This month’s Under Appreciated Rock Band of the Month, BLACK RUSSIAN became the first recording artist from the Soviet Union to be signed to a major American record label, in this case, Motown Records. Their sole album, Black Russian came out in 1980 on Motown Records – evidently the label had decided that there was no reason to segregate their white acts any longer.
Actually the song that has been running through my head most of the times I played Black Russian is “’Cause I Love You”. Black Russian are professionals who put their heart and soul into this album. The music stacks up well with the other albums of that era, and truly, “Mystified” should have been a hit single. As with most of the UARB’s and UARA’s that I write about, I love the whole album, and it is difficult for me to single out particular songs. My personal favorite though would have to be “Leave Me Now”, a plaintive ballad that is as compelling as any that I can remember from the 1980’s.
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Not everyone feels that way though. Doc Dosco, a jazz guitarist who played on Black Russian wrote of his early session work on his website www.docdosco.com: “‘I did tons of “guitar for hire” studio dates back then’, says Doc, ‘and I gigged a lot during the late seventies and eighties. I was a funky fusion style player and there was lots of funk style work. I also did pick-up work, casuals, society gigs and played numerous concerts with old timers such as Little Anthony, the Drifters, the Diamonds, the Platters, Freddy Cannon, Connie Stevens. I worked for composer Dennis McCarthy on the Barbara Mandrell [and the Mandrell Sisters] TV show. I also wrote songs for Jerry Lee Lewis and German pop sensation Nina Hagen, produced “Billboard Queen” Angelyne, and recorded an album with the revolutionary Motown recording artists Black Russian.’”
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When thinking about Black Russian, I am reminded of a review of one of Sade’s albums in the Village Voice (maybe Promise) that I have been unable to find online. The reviewer noted that the album sounds like music that you have heard before, but you actually haven’t. I can imagine that one or two casual listens to Black Russian could lead to the opinions given above – particularly if one is predisposed to dissing anything that even hints of disco – but to these ears, this music represents brilliant songmaking that combines an appreciation of older R&B music with what was happening in the modern scene. It might be my imagination, but sonically, Black Russian seems louder than most of the other albums that I have been playing recently.
I once wrote about Patti Smith in another connection that she “sounds like nothing so much as the Beat poets of the 1950’s”. Despite their groundbreaking sound, Annie Lennox’s vocals for Eurythmics – who came onto the music scene at about the same time as Black Russian – sounded like a 1940’s chanteuse to me. Similarly, Black Russian is a startling album from the very beginning of the lively decade of the 1980’s whose source is from a decade or two earlier. In 2015, the album is not a bit passé but still sounds as fresh as it must have the day it was released; today, the album gives the listener a double dose of looking back.
(April 2015/1)
