“Hey!” It’s one of those scintillating moments when a throwaway b-section suddenly becomes the heart of the song. On “In Our Garden”—the most Marvin-esque composition on the album— long instrumental passages overlaid with news chatter provide revelatory counterpoint to Ware’s plaintive sermon on the state of the world. On the title track, a striking, almost suspenseful ostinato on piano creates tension eased by atmospheric chords, opening space for Ware’s central conceit: making the sexual feel spiritual. Like so many Ware compositions, “Rockin’ You Eternally” has been heavily sampled and acquired a sort of cult status. True to Ware’s destiny as a secret sharer in others’ celebrity, however, it remains in the IYKYK category, whereas another of the pair’s compositions from this period—“Estrelar”—became a worldwide hit for Valle in 1983. For those who live in the Soul, New Arrivals bin, however, Rockin’ You remains a uniquely rewarding delight, full of those breezy sidestreet moments where Valle or Ware takes the other’s melodic conception in a joyously unexpected direction, like a movie where the hero’s story is suddenly upstaged by the performance of a brilliant character actor.
of release that kept curators busy with the creation of all sorts of invented genres—yacht rock, rare groove, boogie—long after the fact. Valle contributed melodies to “Baby Don’t Stop Me,” “Got to Be Loved,” and the title track, but, according to Valle, the partnership was so intuitive he now has trouble remembering who wrote what. “We were so comfortable writing and recording together,” he explained in a 2021 interview with writer Anton Spice.“Because I think that the roots of samba and American rhythm and blues are the same.” Certainly, Afro-Latin rhythms were at the heart of the Motown sound. While in Ware’s previous work these percussive elements tended to remain as layered, atmospheric beds for his musical sermons, on Rockin’ You Eternally , polyrhythmic grooves become almost a second voice in counterpoint to Ware’s. “Baby Don’t Stop Me” is a perfect example: Valle’s fuzzy synth vamp creates a body-music all its own before Ware takes it to another level, developing his thesis that “It’s alright to get carried away!” This intro-groove returns, about two-thirds through, as a euphoric instrumental bridge, punctuated only by Ware’s ecstatic
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