soul training saturdays

When I was but a bambino, my mother worked as a record seller downtown at the now long defunct San Antonio Music Company. At the time - for a time, at least - my father was a sales rep for Decca Records. I come by my slavish devotion to music natcherly, sans any musical talent myself. As the urban/family legends have it, even as a tot, my mother would sit me down in a listening booth at her store, with a stack of records. Much the feeling I got years later, when the downtown Starbucks opened their (now sadly defunct) Hearmusic store: I'd sit for three hours at a stretch at a listening kiosk, nursing the day's mochachocalattayaya, down deep in the archived funk. Much as it felt this morning (wanna tell ya one thing), with headphones on and the dawn of spring break dawning.

Everybody by now knows my devotion to Lady T, though it was a devotion come lately; as is my wont on far too many occasions with far too many other treasures, I was ignorantly dissing the girl until about six years ago my eyes and ears were opened. Been in deep ever since. Thank goodness the girl's been resurrected after some underground time; she's back with a vengeance. This vid, an old favorite, went underground itself for several months:



Old 80s Rick and Smokey duet. For all his clownish foolery, Rick had the voice - Lady T would not have let him in the shop, if he didn't. Throw Rick a good ballad and he could croon with the best.



This should probably be the last clip of the day, but I b'lieve they's even more Jesus comin' after this one, even if not by name. Al looks a big ole mess, but I believe this is just about the time that those lover-thrown hot grits woke the good man up, set him back on his road.



It don't get much better than this. Al's in fine form.



This was a revelation. I saw the 8-minute length of this run, couldn't believe he'd take it all the way. Charley's no longer a non-believer.