Cafe Nine | Citizen Contributions | Music | Arts & Culture
| Photo Courtesy Brendan Toller. |
This is the latest installment on Shake N’ Vibrate, a monthly vinyl series at Cafe Nine led by musician, DJ, and filmmaker Brendan Toller. To get the full taste of Shake N’ Vibrate, New Haveners still have to go to the events themselves. But here, readers can get a glimpse—or a listen—into some of what they’re in for. The next Shake 'N' Vibrate is scheduled for Sunday, May 26 at 8 p.m. For more information on the event, click here.
I hit the jackpot in this year’s pilgrimage to the WFMU Record Fair—a dealer with hundreds of 60s and 70s soul 45s, each $2 a pop. In the world of record fairs, and in a world of rare records, this is rare.
The price point allowed me to stretch out, take chances based on title, year, producer, label, and label design. A good rule of thumb—or wax, if you will—within the soul genre is you can’t really go wrong with a James Brown record. This dealer had tons of records on James Brown’s offshoot People’s Records label.
People’s Records lasted from 1971-76, and hosted hot tracks. The label produced work by James Brown, the JB’s, Hank Ballard, and Lyn Collins among so many others. I picked up a 45 of Lyn Collins' “Mama Feelgood,” backed with Frank Sinatra's “Fly Me To The Moon." And to be completely clear, Sinatra is not for me. But what's $2 on what could be a complete turn-around on “Fly Me To The Moon”? I was curious.
Well, I’ll be danged. Lyn Collins and the JB’s deliver. In a time and place where women vocalists were (and still are) described as phantom artists only to be lifted up by men, Collins dances all over this standard of a track.
Her “Fly Me To The Moon” is a simultaneous rave-up and tear-down refashioning. Men and women chopped off their hair, smashed their Johnny Winter records when they first heard the Ramones or Sex Pistols in the 70s. If Lyn Collins “Fly Me To The Moon” doesn’t make the original irrelevant, check your pulse, hips, mojo.
This song, in its time, was far from Lyn Collins' “hit.” We’ve all heard her smash “Think (About It)” sampled in Rob Base and EZ-Rock’s “It Takes Two” (Yeah! Woo! It takes two to make a thing go right, it takes two to make it outta sight!). Her “Rock Me Again & Again & Again & Again & Again & Again" rates higher on the hit barometer.
But this is what a good DJ does: rediscover, repurpose, remake, remodel. A $2 home run can make the whole lot of clunkers worthwhile.
Her life story is one worth keeping alive on the dance floor. Lyn “The Female Preacher” Collins was born in Abeline Texas in 1948, a relative to Bootsy and Catfish Collins who were also famously discovered by James Brown. In 1970, Brown kept Collins on deck as both Marva Whitney and Vicki Anderson left the, no doubt, demanding working conditions of the James Brown Revue. With a hit like “Think” and a voice like Collins, Lyn became Brown’s most successful female protégé.
As time rode on, Collins rolled with the styles of disco and backup session work. The late 90s and early 2000s signaled an all but too-brief comeback to the soul that originally brought her to the forefront. She rocked the more-civilized stages of the European Jazz/Funk Fest and Montreux.
Seemingly, it was too much for Collins heart as she passed away from cardiac arrhythmia at the all-too-young age of 56 in 2005. May her memory live on forever on the dance floor.