Work Songs Pt.3

Bill Withers - Use Me
Ann Peebles - Somebody's On Your Case
Otis Redding - Louie Louie

Today I bring you a triplet of stellar soulful selections that I couldn't leave behind when my shift was over -- some of them so potent that I was petrified of playing them in the shop in case someone wanted to buy the last copy.

Bill Withers' 'Still Bill' is a phenomenal album. Any album that features three songs as top shelf as 'Who Is He (And What Is He To You)', 'Use Me' and 'Lean On Me' is worth the cover price. Having these three songs successively closing off side A is straight up sublime. In 'Use Me', Withers, in first person, tells of a relationship between two lovers that is so tense family and friends are intervening, but he goes on to suggest that the amazing sexual chemistry more than makes up for all the troubles. The words "if it feels this good getting used/you just keep on using me/until you use me up" sound a hell of a lot more intensely charged coming from Withers than they look as I type them. (It's been suggested that this song was written about country boy Withers' marriage to city girl actress Denise Nicholas "you get me in a crowd of high class people/and then you act real rude to me".) Though the instrumentation is sparse, giving the vocals room to breathe, the syncopated rhythms and funky clavinet stabs provide an appropriate uncomfortable and sleazy background to this torrid tale of an off match getting it on.

Hi Records staff writer Earl Randle came up with 'Somebody's On Your Case' a song which warns women of the signs that another woman might be moving in on their man. A clear instance of a man trying to write from a woman's perspective but being a little too sympathetic towards the man. It suggests that if "somebody is on your case" i.e. another woman is courting your man, then "don't get uptight/don't put him out tonight" but "get your own thing right" and "get on your job". Regardless of the lyrical content, which Ann Peebles delivers with power and class, this track is a classic example of the funky side of the Willie Mitchell's Memphis sound. Howard Grimes' bongos add pace to this slinking number originally taken from 1972's 'Straight From The Heart', though I found it on Ann Peebles: The Hi Records Singles A's & B's.

By 1964, R&B singer Richard Berry's 'Louie Louie' had been enthusiastically adopted by the garage groups of the pacific northwest and was well on its was to become the magnum opus it is today. On his first album, 'Pain In My Heart', Otis Redding thought he'd join in the fun and whip out his own cover. A mere two minutes after the distinctive guitar/horn intro this version is faded out but in between we get a taste of the infectious energy that surrounded Redding. The recording sounds like a live show and you can almost hear Redding stomping around the studio as he would have done on stage.

PopMatters interview Bill Withers
Ann Peebles - The Acoustic Soul Tour
Louie Louie dot net