Loneliness & Heartaches: Willie Tee Posted by Junior

Willie Tee: Loneliness and Bring On The Heartaches From: I'm Only A Man [Capitol, 1970] Apologies for the lateness but I just wanted to put up a post in tribute to Willie Tee who passed away just a little over a year ago now. I've featured music from Tee's band the insanely funky Gaturs before on the site but never really posted up anything from his solo period and can't seem to find anything much on the other blogs I check (believe it or not I'll spend time checking that I'm not duplicating content before I feature any album on the site - you wouldn't believe the number of great albums I've gone to post only to find it featured elsewhere.....). A great indepth article by Larry Benicewicz about Willie's long journey to some kind of commercial recognition can be found here. However, the shorthand version for the txt msg generation is that, before the Gaturs, Willie Tee had quite an eventful recording career spanning a number of cities and collaborators before finally being talent spotted by Cannonball Adderley himself. Adderley took tee to Capitol and before you know it he was recording his 1970 solo album "I'm Only A Man". Now different sources say different things about who produced this album but at least one rumour floating about is that this was produced by Capitol producer at the time David Axelrod. It certainly has hints of Axelrod's style over the recording (particular the drums and grandiose aspect of much of the production) but I'll let you listen and make up your own mind on the matter. Loneliness is probably my favourite track on the album; a proper mini epic as it builds from a rumbling beginning to something full of crashing drums, strings and Willie crying out for an end to his solitude. Quality stuff indeed my friends. Bring On The Heartaches continues the less than happy mood of many of the songs on I'm Only A Man but it's delivered with enough rousing strings and horns that the song definitely ends with a more upbeat feeling than might be expected and I'm a sucker for any song that uses female backing vocals so effectively. Within the year of this being released The Gaturs began to take off and a couple of years later Wille separated from Capitol, frustrated with the way they were taking him. I'd be the last person to ever wish The Gaturs etc had never happened but it's interesting to think what might have happened if Tee had experienced more success with this first real stab at the big time.