Monday, October 5, 2009

Playlist: Jewish soul sisters

Back in the 1970s, Jewish chicks were gettin’ soulful. Real soulful. Click the links below and you’ll hear what I’m talking about...

1. “Shakey Ground” – Phoebe Snow

2. “A Love of Your Own” – Melissa Manchester

3. “It Keeps You Runnin’ ” – Carly Simon

(Backing band: The Doobie Brothers.)

4. “Believe in Humanity” – Carole King

5. “Jimmy Mack” – Laura Nyro

(Backing vocals by Labelle.)

13 comments:

Geneva Girl said...

Don't forget Linda Creed! Although she wasn't a singer, she wrote some of the best lyrics EVER, putting her stamp on the Philadelphia Sound. She wrote the lyrics for Greatest Love of All, Betcha by Golly Wow, Break Up to Make Up and a lot of other 70s classics.

BTW, Carly Simon was raised Catholic and is part black on her mother's side.

I LOVE Phoebe Snow. I saw her years ago in concert in the Rock and Soul Review when she sang her "medley of hit" No Regrets. Carole King is another fav. I burned a whole in the Tapestry album and had a major fight with my dad when he tried to steal it.

Thanks!

bklyn6 said...

BTW, Carly Simon was raised Catholic and is part black on her mother's side.

You beat me too it. :-)

Phoebe Snow has always confused me.

I was hoping to see Timi Yuro on the list but, after a quick search, I think she was Catholic.

Undercover Black Man said...

As for the Carly Simon black mama thing... I remember reading that too... on Wikipedia, I believe. Then I checked Wikipedia again, and that's not there. In fact, the mom's ethnicity is spelled out with no mention of blackness.

I wonder if the black ancestry is something Carly slipped into her personal narrative for reasons unknown.

Anybody have definitive sourcing?

Unknown said...

Come on now, y'all! Carole King co-wrote The Locomotion, Will You (Still) Love Me Tomorrow, Oh No, Not My Baby, Up On The Roof, You've Got A Friend and Natural Woman. She was gettin' funky LONG before the '70's rolled around.

bklyn6 said...

UBM, check out Carly's video "Hello Big Man". It's dedicated to her parents.

Geneva Girl said...

In a 2004 interview by Michael Kors, she states:

CS: It's pretty interesting. It didn't matter as much because I'm a singer, not an actress, but my face is more acceptable in a way now than when I first came on the scene, because I'm part black. My mother's mother was black. I'm Jewish, black, Cuban, and French.

Undercover Black Man said...

... I'm part black. My mother's mother was black. ...

See, GG, here’s where it gets confusing. (And it seems Carly wants it confusing.)

On one hand, the meme has definitely taken hold that Carly Simon’s mom was half black: “Andrea Louise Heinemann is unmistakeably biracial and was very beautiful,” one reader wrote to the blog Light-Skinned-ed Girl.

But this is what it says in a 1995 Vanity Fair article about Carly Simon’s mom:

“Andrea was given to vivid statements that may or may not have been true. She claimed that her mother was Moorish, the illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso of Spain -- although the Moors were expelled from Spain in the 17th century.”

Regardless of the words quoted from Carly Simon’s own mouth... I don’t believe she’s a quadroon.

bklyn6 said...

UBM do you think she's an octoroon?

Anonymous said...

The bit about being part Cuban was enough for me. As the Caribbean latins say, "We're all a little black behind the ears."

Undercover Black Man said...

UBM do you think she's an octoroon?

I think her mom was a flake.

Undercover Black Man said...

^ And even if Carly Simon's grandmother was half-"Moorish"... that doesn't mean Carly possesses anything we would recognize as a "mixed-race" identity.

So the multiracialists who embrace her as part black... are reaching... just a bit.

craig said...

I think her mom was a flake.

So that would make her a moroon?

Undercover Black Man said...

^ Touché.