GUARDIANS OF THE PAST
Sep 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Justin Kleinfeld
Do you remember when music served as a vehicle to tell a story? Although most are familiar with the impact that '60s-era rock and folk musicians had on this country, they comprise merely a small sector of music's long and rich legacy. Song was a crucial part of civilizations throughout the ages and can be viewed as just as priceless as forgotten manuscripts or coveted paintings. These days, when music comes across as overly produced and disposable, it's easy to forget how truly important this timeless form of communication is to people today and was to previous generations. And like other art forms, music recorded in the past can be just as relevant today — if not more so.
Take the work of Sister Gertrude Morgan. Morgan was a painter, singer and self-proclaimed “bride of Christ” whose visually explosive folk art is celebrated in museums around the world. She was also one of New Orleans' most famous personalities. For more than 20 years, Morgan roamed the French Quarter dressed in a nurse's outfit, aiming to “heal” sinners using the word of God as her medicine. In fact, she often planted herself at street corners and delivered her message with a megaphone and a tambourine. Her music was a combination of traditional church praise songs and prayer sermons that she literally converted to song.
Morgan also gained notoriety for her vivid biblical paintings and quickly caught the attention of New Orleans art dealer Larry Borenstein, who began exhibiting her pictures at his studio on St. Peter Street. (That facility was soon turned over to Allan and Sandra Jaffe, who, in 1961, transformed the venue into Preservation Hall.) Recognizing her gifts as a multifaceted performer, Borenstein brought in an engineer to capture Morgan's music on tape. The result was 1968's Let's Make a Record (Preservation Hall), an album filled with excerpts from the Bible and songs about God. Morgan's only release, Let's Make a Record showcased the artist's uncanny ability to turn prayer into song using only her voice and a tambourine.
Although Morgan passed away in 1980, her work has experienced a renewed interest. In 2004, her paintings drew rave reviews at New York's American Folk Art Museum, and, soon, her paintings will be on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art and at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago. Leading the charge for renewing interest in Morgan's music is Ropeadope Records. Label chief Andy Hurwitz became obsessed with the music after a visit to a Sister Gertrude Morgan art and music showcase in New Orleans. Hurwitz had a meeting with Preservation Hall owner Ben Jaffe to discuss his idea for a new approach to reproduce Let's Make a Record. After obtaining rights to the record, Hurwitz phoned DJ, producer and remixer King Britt and his production partner, Tim Motzer, to see if they would be interested in reimagining Morgan's music. Although Britt and Motzer had never heard of Morgan, the music and artwork completely blew them away. “What drew me in was the lyrics, what she was talking about and how it relates to our society right now,” Britt says. “We needed a voice of hope. When [Tim and I] got the album, our troops were going to Iraq, and we still had the aftermath of 9/11 — it was just a time when we kind of needed to hear what she was talking about.” The result is Britt and Motzer's imaginative new project, King Britt Presents: Sister Gertrude Morgan (Ropeadope, 2005).
REIMAGINATION VERSUS REMIX
Britt has made a name for himself in music circles as one of the most ambitious and talented producers and remixers in the house, soul and hip-hop genres. His production credits travel through the map of cool — from his early days as a DJ with Digable Planets to his work with Sylk 130 and Philadelphia Experiment to his remix work for the likes of Macy Gray, Tori Amos, Yoko Ono and Femi Kuti. He also records under the Scuba moniker and owns the multimedia studio and marketing corporation FiveSixMedia.
Despite the diverse volume of work that Britt has put out, his reworking of Morgan's original tracks might be the most ambitious. Indeed, the most interesting term associated with this project is reimagination. Despite having made a career out of churning out quality remixes, Britt is quick to point out that this is not a remix project. “We hate the term remix when it comes to certain things, because this is a production,” he says. “Her original production is just her voice and tambourine. This is a continuation of what she started. I think reimagination is a better term than remix because the term — and I know your magazine is called Remix, so don't take offense [Laughs] — has really been watered down, especially when you have Puff Daddy putting out an album called We Invented the Remix. I have nothing against Puffy, but come on!”
Further making this project a “production” rather than a “remix” was the hands-off approach of Hurwitz and Ropeadope. Rather than request the tracks to be created following a set plan, the label allowed Britt and Motzer to create freely and without any direction.
IN THE BEGINNING
Britt and Motzer knew that they wanted to create a voodoo-type sound while keeping the beats contemporary. They wanted to complement Morgan's vocal, not overtake it. “Her lyrics and her melodies really guided us to what we were doing, because it really felt like she was in the studio with us,” Britt says.
“Talking from the guitar standpoint, just hearing her voice conjured up the Mississippi delta to me,” Motzer adds. “That's why I could hear slide guitar and stuff like that as opposed to hip-hop beats or Fela-esque Afrobeat.” They also did quite a bit of research, listening to albums from Dr. John, Led Zeppelin and John Lee Hooker while reading All You Need Is Ears (St. Martin's Griffin) by George Martin to learn how he recorded The Beatles' albums. But perhaps the biggest influence on the sound of this project was Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden (EMI, 1988). “This is one of their deepest, darkest records,” Britt says. “It's really an organ- and guitar-based record, and it feels like you are in New Orleans. That was a huge influence on what we were searching for on this album.”
Using a wide array of digital and analog production gear, the pair was able to bring Morgan's music into a whole new realm. The brain of this operation was Apple Logic 6.4.1 running through an Apple G4 17-inch PowerBook. Additional software included Propellerhead Reason 2.5, Ableton Live 3, Arturia Moog Modular V and Steinberg Waldorf Attack, as well as lots of Roland gear, including the JD-990 and JD-800 for sound effects. They also used various records and an Akai MPC2000XL for beats. In terms of guitar, the core of the album was recorded with an old '60s Danelectro convertible guitar and a battered 000-style mahogany Guild acoustic (mainly for the slide guitars featured on “Power” and “Living Word”). For the electric guitars, Motzer used either the Danelectro or a Fender Telecaster Thinline.
Next, Britt and Motzer looked to the vocals. They took a CD of the original works and used a Pioneer CDJ-1000 to read the bpm of the tambourine from every track. They then hired an engineer who used Digidesign Pro Tools' Beat Detective to time-correct the tracks so that they would sync up with each new production. Finally, Britt and Motzer began working on the vocals in Logic.
BREATHING NEW LIFE
The first track to be completed for the album, “Power,” was like all of the others: First, the partners loaded the vocal into Logic, and then Britt turned to the MPC2000 for drum programming. As it turned out, there were already a few drum samples in the MPC left over from a remix he was completing under his Scuba alias. The drums, which had a Fela Kuti vibe, didn't end up working for the Scuba remix but did fit the feel of “Power.” Next, he grabbed a Clavinet and a sound created on the JD-800 and combined the two to get the weird organ sound audible in the background. For the bass, Britt used IK Multimedia SampleTank to bring in a reggae vibe. “The reason I wanted to do something like Fela Kuti is because it is very revolutionary, and reggae is also very revolutionary,” he says. “The bass line is very dubby, repetitive and hypnotic and very revolutionary. So we got the groove going and to go along with what she's saying — man, it's a very dark track.” For his part, Motzer recorded the Danelectro and the Guild. Then, G. Love entered the studio to add the final element of harmonica. “It's the kind of sound that pulls your heart out of your chest,” Motzer says.
To get some ideas for drum sounds on “I Am the Living Bread,” Britt listened closely to John Bonham's drumming on Led Zeppelin IV (Atlantic, 1971) for inspiration. Again, he used SampleTank to bring up compressed drum sounds that had a Zeppelin-esque big-room sound. He played the “Living Bread” beat live on the MPC, as if he were a drummer, which resulted in the beat being a little off. Turning again to Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden for inspiration, he found an organ patch in Live 3 and ran it through a tremolo sound in a Waves plug-in. Motzer then recorded the guitars through an Avalon Vt-737sp mic preamp. Next, Britt found an underwater-sounding sample and reversed it, ran it through Live and put some effects on it. “I wanted it to sound like you were being baptized, immersed underwater and brought back up,” he says. “So when the record starts, you get immersed, and then at the end, you come back out from the water.”
ASSISTANCE FROM ABOVE
One of the album's most fascinating production stories surrounds the track “God's Word.” Britt and Motzer had just finished cutting the final bits of guitar, which Motzer recorded by running the Danelectro through a whole bunch of fuzz pedals, distortion units and preamps. This resulted in the gain being jacked so high that the guitar fed back through the studio speakers. Once they finished, a radio station started coming through Motzer's guitar pickup. And because of all the gain, it was now amplifying the radio signal through the studio speakers.
“You never know what's going to happen, so we started recording the radio station, and it sounded like it was coming out of a shortwave radio from outer space,” Motzer says. “What happened next was amazing: There was a Hammond keyboard organ solo that came out of the speakers, and we were recording this thinking, ‘This is insane!’ As soon as it was finished, we pulled it back into the track, and it was in the same key and tempo of the song. It just fit, and it was right in the spot where we needed something in the track. It was insane. We called that the ‘divine sample’ because it felt like [Sister Gertrude] was in the room with us. We were saying, ‘It's God's word’ for weeks.”
TAKING IT LIVE
The next step in resurrecting Morgan's musical work will involve a worldwide multimedia tour. A full band — including drums, keyboards, bass, guitar and percussion — will support Britt and Motzer on all dates. While Motzer will handle guitar duty, Britt will return to a space that made him famous with Digable Planets: He'll DJ alongside the band, playing stems from the tracks that have been burned to CDs. “With this, we are going to go through each track and maybe keep some guitars and remove some because Tim is going to play some guitars live,” Britt says. “Some of the beats we'll keep lower so our drummer can play over it. We'll do different versions for the live show. We'll print it to CD, and as a DJ, I'll cut these parts in live. We are going to add click tracks to each track so the drummer will know the tempo right away once I drop it in.”
Britt and Motzer reveal that their dream is to run all of the stage musicians and the DJ setup through a Mackie 16-channel mixer so that Britt can mute them out and mix them live while they are playing. “Kind of like what Adrian Sherwood, Tackhead and Mad Professor do,” Britt says. “Then, it would get split, one to the monitor onstage and one to the audience with the vocals going over the top.” As for the multimedia aspect, the pair has hired Illuminati to sync visuals with the music; Illuminati has previously worked with Mad Professor, Spooky and Sasha and Digweed, among others.
Although Morgan's original music only consisted of voice and tambourine, Britt and Motzer's new interpretations sound as if they could have come straight from the Sister herself. Perhaps this project is a lesson for all producers and remixers in the art of listening: Through a good amount of research and a realization of the power before them, Britt and Motzer understood that the original tracks would lead the way. But the most powerful part of these reinterpretations lies within what Britt and Motzer respected enough not to touch — Morgan's original vocals. Sister Gertrude Morgan told a story and spread the word of love and friendship. Although times have changed a great deal since she sang those words in 1968, Britt and Motzer's added musical message only reaffirms their significance today.
REMAKING LET'S MAKE A RECORD
Computers, DAWs, recording hardware:
Ableton Live 3 DAW
Apple Logic Pro 6.4.1 DAW, Mac G4 17-inch PowerBook
MOTU 828mkII interface
Consoles, mixers:
Mackie 32•8 mixing console
Yamaha 03D digital mixing console w/expansion outs
Samplers, drum machines, turntables:
Akai MPC2000XL sampling workstation
Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD turntable
Software, plug-ins:
Arturia Moog Modular V
Native Instruments Pro-53
Propellerhead Reason 2.5
Steinberg Waldorf Attack
Waves Gold bundle
Guitars:
Danelectro Convertible
Fender 8-string lap steel, Stratocaster '57 reissue, Telecaster Thinline
Guild 000-style mahogany acoustic
Takamine EF-325 SRC acoustic/electric
Synths, sound modules:
Creamware Profit-5 ASB
Korg Mono/Poly, MS-20, VC-10 Vocoder
Moog Memorymoog, Minimoog, Sonic Six
Novation SuperNova
Roland JD-800, JD-990, JV-1080, MKS-50 w/PG-200 controller, SH-101
Mics, mic preamps, EQs, compressors, effects:
API 3214+ 4-channel preamp
Boss OD-2 OverDrive effects unit
DOD 250 Overdrive/Preamp effects unit
EBow electronic guitar bow
HHB Radius 3 Fat Man stereo tube compressor
Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer effects unit
Line 6 Bass Pod effects unit
MXR Distortion + effects unit
Shure 5455D Unidyne III dynamic mic (used on guitar amps)
Monitors:
Mackie HR824s
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