Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Chaka Khan...and Prince, Rufus


Chaka Khan...I really like Prince's original version of I Feel for You.  She surely makes her cover version of it her own - especially with that killer dub intro, but the swing-y tempo of Prince's (who wrote it) version is just really smooth and silky.  Prince's version is on his 2nd LP (which some people think is/was his debut), the eponymous Prince album, called Prince, which was released in October 1979.   Apparently, it was slapped together rapidly to keep the momentum gained from his actual debut LP, For You.  I wore that album out in college because it has one of my all-time favorite songs on it - "I Wanna Be Your Lover."  Which was his first hit, spending two weeks at number one on the R&B singles chart.  But back to Chaka and the group she has fronted for many years - Rufus.  I read that when Quincy Jones was helping to make Off the Wall, members of Rufus (David J. "Hawk" Wolinski  and John "JR" Robinson) were used as the rhythm section on that classic album.  The album shown on the right is hers called Naughty, out in 1980, and produced by Arif Mardin, Turkey's second most famous record-maker.  There is a veritable who's who of musical geniuses listed as having played on that record too long to list here.

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