TRUTH TELLER Willie Wright
Feb 22, 2011
A long-forgotten, soulful near-masterpiece from 1977 offers both power and poignancy.
BY STEVEN ROSEN
Willie Wright's Telling the Truth, the latest reissue/rediscovery from the archivists at Chicago's Numero Group, gets off to one strange start. A jivey voice, which sounds like it's introducing a live-radio broadcast from a glittery nightclub, cheerily says, "Hello, music people of the world. Hotel Records and Variety Recording at 130 West 42nd St. in New York City, we proudly present Mr. Willie Wright." There's a slight New York accent to the voice and you wonder what kind of dated, hipsterish hokum you're in for. But then Wright starts to sing a laid-back, introspective, lilting jazzy-folk number - " Nantucket Woman" - pushed gently forward by the expansive, Allman Brother guitar licks of the fine Harry Jensen, and you're taken aback. This sounds intimate, personal, real. What gives?
That's all part of Wright's unusual story - this album was originally (and barely) released in 1977, when Wright was just shy of 40. An African-American born in the South who moved early to New York, discovered his relaxed, mellifluous, honeyed voice (with a touch of Lou Rawls) and spent a peripatetic career traveling between New York, Boston and points between.
He could have had a career in the 1970s to match Bill Withers, O.C. Smith or Terry Callier. And he seems to have tried. But he also seems to have been infused with quite a bit of the countercultural spirit. According to the copiously detailed liner notes accompanying this reissue, he and a partner once ran a head shop in Allston, Mass., but broke up when he wanted to shift all the contents vertically by 90 degrees. That meant the counter and clerks would have to be suspended from the ceiling, which struck the partner as a bit impractical.
Maybe that kind of spirit is why Telling the Truth was released on Wright's own barebones Hotel Records. And in order to afford its production, he cut a deal with Variety Recording, a studio. It halved its rate and got a plug on the album's first cut. Wright pressed just 1,000 copies, selling them himself in Nantucket where he was a popular club draw.
All this makes Wright seem like a total eccentric, a flake, but he doesn't sound like that at all. True, the production limits the dimensionality of the recording, so his voice isn't as dynamic as it could be. But nevertheless, it is friendly and unpretentious, romantic but never melodramatic - it finds the groove and works intuitively with the limited accompaniment (he, himself, plays rhythm guitar and flute). At times, the songs have a solid Southern rock-and-soul dimension. These are tunes Van Morrison would love - quietly trying to push the romantic into the mystic. Greg Allman, too, would have admired the funky-rock fatalism of "It's Only Life, That's All."
The songs are often quite touching lyrically. Wright seems to know his dreams of musical success are slipping from him, and he expresses it with wise resignation. He seems badly to want love - a good relationship - and to need it to get by. (Apparently he found it on occasion. the photo above depicts Wright with his "one-time muse" Susan Hayes.) In "Dressing for the Occasion," he finds solace from job-hunting frustrations in his woman's love. On "In the Beauty of the Night," a ballad that Wright prefaces with flute and some dreamy "la la las," he sings, "Searching through our sounds, for our favorite LPs/There isn't anywhere on earth I'd rather be."
According to the liner notes, Wright had a troubled family life. And that seems to bother him. The ballad, "Son, Don't Let Life Pass You By," which has some gorgeous minor-key chord changes to highlight its generous lyrics, is directed toward a resentful offspring. The piano wisely plays off of Jensen's guitar - at key moments the voice is double-tracked. On the carefully pulsating groove of the celebratory "I'm So Happy Now," Wright is joined by a daughter on back-up vocals: "Finally decided, we can't be divided."
The reissue includes three extra cuts, two of which are also included on a CD-45. One is a version of Curtis Mayfield's powerful "Right On for the Darkness."
Wright, now just over 70, lives in Providence and fights Parkinson's disease. Numero Group doesn't dwell on this, but the liner notes do have a recent quote from him: "I'm trying to do something comfortable with my life. It's not really about the money. I want to contribute something...something timeless."
He's a little late getting discovered, but with Telling the Truth he just might have done that.
Listen to tracks from the Wright album at the Numero site.
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