GOTTA HAVE SOUL SERIOUSLY OLD-SCHOOL SOUL FUNK AND PROUD OF IT, THE DYNAMITES FEATURING CHARLES WALKER ARE EXACTLY WHERE THE BAND’S FOUNDER WANT THEM TO BE, MICHAEL SMITH DISCOVERS.
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“A I’M AN ABSOLUTE SOUL MUSIC JUNKIE…”
t the very beginning of it,” explains The Dynamites’ principal songwriter and guitarist Leo Black (he also produces their records as Bill Elder, his real name) on the phone from Nashville, Tennessee, “I just had this concept of putting together this soul revue to kind of pay tribute to the music that I was going towards and spoke to me the most. I was working as an in-house producer in a Nashville recording studio at the time, and I kinda just got some friends together that were like-minded on the same kinda trip and put this soul revue thing together and as it was, it was really only kinda just for fun and no real big hurry. “You know, people who are into soul and jazz and R&B, they tend to find each other,” Elder laughs,“especially in a music city known for, you know, horrible music – that being modern country. So many of the musicians are just looking for an outlet to not have to be constantly doing all the ultra-commercial stuff the city is known for and cranks out on an hourly basis. “Then Charles came to our attention through an exhibition at the Country Music Hall Of Fame – they were doing a whole series of shows called Night Train To Nashville, which highlighted all the classic R&B era in Nashville in the ‘60s – and a guy who’s now a partner in my record label and good friend called out Charles, we went out and had a beer and here we are.” The Charles of the piece is singer Charles Walker, a veteran of that late-‘60s/early-‘70s scene who has recorded for everyone from Chess to Decca Records and toured with many of the originators of that R&B/soul sound, James Brown and Wilson Pickett among them. Where the seven-piece soul revue that tours as The Dynamites featuring Charles Walker is at right now is two albums – 2007’s Kaboom! and 2009’s Burn It Down – strong and an international presence that sees them return to Australia for a second time this year. Walker is the real deal. “Oh yeah, absolutely the real deal,” Elder agrees. “There were so many record labels he had been on. Really the greatest thing about the golden era of soul was it was popular music at that time and so there were just tons and tons of labels all over the place, so good artists really had a lot of options open to them, and Charles had a lot of really beneficial things happen to him early on in his career, which brought him up to New York and he ended up opening for James Brown and Etta James and Wilson Pickett and Jackie Wilson… just some amazing, amazing acts. “After he got up to New York at the behest of Jason Davis, who was James Brown’s bandleader for a while, Charles had put his own group together called Little Charles & The Sidewinders, which he formed in Columbus, Ohio, and just started boppin’ around openin’ for these giant mega-soul artists. Nashville was where he was born and raised, but then when he started to gravitate towards being a performer, as I said, he ended up in Columbus, Ohio for a while and started recording and doing sides for various record labels. “Then, and I love the way he tells the story, when he went to New York, he says that Jason Davis has said, ‘Come find me when you get here’, and he had a relative that lived in Harlem that he was staying with that was just a few doors down from the Apollo and Charles just tried to get his bearings for a few days and then he knocked on the back door of the Apollo and Jason Davis opens the door for him and says, ‘Hey, come on in’. So he meets James [Brown] and all those guys and two weeks later he was on the road opening for him.” The other “secret” weapon The Dynamites have is a crack songwriter in Elder/Black, who has managed to really capture the essence of that classic ‘60s soul style with a real authenticity and integrity. “It’s the kind of music that moves me and [laughs] it’s the only kind of music I listen to – I’m an absolute soul music junkie – and when I talk about that it’s mostly early ‘60s through… I guess the whole ‘60s era that I’m just constantly listening to and mainlinin’ so, if you do that, if that’s what you put in, that’s what’s gonna come out. I absolutely concentrate heavily on, you know, all of the things that made those sounds feel the way they felt, as far as instrumentation and arrangements and recording techniques and subject matter – just all that. So yeah, it’s all there. Not so much trying to go back and relive yesteryear as much as it is that I just love the way that kind of music sounds and don’t really feel like it’s been improved on enough to do anything different.” In a very real sense then, what Elder, Walker and The Dynamites are doing is reminding us that, like the blues from which it was spawned, soul has the capacity to be as much a living tradition as it does a treasure trove of back catalogue; it’s still capable of being a vibrant expression of the way you feel. “That’s why it’s called soul,” Elder agrees. Once this Australian tour is done and dusted The Dynamites go back into the studio to finish off the sessions they’ve begun on the third album. “We’re gonna start releasing singles from it, and we actually just finished a duet with [another soul veteran] Bettye LaVette, which is really cool and it’s just something that I wrote actually about them [Walker and LaVette] because they were [laughs again] partners in crime I guess you’d call them up in Harlem as kind of rotating front people for Small’s Paradise, which is a legendary soul/jazz/R&B club in Harlem. And we’re bringin’, I don’t know, probably six or seven brand new songs to Australia to try ‘em out on audiences.” WHO: The Dynamites featuring Charles Walker WHEN & WHERE: Friday, Australian World Music Expo, Hi-Fi; Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 November, Queenscliff Music Festival
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