Soul tapes
Monday, 7 January 2008
Dirk Koorn surprised me with eight cassette tapes with soul music yesterday. Most are Atlantic records, with those black plastic boxes, where the covers and the titles are on the outside. That means that after 40 years they are usually heavy damaged and hard to read. But these eight tapes are quite okay. And hey, it is about the music, of course, not about the packaging.
I have half of these tapes already as records, but the other half is interesting: especially the tape by Betty Wright is a great album. The hit is Clean up woman, but there is not a bad song among the eleven tracks on this cassette.
Another surprise was the Clarence Carter tape. I am not a big fan of the music of Clarence Carter, but when I heard Patches, it opened up a floodgate of memories. This song was on a double LP with hits, that my parents had. As a kid I played all my parents’ records, and I didn’t really like much of it. But the funny thing is that some of the songs have made a much much deeper impression than I usually realise.
This is an interesting aspect of music: songs function as an external memory, or as a time travel device. Songs bring us back to the times and places where we listened to these songs. But not really: the memories may be completely false. I don’t trust my own memories at all.
here is betty Wright with one of my favourite songs of her, “Clean up woman”: