THE STYLISTICS – "I Can't Give You Anything But My Love"

I accidentally got a stylistics single when I collected Smiths coupons off crisp packets and put the wrong symbol down on the order sheet (I actually wanted the Status Quo one). They’d made this new format which was meant to be more flexible, resistant to wear and more high fidelity…

Yep, it was a 2 sided flexidisc.

Funnily enough, I liked the single better after getting it than I had before.

My cat, Tosca, just pricked up here ears and came sniffing at the screen. Now I know why! (Tosca? She’s a jealous, possessive, impulsive, temperamental but ultimately loyal diva. Just like my cat.)

Where the seventies (and everything that came after) differs from the sixties, which was my own teenpop period, is that I’m not fully immersed in everything that’s going on, and I can take or leave most of what’s about, but there are things I like a lot. This is one of them, and it conjures up brilliantly both the laid-back spirit of the mid-seventies and that long, lazy, hot summer of ’75. (The summer that followed may have been even longer and even hotter but it was far from lazy for me, as will become apparent.) I love it. It’s not particularly original or startling, so the most I could give it is 8, but I like it a lot.

And isn’t it odd, both in the light of the previous discussion and recent controversy about “blue-eyed soul”, that the Stylistics could take their place alongside Typically Tropical and nobody at the time thought anything about it? This is music that is undoubtedly ‘black’ in origin, but which can embrace everbody because it doesn’t feel like a point-blank leer.

One of the greatest singles acts of the 70s finally nabs a #1. (Seriously, who’s the competition back then in terms of consistency over several years in that decade: T.Rex, Abba, Roxy? That’s probably it.) And while it should have been “You Make Me Feel Brand New” that topped the chart, and some of the Hugo & Luigi stuff is a little too smooth for my tastes, “Can’t Give You Anything” will always get me punching the air and singing along at the disco.

Strongest memory of the time of the Stylistics: they featured along with Quo, the Rollers and others in a crisps promotion (it might have been Smiths, as they were the biggest noise in savoury snacks in the mid 70s, just as Walkers is now) where you could collect tokens from the packets and send off for a 2-track flexi disc of hits by your favourite pop act. It’s a measure of the extent that Thompkins & co had crossed over to the mainstream by 1975 that they featured in this promotion.

I was also pleased to note that the CD collection of their hits and most popular LP tracks released in the UK last year (recommended as a primer btw, it contains pretty much everything you need) did OK chart wise.

The Hugo and Luigi productions weren’t all that successful in the States but did very well in Britain, better than their Thom Bell stuff I think.

By ‘point-blank leer’ I meant a reference to the kind of contemporary ‘urban’ music which, to me anyway, projects an aggressive, in-yer-face, up-yours attitude. Maybe it wasn’t the most elegant phrase I could have chosen, but nor do I think guilt-tripping the honkies is the ideal way to bring about harmony. And as for leering, perhaps only a woman could experience the chill of running the gauntlet of a group of bruvvers hanging-out on a street corner in somewhere like St Pauls in Bristol, being, yes, leered at, propositioned, grabbed and even spat at. It’s not all one-way traffic, oppressor and oppressed.

And lest anybody get hold of the wrong ideas, I have worked very hard with both the Notting Hill and St Pauls Carnival organisers and been thanked for it. I’ve been in the thick of things working for change. And yes, I have strong views about black music. I’m very much for it. Yes, it’s true that I have a copy of Legend and I’m not ashamed of that at all. In my collection you’ll also find Bessie Smith, Howling Wolf, Memphis Slim, Billie Holiday, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Dinah Washington, Youssou N’Dour, Hugh Masakele, Wilson Pickett, Sonny Boy Williamson, Sarah Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, do you really want me to go on? Oh yes, even the Stylistics! Not a lot of gangsta rap I’ll admit. It’s not to my taste. If you want to make an issue of that, that’s fine.

jeff, in 1975 Walkers were a big noise in savoury snacks for those in the know. They were made on a small scale near Leicester and a few discerning pubs outside their main trading area stocked them rather than the inferior Smiths and Golden Wonder. Their location was passed round by word of mouth, and a pub that stocked Walkers was likely to take more care over other details too.

Then the late Richard Boston gave them publicity in his Guardian column and his book Beer and Skittles, leading to Pepsico buying them out. The result – and Tom knows my views on this sort of thing – was a triumph of Brand over Product.

And as for leering, perhaps only a woman could experience the chill of running the gauntlet of a group of bruvvers hanging-out on a street corner in somewhere like St Pauls in Bristol, being, yes, leered at, propositioned, grabbed and even spat at.

Opening section of Lester Bangs’ “The White Noise Supremacists” essay to thread I think.

My abiding memory of this song is how much “Bigger” it sounded, compared to previous Stylistics hits. From reading the comments above it appears that this was down to a change of producer. Being a few years older now that is quite obvious.

There was a marked shift from the sweet soul sound of tracks like “You Make Me Feel Brand New” and “Stone in Love With You”, to this more poppy, accessible sound.

Despite this song giving them their number one hit (which they undoubtedly deserved), the material in the H&L and Van McCoy periods was not as strong and within a year of this they were singing corny songs like “16 Bars”, and later the even cheesier “$7000 and You”, neither of which will remotely concern this blog!

It’s a perfectly good song, but a little clumsy, and not really what I imagine they would wish to be remembered for.

My view is that this isn’t ILx.

Can we stick to the music ? This pugnacious posturing is a real pain …..

Okay, youse guys, hands up who remembers the film clip accompanying this on TOTP? The Stylistics were “performing” the song on top of a roof probably in Philly. The cuddly dwarfy lead singer with the squeaky voice I’ll give you. But the rest of them? Yer ‘avin’ a larrf! One of them is clearly totally wankered (or has St Vitus’ Dance) and deserves to be taken out by a police marksman. The others just jive around out of sequence but I swear to God that this is inadvertent high comedy of the finest calibre. Having taken the piss thus, it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that this song did have merits. In fact it’s a strong performance, although not a patch on “You Make Me Feel Brand New” from a year earlier, which I thought was just class in a glass and still do. It tragically got stuck at Number Two. The B-side to this was the equally sublime “Only For The Children”, which deserved laurels in its own right. You just would not figure how the idiots on the roof could have come across with gold like this.

Some time in the future we’ll come to a piece (as so often in this exercise, one of my absolute favourite performers represented only by a lesser work) which came from a film. The woman reviewing this film in City Limits declared that “all women will find this film offensive”. I hurled my copy of CL against the wall and never bought another one.

Well, to return to popular music at large and lightening things up a little, I’ve just learned that I’m invited to be a guest on a late night show on the local Abbey FM station and I’m to choose eight gramophone records to be played during the session, which are restricted to Top 20 from 1960s to present. Now, where should I begin…

One minor point of fact: the old standard “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” was not a Jolson song, or at least nothing like primarily; it was a Jimmy McHugh/Dorothy Fields composition for the all-black Broadway show Blackbirds Of 1928, in which among others Bill “Bojangles” Robinson first came to national prominence, and was one of the early hits of mainstream black pop in the US. Louis Armstrong had the first hit version, and Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday, and Fats Waller were also associated with it in its first decade.

Maybe the Jolson association came about because it’s on Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall album, which was largely Jolson material?

Snif: But a pale shadow of what they were when they were produced by a small family company and not an international megaconglomerate. Which is almost invariably the way, I find. (Is this taught in economics courses?)

It is a shame that the distracting drizzle of egocratic racism masquerading as misplaced moral gliberalism has continued unabated.

With regard to #24, I could tell similarly horrifying stories about Glasgow in the seventies and replace the terms “black” and “white” with the terms “Catholic” and “Protestant”. Since I am wise enough to avoid crass strawmanism, however, I prefer to view the bigger picture, namely to look at why this prejudice historically exists – and saying that the blacks were just as bad/worse round “my” way is yet another manifestation of what is essentially endemic, or at least ingrained, racism, in blissful and total ignorance of the circumstances which brought this sort of attitude and behaviour into being in the first place.

Jonathan (#29) – the Jolson association came about because Marcello said it was a Jolson song! Tch, MC, usually so authoritative…!

Um, no he didn’t. He said that he had a song of the same name, on the “Typically Tropical” Barbados discussion.

Re 36: The Stylistics’ version of ‘You’ll Never Get To Heaven If You Break My Heart’ is sweet, but the Dionne Warwick version is one of the very best things either she or Bacharach ever did. It’s a wonderfully tactful reading of the song, from a singer who seems to know suffering, but has a real hope that her beloved might be good to her.

I’d just like to put in a word for Chipmunk crisps. I don’t think they make ’em anymore but their salt n’ vinegar was potent.

Possibly the most memorable crisps ad ever:
Newcastle United supporters’ coach returns to Tyneside, and Dad meets his lad off the coach.
Dad: “How about that eh? 4-0 win away at Arsenal!…”
Lad: “Aye, but they had horrible crisps…”
(Dad gives lad a packet of his favourite Tudor crisps)
Lad: “Aye, that’s canny… tell yer what, if they’d had Tudor crisps in London I’d have settled fer a gerrl-less draw!”

I can remember the initial McCoys campaign “The BIG chip from the BIG country”, which I enjoyed because of its ASA-imposed suffix “Made in the UK”.

who knew popular comments were filled w/ so many bernie goetz sympathizers? disturbing stuff

o sobek!: I really do think that this matter should be close down now, but all the same I want to ask who has advocated shooting? There’s a world of difference between feeling menaced and overreacting to it.

I once asked my late ex-partner Frank, a former lieutenant in the Royal Marines, what he would do if we were menaced while walking through St Pauls (it happens – accept that). He said we would cross the road to avoid a confrontation. I asked what he would do if we were pursued. He said he would ask the pursuers politely to desist. I asked what he would do if the pursuers ignored the request. He said he’d break their arms.