Weather Girls & Martha Wash

Carry On – The Deluxe Collection 1982 to 1992 [[Success/Big Girls Don't Cry/Weather Girls/Martha Wash/bonus tracks) [[4CD set)

CD [[Item 144701) Soulmusic.com [[UK), 1980s/Early 90s — Condition: New Copy
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Weather Girls & Martha Wash
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A big package of work – all the albums recorded by The Weather Girls, plus solo material and bonus tracks too! First up is Success – maybe the greatest moment ever from The Weather Girls – a long-running duo who started out as backing singers for Sylvester in the 70s, then recorded as Two Tons O Fun, and finally got the chance to cut this classic for a major label in the early 80s! Both Martha Wash and Izora Armstead are great singers – and work here with previous disco maestro Paul Jabara, who has a great way of shifting the groove to 80s club, while still allowing all the playful elements of the decade before! In a way, this was definitely one of those records that showed the world that in the right corners, disco wasn't dead – heard to best effect on the classic "It's Raining Men" – alongside other cuts that include "Success", "Hungry For Love", "Dear Santa", "Hope", and "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair". Next is Big Girls Don't Cry – soaring vocals from The Weather Girls, set to bouncy grooves that are equal parts soul and pop! Martha Wash and Izora Armstead have mighty vocal chops throughout – that bold duo approach they first crafted as Two Tons O Fun, and pushed even more strongly as The Weather Girls – set here to keyboard-heavy backings from Leon Pendarvis, who knows just where to put the best hooks in the grooves! Titles include "Well A Wiggy", "Lock Me Up", "No One Can Love You More Than Me", "Big Girls Don't Cry", "You Can Do It", "Laughter In The Rain", and "March". Next is the self-titled Weather Girls album – the last album in the original run of The Weather Girls – and a set that's full of well-produced tracks from Reggie Lucas and Full Force, balanced out nicely as a way of pushing the duo's sound strongly past the disco years from which they emerged! Sylvester makes a guest appearance on the cut "Love's On The Way" – and other titles include "Why Can't We Show Our Love", "Burn Me", "Love You Like A Train", "Opposite Directions", "Something For Nothing", and "Land Of The Believer". Last up is a super-huge solo set from Martha Wash – made a number of years after her fame in The Weather Girls, and at a time when she had really emerged as an important voice in dance music after a big cut with C&C! By this point, Wash had plenty of recording experience under her belt – and she knocks it out of the park with vocals that are disco-trained, but much richer in soul content overall – certainly more so than some of her other contemporaries on the early 90s club scene. The album features help from a huge amount of studio talent, but it's clear that Wash is the shining star in the lead – really blowing away so much of the work from the "sound system with singer" generation of club – on cuts that include "Leave A Light On", "Give it To You", "Runaround", "Things We Do For Love", "So Whatcha Gonna Do", "Someone Who Believes In You", "Just Us", "Hold On", "When It's My Heart", and "Carry On". 4CD set features bonus tracks on every CD – 22 more bonus mixes and more! © 1996-2023, Dusty Groove, Inc.

From memory a typical studio musicians pay rate back in the late 60's / early 70's was around $10 to 15 / hour -- and lots of studios / producers tried to pay less than 'union rate'.
I may well be wrong with my quoted figure.

Today, things have moved on but not by that much. A typical studio musician [[not a 'name' session player) will get around $25 per hour or $50 per completed song. Backing singers getting around the same rate.

So, aside from the cost of hiring the studio, the arranger, the producer [[the cost of the engineer coming in with the studio hire cost), sessions can't have cost that much if we're just talking musician / backing singer costs.
A typical studio session would I guess have involved say 5 musicians & 2 backing singers, so that would run [[back in the day) at around $100 per hour.
I know some record guys would make use of a local 'cheap' resource -- seem to recall the likes of John Richbough / Shelby Singleton using the local music college's student band with very little cost involved [[& that could run to 20+ musicians; strings, brass, percussion, etc.).
So the cost of many sessions were kept quite low, which is probably why so many soul tracks were cut back in the 60's / 70's.
AT MOTOWN, they had their own dedicated studio band [[the Funk Bros), who were never too happy about how much they earned [[& so were always taking outside sessions on the quiet). The backing singers were usually other Motown acts [[or the Andantes).
. . . .So session costs were kept low-ish.
So how come most Motown acts owed BG & Motown loads of money for past sessions, so didn't get paid out much when they enjoyed a hit record. Was this due to a lot of 'creative accounting' ?

I have just stumbled across this song, having forgotten about it for many years. Wow, doesn't it sound like a Motown song! I can almost hear the trademark Motown foot-stomps/hand-claps where Felice Taylor is speaking between verses.

https://youtu.be/7ZFjDsDrl-w

I'm sure most of us were saddened by the recent passing of Tina. Though I had known she was ill, it was still a shock when she finally transitioned. Like so many of the greats who have left us, I never imagined a world without Tina.

My earliest Tina memory was my parents taking me to see the SOUL TO SOUL film. To this day, I can remember seeing this wild woman singing the title track while bopping with the Ikettes. I also had the memory of Ike and Tina performing I SMELL TROUBLE stuck in my mind for many years.

While I was out shopping today, WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT came over the pa system and it made me think of my favorite Tina recordings.

From the Ike and Tina days, my favorites [aside from the hits] are:

THE REAL ME [Sue)
IT'S CRAZY BABY [Kent]
SOMEBODY [SOMEWHERE] NEEDS YOU [Loma]
EVERY DAY I HAVE TO CRY [Philles]
YOU GOT WHAT YOU WANTED [Pompeii]
ONLY WOMEN BLEED [Fantasy]

Tina solo:

LET'S PRETEND WE'RE MARRIED
OVERNIGHT SENSATION
PARADISE IS HERE
WITHOUT YOU
GAME OF LOVE
EDITH AND THE KINGPIN

Tracy Chapman's 'Fast Car' vs. Peter Gabriel's 'Solsbury Hill'.

Having just got the rights back to all my earlier TV specials, this is one of my favorites with Louvaine Damps, The Originals and my favorite cha-cha Edwin Starr electric jamEdwin Starr, classic Motown cha-cha and my personal Top 10 of all Motown tunes...enjoy this electric live rocker https://youtu.be/FnRog8a23ms