Get the party going | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

WORLD BEAT

In 1987, I bought a Charley label reissue called Soul Mine, a double vinyl LP that featured some of the hits of the New Orleans-born R'n'B and soul singer Lee Dorsey. I was interested in the album because I'd read in John Broven's wonderful book, Walking to New Orleans: The Story of New Orleans Rhythm & Blues (Flyright, UK/Blues Unlimited, USA, 1974), that Dorsey recorded many of his best tracks not only with my favourite New Orleans funk band, The Meters, but also with producer and piano virtuoso Alan Toussaint.

Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn wrote many of the songs that featured on the compilation. Hits like Dorsey's earliest one Ya Ya, Working in a Coal Mine, Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley (I think it was the late Robert Palmer who had the biggest hit with his cover of this song but it isn't a patch on the original), Oo-Na-Nay, Get Out of My Life, Woman and Ride Your Pony all featured. I hadn't heard any of these tracks for years until recently when a friend handed me a double CD reissue of the above, on one CD, plus another CD with lesser known hits like Ride the Stallion, Go Go Girl and Night People. The second CD even includes a couple of country songs that Dorsey had planned to release on an album of country songs.

Dorsey died in 1986 just a few months before the original Charley release and would not live to see and hear hip hop musicians like the Wu Tang Clan sample his music. It turns out that the most sampled song is Get Out of My Life, Woman. John Lennon covered his songs and Petula Clarke had a monster international hit with Ya Ya Twist, her cover of Ya Ya.