Bound To Happen

Clarence Reid: Nobody But You Babe
from Dancin' With Nobody But You Babe (Atlantic 1969)

William Bell: I Forgot To Be Your Lover
from Bound to Happen (Stax 1969)


One of the more beautiful aspects about spring in Southern California is the ability to kick back under the sun and have the cool breeze of the beach winds dance on your skin and through your hair while you drink ice cold coronas from an ice filled cooler and barely break a sweat all while you listen to music so funky and so moving you can't help but play them over and over again. For those who have never had this small luxury of life I wish I could help you experience it but since I can't provide everything needed to fulfill this I can at least provide a bit of a soundtrack for this idyllic image.

Clarence Reid's Nobody But You Babe is funky piece of spring swag. It's not exactly a song that you wanna kick back and smoke an el to, but for those peak spring afternoons when you get too lazy to get up out of the lawn chair, it's the perfect toe tapper to accompany you as you move past the hump of the noon day sun. Just as well known under his alias Blowfly, Reid drives the song with a heeeeavy guitar break and stabbing horns that works it's way up to the bridge, at which point he then ups the funk meter by a good 10,000. If your head isn't nodding ten seconds into the start of the song I would strongly suggest you check your pulse or get out into the sun a little longer to invigorate your spirit.

The second song is nowadys just as recognizable from being sampled on the Alchemist produced track for Dilated Peoples, Worse Comes To Worse, as it is for being a top ten hit for Bell in '68. Lugubrious and doleful, Bell's voice cuts through the song and gains more pity backed by a bluesy guitar than it has any right to. This is the song you listen to as your spring excursion comes to an end and as the sun turns to to it's dusky faded yellow. A perfect song to break out the hookah and fire it up to, or to just close your eyes and let the liquor subdue your mind.