Camden, Jazzie recognized Wheeler as the lead vocalist from the group Brown Sugar, known for the naive and innocent- sounding “I’m in Love with a Dreadlocks.” “Anyone who remembers the heady days of the ’70s will remember the British lovers rock scene,” said Jazzie on Later , gesturing toward Wheeler, who was seated beside him. “Well, here’s the Queen of lovers rock!” “I’d been singing for Elvis Costello and Phil Collins, but I felt like a bit of a traitor because my influences were the likes of the Emotions and Marvin Gaye,” Wheeler told The Guardian . “I wanted to break out. I was quite a secret soul head but hadn’t dared tell anyone.” Jazzie played the music he had been working on and initially asked Wheeler to contribute backing vocals to the song “Feel Free” (with Do’reen Waddell on lead). “When I heard the first bits of the album he had, I wasn’t impressed, to be honest,” Wheeler said in 2013. “But I thought his ideas were really good, and the whole sound system thing was something I grew up with. For me, it was a part of my culture as an English Black woman. It turned into a working relationship. He asked me, ‘Could you sing on this, and could you sing on that?’ I told him, ‘I might be able to, but I need to get paid.’” Pragmatic and business-like, Wheeler was also blessed with the voice of an angel and wasn’t prone to vocal histrionics. Her range would usually start low and sincere, able to take off and glide over the melody, impassioned or sweet, whichever way her soul dictates. She didn’t dress like an R&B dolly bird either, wearing her locs proudly whilst coordinating brightly colored fabrics that displayed a taste for Pan-Africanism. “I wasn’t the usual woman singer,” Wheeler told NME . “Record companies would go, ‘Slim down a bit’ or ‘Don’t wear your hair in dreads.’ I went round the record companies [before Soul II Soul] and nobody wanted to know me.” Wheeler was authentic neo-soul as a way of life, before the term was an itch in Kedar Massenburg’s neatly pressed pin-striped pants. “I can honestly say of all the singers I’ve worked with, she comes out on top,” says Rodriguez who got to know Wheeler well during the recording of Club Classics Vol. One . “A truly lovely person, super professional, who always knew when a take was right.” “Keep On Movin’” was the first song that Jazzie offered to Wheeler as a lead vocalist. He wrote it at 5:00 AM, the morning after the police shut down the Africa Centre on a spurious charge due to “crowd issues,” the song title expressing the desire to keep partying, with the lyric “Yellow is the color of sun rays” referencing the dawn sunrise he witnessed as he was writing the words. However, whilst Wheeler liked the message, she wasn’t as keen on the tempo of the original demo—recorded at Ross Anderson’s basement studio on Kingly Street—and suggested to Jazzie that they slow the groove down a tad. “It started out as disco,” Wheeler told Classic Pop Magazine .
“But I felt the words were flying by and the meaning was being lost.” It was coproducer Hooper who programmed the drums on the session. “There’s a Biz Markie tune called ‘Pickin’ Boogers,’ which uses a drum sample from ‘The Jam’ by Graham Central Station, so you know Nellee just put that groove and that shuffle with a 909 drum machine,” Law explains. “That’s how you get the fucking magic happening, man. Then there was the breakbeat on the breakdown right in the middle, which we all just loved to bits.” It was also Law’s first session with the band, playing both the piano and the bass line. “I was just hearing in my head James Brown. All of James’s stuff was known to us and the whole reggae influence was big too. It’s all there in the DNA of the song.” Rodriguez remembers recording Wheeler’s vocal late at night, using a new microphone especially for the occasion. “It was the first time I’d been able to choose the mic myself—a real proper vintage valve, AKG C12. The C12 was the crème de la crème of mics, and it really suited her voice.” “I remember Caron wasn’t very happy with the vocal,” says Law. “But that was the vocal that everybody just adored. And thank God, because it came to be an utter classic.” Despite the personal meaning of the lyrics to its creator, when “Keep On Movin’” was released in March 1989, ascending to number five on the U.K. charts, it came to mean so much more to those who had never even stepped into a London nightclub. The positivity of the message was tempered by the stark realism of the soundscape. Unlike a perennially optimistic gospel cut, or a feel-good Philly classic like McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” “Keep On Movin’” is imbued with a sombre tone, acknowledging the situation at hand and providing a sense of empathy. For when circumstances are truly at their darkest, you can listen to “Keep On Movin’” and hear the hope and determination that “the time will come one day”—like a modern-day “We Shall Overcome” that you can dance to; a drum program/sample so irresistible, it launched a thousand dances by copycats all around the world. The bass was unique for a soul record too, more akin to a reggae dub bass line, that at 40,000 watts, could be felt on the chest plate, by your heart. As an overall musical statement, Club Classics Vol. One confirmed upon its release in May ’89 that more than any other album of the era, including Primal Scream’s Screamadelica , it was possible to amalgamate the post–second Summer of Love, splintered dance scenes of rare groove, house, funk, and hip-hop. “I think the record was a real reflection of the music policy that got played at the Africa Centre, recreated by a bunch of guys from London,” Says Law, adding: “I remember the Beatles saying that if they wanted to do a song like the Supremes that
99
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting