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artist.....: Gloria Ann Taylor
album......: Love is A Hurtin' Thing
year.......: 2015
label......: Luv N'Haight
LHCD076
source.....: CDDA
moodswing..: Soul
releasesize: 77.55 MB
tracks.....: 13
length.....: 44:31
encoder....: VBR LAME 3.98.4 -v0
quality....: avg. 240kbps
scenealized: 03.31.2016
A onth before the release of their
debut album on 4AD, U.S. Girls dropped
the video for the Slim Twig-produced
single "Window Shades". For most
listeners, it was a song about the
emotional breakthrough of a woman
finally confronting her unfaithful
partner. But its production, with
looped strings, piano, and hand drum,
was startling to deep soul fans.
"Window Shades" incorporated a licensed
sample of Gloria Ann Taylor's 1973
single, "Love Is a Hurting Thing", a
song found on a privately-pressed 12"
called Deep Inside You featured one of
the more anonymous spirograph sleeves
from that era. Seen in the racks, the
12" might have looked like any number
of local gospel or marching band albums
from the mid-'70s, but this one came
with a twist: a copy of the release,
credited to Gloria Ann Taylor and Walt
Whisenhunt's Orchestra, routinely tops
four figures in online auctions, making
it one of the most coveted soul/disco
albums of its ilk.
Deep Inside You is the centerpiece of
Love Is a Hurtin' Thing, Ubiquity's
long-gestating compilation of
highlights from Gloria Taylor's brief
career, gathering five singles recorded
between 1971 and 1977. For those of
more modest means who've relied on mp3s
culled from long-deleted music blogs,
Hurtin' Thing fills in her discography
as well as her biography. The mystery
inherent in her music has led to some
strange speculations online. Even her
Discogs page puts her birthplace as
Alabama, saying that she formed gospel
group Sweet Honey in the Rock and
passed away 10 years ago (no doubt
conflating her with one Gloria Ann
Taylor-James). As these liner notes
clarify, though, Taylor was actually
born in a coal-mining town in West
Virginia and is still very much with
us.
That Gloria Ann Taylor didn't become a
household name isn't of much concern
now. It's difficult to become a star,
much easier to be star-crossed, to find
your music lost to time. So the fact
that she never made it is not cosmic
injustice so much as the actual
indifference of the universe. It was in
fact at the start of Taylor's career as
a soul singer based in Toledo that she
had her best shot at stardom. Compared
favorably to Aretha Franklin, she had a
powerful, church-bred voice that caught
the attention of one of James Brown's
arrangers and associates, Walt
Whisenhunt, fresh off of working on
Doris Troy's "Just One Look". They
became both musical partners and a
couple.
The number of forgotten, obscure, or
lost soul singers revived in the 21st
century runs long and deep, the
"personal sacrifice, failed
relationships, and missed opportunity"
that these notes describe are all
attendant of this peculiar genre. But
before allowing hard-knock biography to
color the reception of Love Is a
Hurtin' Thing, just listen to the
opening seconds of the title track. A
blistering psychedelic guitar solo,
like something left off of Nuggets,
flares across the opening 10 seconds,
but 20 seconds in, we're awash in
opulent strings, piano, and Taylor's
voice, a powerful instrument that seem
to be echoing from a subterranean
tunnel.
As production choices for a potential
hit single in the early 1970s go, it's
baffling, one part psych-rock, one part
Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra,
all competing with the fresh wound of
Taylor's voice. There's a raw pain and
cavernous hurt in Taylor's every
exhalation, the lyrics questioning how
love could bring such joy and pain. And
the music itself is bent on evoking all
of the ecstasy and agony, the crazed
jags of adoration and confusion that
stems from a dysfunctional
relationship.
"How Can You Say It" has Taylor talk
about giving her lover her last dime,
then finding tears on his pillow. That
wrenching whiplash of emotions are
scored by lush orchestration and
percussion swaddled in so much echo so
as to suggest the sound Lee Perry would
get out of the Black Ark in a few
years' time. Same goes for "Deep Inside
of You", where the strings, vibraphone,
and Taylor's voice are all doused in
heavy reverb, and for an instant,
everything becomes disorienting and
indistinct.
No other soul producer in that era
would smother their vocalist in so many
effects or arrange backing harmonies at
such cross purposes to the main melody.
So while Taylor voices heartbreak and
anguish, Whisenhunt's idiosyncratic
productions suggest something close to
madness. But his choicesùwhich no doubt
made mainstream success impossibleùare
staggering 40 years on. On the haunting
dirge of "Burning Eyes", Taylor's voice
frays before our ears, shadowed by a
muted trumpet and a horn section that
seems to have lurched up from a
graveyard. "World That's Not Real" is
ominous yet ephemeral, buoyed by
xylophone and Taylor's desolate voice.
Almost a minute in, the piano hits a
chord that Oliver Wang at Soul-Sides
once deemed "Death's ringtone," yet at
that, the song briefly brightens, only
to sidle back into darkness, perching
at the edge of the void.
Harrowing and feverish as these sides
are, the most uncanny song remains the
seven-minute version of "Love Is a
Hurtin' Thing", a befuddling megamix
comprised of the original version of
the track as well as chunks of previous
singles "How Can You Say It" and
"Music", all cobbled together in the
studio by Whisenhunt. To the mix he
adds more stinging wah-wah guitar,
silken orchestration, and a re-recorded
drum track not quite in sync with the
original that trainwrecks the whole
thing (no doubt an attempt to cash in
on disco fever). With funds low, it had
a minuscule press run and was soon
forgotten. Yet somehow, it all works.
It's glorious and bewildering,
magnificent and forlorn, defiant and
defeated, an emotional speedball. Heard
in 2015, the music is as indelible and
inscrutable as ever. Or, as Taylor once
sang about love: "It's a mystery no one
can explain."
psst, more info at www.ubiquityrecords.com
01 Love is A Hurtin' Thing 03:23
02 How Can You Say it 02:53
03 What I Want 03:31
04 Burning Eyes 03:25
05 Deep Inside of You 02:28
06 World That's Not Real 03:51
07 Whats You'r World 03:53
08 Had it All the Time 03:01
09 Jolene 03:37
10 Music 01:33
11 Deep Inside of You 02:30
12 Love is A Hurtin' Thing 07:17
13 Brother Less than A Man 03:09