Monday, June 27, 2005
No love to be found...
Baby Huey - Hard Times
Ghostface Killah - Buck 50
The story as I heard it for the first time a few years back is that Baby Huey, a very large individual, was some sort of soul guitar prodigy who ate himself to death, distraught over the death of his hero, Jimi Hendrix. Not quite nearly the truth but maybe close. According to the All Music Guide he had some sort of glandular problem that had him hovering in the 3-400 lbs. range & he died of a drug-related heart attack in a hotel room before his debut The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend was released on Curtom. The song seems somehow heavier given the weight of the possibly apocryphal backstory. One of a handful of soul songs that make me sad & want to dance at the same time (provided it's played near the end of the night, when it's obvious I’ll be spending the night alone).
The Ghostface track does just loop sped-up, extended bits of the song but it’s the 4 beats of trill-y flutes that really seal it for me. I finally caught onto Supreme Clientele 3 years after it came out, just as I was rethinking my ignorance of all Wu Tang-related albums besides the first. The rest of the album is great & my favorite of the solo Wu records, although the instrumentals + dialogue version of RZA’s Ghost Dog soundtrack (out of print Japanese import, damn it!) is pretty fantastic too.
And in related news, there’s a RZA interview w/Terry Gross on the Fresh Air site that's worth a listen here.
The story as I heard it for the first time a few years back is that Baby Huey, a very large individual, was some sort of soul guitar prodigy who ate himself to death, distraught over the death of his hero, Jimi Hendrix. Not quite nearly the truth but maybe close. According to the All Music Guide he had some sort of glandular problem that had him hovering in the 3-400 lbs. range & he died of a drug-related heart attack in a hotel room before his debut The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend was released on Curtom. The song seems somehow heavier given the weight of the possibly apocryphal backstory. One of a handful of soul songs that make me sad & want to dance at the same time (provided it's played near the end of the night, when it's obvious I’ll be spending the night alone).
The Ghostface track does just loop sped-up, extended bits of the song but it’s the 4 beats of trill-y flutes that really seal it for me. I finally caught onto Supreme Clientele 3 years after it came out, just as I was rethinking my ignorance of all Wu Tang-related albums besides the first. The rest of the album is great & my favorite of the solo Wu records, although the instrumentals + dialogue version of RZA’s Ghost Dog soundtrack (out of print Japanese import, damn it!) is pretty fantastic too.
And in related news, there’s a RZA interview w/Terry Gross on the Fresh Air site that's worth a listen here.
