R.I.P...........Freddie Hughes..........Kent 337- Freddie Hughes - Send My Baby Back (2010) - Rare Soul (FLAC)+++Booklet Etc

It really upsets me to have to be the bearer of another terrible loss to the world of Soul music and all it stands for,but sadly hear we go again...I have cancelled much of the music reviews i was going to post because of these 4 sad losses to our music in the last few days.I felt i have had to do these tributes as these guys have given us so much pleasure over the years with their Phenomenal Records. But this Album sums up a very talented life....... 

 

HIS MUSIC

One of the best performances on Freddie Hughes’ 1968 album “Send My Baby Back” – the first legitimate reissue of which is now available on Kent since 2010 – is a song entitled ‘Natural Man’. It is Aretha’s classic reworked from a male perspective, but the tune’s title pretty much sums up Hughes’ abilities and his incredible voice. Though he came from a church background that many soul singers share, Freddie’s gift was one hundred per cent his own, an untutored and breathtaking instrument, with a flexibility and range that makes him completely distinctive. When married to the compelling arrangements of producer Lonnie Hewitt, it’s a match made in 1960s soul heaven. Let’s get one thing straight right away. Our Freddie is NOT the same artist that sang ‘Oo Wee Baby’, or recorded for Vee-Jay or Brunswick. With all due respect to that fellow, he couldn’t hope to scale vocal heights such as those represented on this CD...IMHO. The lingering fondness for Freddie’s best known number, the charming and completely soulful mid-tempo ballad ‘Send My Baby Back’ means that many believe it to have been a bigger hit than it actually was (#20 on Billboard R&B in July 1968). Freddie’s artistry is clearly on display on every track of this classy longplayer and if I had to choose a favourite song, by a narrow margin it would have to be "Natural Man" apart from his wonderful Dance classics! Adding bonus tracks to the album’s rather brief running time was easy in theory, not so in practice. Freddie’s background with San Francisco duos: the Impression-istic Soul Brothers with Ken Pleasants, the storming, searing Casanova II with Wylie Trass, was familiar enough, but the rights to certain cuts were in flux. Just a couple of years ago, there was a breakthrough, which came along with the exciting discovery of several unissued songs from the Soul Brothers. These superlative items, derived from Freddie’s first prolonged period in the studio at Music City of Berkeley, include early arrangements of tunes recorded later, as well as the unknown and fabulous ‘She’s Coming Back’ and ‘Station L-O-V-E’. All this additional material gives us not just an intimate glimpse of Freddie’s evolution as an artist in the San Francisco Bay Area, but is some damn fine soul music in its own right.

HIS LIFE & CAREER

(Born 1943 Passed 2022)Freddie was born in Berkeley and raised in Oakland’s segregated Harbor Homes housing project, Hughes had four siblings. Like many African Americans drawn to the region by plentiful war industry jobs, his parents came to the East Bay from the Dallas/Fort Worth area. His father, Fred W. Hughes, was a longshoreman and pastor who helped found Oakland’s Good Samaritan Church of God in Christ, and his mother Lola Mae Anderson was a singer and missionary. Oakland brimmed with young talent in the 1950s. As a youth Hughes sang in a choir that included Betty Watson and Edwin Hawkins, who went on to co-direct the Edwin Hawkins Singers (the group that recorded the 1969 international gospel hit “Oh Happy Day” at Berkeley’s Ephesian Church of God in Christ). “Freddie was singing lead with the grown-up choir every Sunday at 12 years old,” recalled Johnny Talbot, who also sang in the Good Samaritan children’s choir with Hughes. “The way he could sing later was the way he could sing at 12.” Hughes made some of his first recordings for Compton-based Melotone Records in the late 1950s with a vocal quartet called the Markeets. He went on to sing in a variety of vocal groups and by 1961 had taken up with The Four Rivers, a combo that caught the attention of Capitol Records in Los Angeles. But legal threats from the group’s erstwhile manager, who wanted to maintain control of the band’s recordings, put the kibosh on any potential record deal. Back in the East Bay, The Four Rivers became a house combo for Ray Dobard’s Berkeley-based Music City label, singing backup for acts such as Richard Berry, James Brown, and Big Mama Thornton. Looking to make their own way, Hughes and fellow Four Rivers vocalist Ken Pleasants started performing as a duo known as The Music City Soul Brothers, recording several singles, like 1965’s “Let Our Love Go On.” “Together we developed a style reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions,” Pleasants told British music journalist Opal Louis Nations. “We sang double falsettos on the melody and harmonized on the bridges and at the breaks.” Hughes scored his big national hit with 1968’s imploring “Send My Baby Back,” breaking into R&B’s Top 20. The success of the single, released nationally by San Francisco’s Wee Records and internationally by Scepter-Wand Records, quickly led to an album of the same name. This 2010 reissue by Kent Records, includes 14 bonus tracks covering much of his 1960s output. While international soul aficionados were paying hundreds of dollars for his vintage 45s, Hughes cut a modest figure on the Bay Area scene. In recent decades he held down regular gigs at no-cover venues like Berkeley’s Cheese Board, where he often performed with Oakland blues band Kickin’ the Mule, and at the Mission District bar the Royal Cuckoo, where he performed with keyboardist Chris Burns. Chris Siebert, the Red Hot Skillet Lickers pianist and husband of the band’s vocalist Lavay Smith, books the Royal Cuckoo (which is owned by Smith’s brother). Burns was holding forth on the Hammond B-3 organ installed behind the bar shortly after the Cuckoo opened in 2011 when Hughes, unbilled and unannounced, started singing without a mic and hushed the room. Siebert quickly figured out who possessed those glorious pipes, and Hughes and Burns became fixtures in the Cuckoo rotation. “We fell in love with his singing,” Siebert said. “His version of ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ was as powerful as Sam Cooke’s. He was a beautiful guy, and his delivery reflected the culture he came from in the Church of God In Christ. His voice brought tears to our eyes often.” Hughes is survived by his brother, Wayne Hughes of Oakland; five children, Sonia Hughes Farmah of Hanford, Derick Hughes of Oakland, Derene Hughes Jones of Alameda, Lena Hughes, and Jelani Hughes; 23 grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren.
Plans are underway for a jam session and memorial concert in Hughes’ honor. Another terrible loss to the soul Community but his legacy in music will live on forever!

AMM (Additional info courtesy of Yves)

                                                                         The Taster!

 

                                                                    Tracks Below (FLAC)