A Little Respect

Rotary Connection: Respect and Sunshine Of Your Love
From: Songs (Cadet, 1969)

So, when I decided to use the tenuous link of cover versions to do a series of posts there was no way I could pass up mentioning one of the great masters of the art form - Rotary Connection.

Led by Marshall Chess with additional production by Charles Stepney and featuring vocals by Minnie Riperton, Rotary Connection produced a series of albums from the sixties to the seventies covering a range of styles. Their legacy of music goes from the sublime to the faintly ridiculous but when they were on form they were nigh on untouchable.

Songs, their penultimate album together before Minnie went solo is one of their strongest offerings and includes a number of killer cover versions.

Respect is so reworked as to be almost unrecognisable. The band forgo the pleading passion of Redding's original and the righteous anger of Aretha's version and replace it with something altogether more sultry, Minnie's voice oozing sexual yearning. The instrumentation reflects the tone with distorted guitars and the kind of brooding, epic orchestration that producer Stepney excelled at, slowly building up to a crescendo of harmonising between instruments and vocals. If you're gonna cover a classic then this is the way to do it.

Sunshine of Your Love slows the mood right down from the original's high energy to a stoned soul groove. While not as dramatic a reinterpretation as Respect this is still top quality stuff. Check out the drums that are ever so slightly off beat at the the beginning of the chorus, the mournful horn accompaniment and the note that Minnie hits, and holds, in the chorus. Spellbinding stuff.