1000 Day Album Challenge (#71) Howard Tate: Howard Tate (1969) [11.03.24]
once I had a good woman / but I did not count my blessings
wish she could hear me / I've learned a better lesson…
I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember the name of the record store I frequented in the early nineties on San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito, California where I bought this record. it was the first record store I had been in that had a turntable to preview records. the focus was R&B, funk, and soul. I bought a bunch of 7” singles there on James Brown’s label, People, by the man himself and many JB-related artists. I bought more singles there than albums. most of the albums I would have bought were too rich for my blood.
this Howard Tate album which was a reissue of his 1967 debut, Get It While You Can, was an excellent purchase. I’m gonna guess that it was no more than $12 only because I don’t think I would have paid more than that at the time. Howard Tate is one of the great lost soul men from the late sixties and early seventies. his feel is quite bluesy. he would have fit right in with some of the shows I saw at Eli’s MiIe High Club when I was living in Oakland.
some of the best songs on this album have better known versions by other more well known artists. I knew both Ain’t Nobody Home and Everyday I Have the Blues as B.B. King songs before I ever heard Howard Tate’s original versions. without a doubt I rate the original of Ain’t Nobody Home as the definitive. not sure which version I would take of Everyday I Have the Blues. I’m pretty sure I give Janis Joplin the nod on Get It While You Can, but that might only be because I heard it first and already knew it so well before I heard Tate’s version.
trust me when i say that music history is littered with artists like Howard Tate who had a little bit of success, but who have been mostly forgotten as time as moved on. me, I have always loved finding older artists who most people don’t know and discovering that they have made some absolutely great music that deserves to be cherished and preserved.
for me it started in college when I felt like I was looking forward and backward simultaneously. I always wanted to hear the newest thing, especially artists that were likely to be ignored by mainstream culture. I also wanted to hear what came before. what inspired some of the artists that I loved. I read a great deal about music in books and magazines because to find both the new and the old. I guess I still do on the Internet now, but my appetite is not nearly as voracious as it was in my teens and twenties.
#1000DayAlbumChallenge #HowardTate #AintNobodyHome #GetItWhileYouCan #EverdayIHaveTheBlues #BBKing #Janis Joplin