Terry Callier - "What Color is Love"

edited February 2010 in R&B/Soul
Terry Callier - "What Color is Love"

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"What Color is Love" was reissued as part of the Verve Originals series and offered on my BMG account, and I grabbed it up right away. It is a stunning album. The guy's got an amazing voice to go along with rich songwriting skills. More soul than jazz, What Color is heavier on the orchestration than most of his early albums, but this isn't a bad thing here; the added strings don't come off as corny, but really enhance the music. I've had this album for about two years now, and it still gets a regular spin in my stereo. It has, IMO, much of the sincerity that I find prevalent in Marvin Gaye's music. But you can't go into it with a pre-packaged sneer on your face; you gotta be open to it, y'know? It's easy to just write this off as some corny shit if you don't give it a chance. I highly recommend buying this album.
I've picked up several of his live albums since then, most of them pared down to his voice and a guitar, and they're just as amazing.
Here's his myspace page...

http://www.myspace.com/terrycallier

I picked up his album Timepeace, which he put out a handful of years ago. I wasn't crazy about it. The studio albums that I like most have been his output from 30-40 years ago.

He's got an interesting career, worth reading up on. Basically, after making some influential albums early on, his career sputtered out and he took an admin job at U of Chicago. Some music nuts in England began listening to his stuff and spinning it as djs, and suddenly Terry had a cult following overseas (I'm probably not remembering all this clearly from when I read it awhile ago, and who knows how accurate some of these "facts" are, but it's a fun story).
Anyways, a bunch of his albums got reissued by Verve, but none of them are available on emusic. He has some other ones though, like "The New Folk Sound", which is very good and can be heard on Lala, along with "What Color is Love"...

http://www.lala.com/#album/432627039263999006/Terry_Callier/What_Color_Is_Love

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