It could be argued that Millie Jackson is the ultimate proto-feminist. As the queen of gutbucket R&B/trash talk and with a career that has spanned four decades, 28 albums, 40 hit singles and successful forays into stage, television and radio, she has never presented herself as a passive participant in any of her scenarios.
Even more memorable is her performance style, which bonds explosive vocal pyrotechnics with raunchy anecdotes that simultaneously shock, enthrall and force laughs from even the coldest of audiences. In short, this woman has a mouth on her. Her recent set between soul legends Latimore and Bobby Womack at The Venue last weekend begged the question of whether Jackson and her style have maintained their edge in this era of R-rated network television, hordes of foul-mouthed rappers and self-hyped underdressed "divas."
Opening with a trio of her classics ("Breaking Up Somebody's Home," "If You Ain't Back in Love by Monday" and her breakout hit, "Hurts So Good"), she got wicked but quick. Smack in the middle of "Hurts So Good" she reminiscenced about her former lovers' endowments while questioning the rationale of ecstasy and physical pain—which she rejected. When she addressed the audience with this query and they disagreed she snarled, "You bitches are lying!!!"
However, the show was hardly about weenie jokes and cussing. Jackson still has a way of covering the most lachrymose material and turning it into something far beyond the original. Her high-octane reading of Phil Collins' "I Wish It Would Rain Now" rivaled her revered take on Neil Diamond's "Love On the Rocks" and, like that earlier performance, it showed her to be an interpretive vocalist with few equals. So the answers to that question are "yes" and "yes;" she's got her edge and she's still the bomb.
A much younger bomb(shell) came in the guise of Estelle Fanta Swaray—known simply as Estelle—who hit the Double Door to preview her upcoming album, All Of Me (Atlantic Records). Where Jackson was blunt, Estelle reveled in sass, class and a party-girl aura; however, her fashion sense and sculpted high-gloss nails (she cites Edie Sedgwick as her fashion icon) hardly masked her candidness. Although she opened with a breezy take on the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" and her own "More Than Friends," Estelle seemed to delight in sprinkling her set with dirty words with the smirking glee of a naughty 6-year-old playing hooky.
None of it had the ring that Jackson had, but that was beside the point; Estelle was into partying, not pontificating. "No Substitute Love" and "One Love" had a club-mix feel to them but she hit her stride with "Freak," which was a hell of a lot saucier than the advance single let on. In fact, she and the gays in the room—and that was about half in attendance—ran with it like jizzed fly girls and you could be forgiven if you expected panties of every persuasion to hit the stage. (For some reason the couplet "I can be a freak/everyday of every wee," drove this crowd apeshit.) Once she got her inner "freak" back in its place, Estelle closed the show with a revved-up "Blame It On the Boogie," a ragged duet with opener Luke James on Al Green's "Love and Happiness" and (of course) a raucous "American Boy." Maybe Estelle doesn't have Jackson's ferocious bluntness and her posh tastefulness could be misleading, but she's hardly a lightweight.
It's hard to think of another musician with as varied a career as Robert Gordon's. As the mouthpiece for punk rock band the Tuff Darts it was highly unlikely that he would take up rockabilly, do it well and make such a strong lasting impression. For his first two albums he partnered with guitar god Link Wray and even performed with Elvis Presley's original back-up vocalists, the Jordanaires. His first hit was a recording of a song intended for Presley by an unknown rocker from Jersey named Bruce Springsteen; the song eventually was obscured by the success of a cover by the Pointer Sisters. The name of the tune, of course, was "Fire"—but if Gordon did not find himself on Casey Kasem's Top 40 it hardly mattered. When Presley died in 1977, Gordon was widely considered to be his true heir.
Recently, Gordon came through Reggie's not only to throw down some licks but also to celebrate his 33rd anniversary performing with guitarist Chris Spedding. (They started working together after Gordon's stint with Wray.) This was a SRO show with a crowd decked out in pompadours, jack boots, greased ducktails, cuffed denim and pinky rings, but it was obvious from the moment when he opened his mouth that Gordon and his audience were not into just dressing up or fads but the real thing.
It hardly mattered that Gordon/Spedding had no new material to perform; this was a show about breathing life into the past. "Wild Wild Women" was the opener but there were so many gems tucked throughout the show that it nearly burst: "The Worrying Kind," "Nervous," "Little Sister," Iggy Pop's "Beside You," "Picture of You," and "Devil In Disguise." "Fire," naturally, stood out and Gordon took back possession of the song by fueling it with his booming baritone while embracing the Pointer's dramatic precision and Spedding played rings around the lyrics. Hearing stripped-down rock 'n roll—with all its pops, cracks and unprocessed edges—is obviously what Gordon is all about, and thank God for that.
A postscript on these two shows is the passing of two figures I associated with the Chicago music scene: Don Cornelius, the creator and producer of Soul Train and LGBT activist John Pennycuff (formerly of Windy City Media Group). Cornelius was born in Bronzeville and started Soul Train in the studios of Channel 26 with a budget of $400. A year later he and the show moved to L.A., where it became a major bridge for soul, R&B and, particularly, dance music for a wider audience. Without Cornelius it's unlikely that the dance music that we have in the clubs now and everything released since 1970, when the show first broadcast, would have reached so many ears.
Although many people have spoken at length about Pennycuff's activism in the community with his long-term partner, Robert Castillo, apart from the offices of WCMG I always ran into the two of them at many shows similar to Jackson's and Estelle's; in later years, that's where we would always see each other. They certainly loved their divas (we had lots of fun snipping about Pennycuff's favorite, Cher) and they made it a point to live life to the fullest. To say that I miss Cornelius and Pennycuff already isn't saying enough.
