John Kasandra – Down Home Ups/Good Whiskey & Bad Women
John Kasandra – The Other Brother / We Gotta Go On
John Kasandra – You Can Go Now
On Sunday, I’ll be doing my 200th show on the KPFK airwaves, and my last on Sundays before moving to Fridays from 8-10pm on June 26th and will spend those two hours highlighting some of the music associated with Dale Ossman Warren. Warren spend a number of years producing, writing and arranging songs for Motown, Shrine, Sidra, Drew and others before finding a home on Stax. At Stax he worked on a number of classic albums, particularly with Isaac Hayes, David Porter, and his own project, The 24-Carat Black.
As I’ve been prepping this tribute (which will feature, from start to finish, the “Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth” album in the second hour Sunday at 5pm), I’ve been digging into a number of projects that Warren was associated with, but that I hadn’t heard before. This album from John Kasandra is an especially interesting one, as it comes a year before the concept album “Ghetto.” It’s clear, since Warren produced, engineered, arranged & conducted the music for the album, that this album carries much of his vision.
What’s interesting to me is how this album fits in his discography, coming just before the 1973 masterpiece. The album doesn’t necessarily sound like the 24-Carat Black project, but there are elements that show that Warren was working through some things that would later on show up on that album. This is clearest on the intro to the monologue “The Other Brother.” As the female singers sing, “We Gotta To Go On, We Gotta Keep On Moving Along” you hear an electric piano playing the same theme that would later show up as a recurrent theme on the “Ghetto” album. The sparse and stark style of the horns and drums also share similarities with the sound of that underground classic.
It is a shame that Warren wasn’t able to keep moving along with his vision and continue to record more during this very furtive period of time, with Stax records folding in just a few years after these records were recorded. But we should be glad that we have all of these examples of quality (and especially glad that Numero was able to save some tracks from the “lost” album from the 24-Carat Black a few years ago). I’m thankful to have found this music and to be able to share it with you here and on the radio.
Cheers,
Michael