janis Joplin covered) that Look At Granny Run was pulled from. Tate also made an excellent LP for Lloyd Price's Turntable label (Howard Tate's Reaction) in '70 and one for Atlantic in '72.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic tune! W.

Anonymous said...

The first Viagara song.

Your driver said...

I think I remember this one. Of course it could be argued that I think I remember it because it is so formulaic, but shit, what a formula! Good stuff.

Perrata 2000 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mighty High said...

One of my favorite songs of all time from an incredible album.

Anonymous said...

real strong stuff as usual. Man, whenever i think I know my shit about music I go to yr site and get schooled