Just found out that this is now on CD. If you haven't heard this album, you are missing out! One of my all time favorites.

Lonette McKee
Words and Music
(Pine Bloom Productions/Warner Bros. – 1978)

A Record Reflection by A. Scott Galloway

Once upon a time when you saw a beautiful woman on an album cover posing in front of a piano, she was a model strategically placed there to seal your purchase deal. However, in 1978 when Lonette McKee released Words and Music, the café au lait lady serving your eye a luscious flash of thigh - elegantly draped before a white baby grand – was, indeed, “The Artist.” Not a marketing VP’s half-singin’ penny candy dime piece. Lonette McKee was a bona-fide singer AND co-producer of her album, composing all of its seamlessly flowing songs. She was also an actress that, two years earlier, made a stunning debut as “Sister” in the ghetto fabulous music biz fable, “Sparkle.” This rendered Ms. McKee a non-carbonated multi-hyphenate - tragically ahead of her time. Imagine her doing what Alicia Keys does today in both music and film. Still, when submerged in her song craft, Lonette possessed a serenely introspective bent for embodying the sweet-n-sour subtext of amour.

Listening to Lonette McKee’s Words and Music Lp is like stepping into a warm whirlpool where soothing grooves and naked sentimentality luxuriate. Like the album cover foreshadows, everything within is first class. The exquisite everything-in-its-place musicianship of Los Angeles’ A-team elite including Patrice Rushen, Lee Ritenour, Abraham Laboriel, Harvey Mason and Michael Boddicker, along with the seasoned stewardship of co-producer/orchestrator Johnny Pate roll out a plush carpet of blue-woven soul, but the centerpiece is always “the girl at her piano.” Because she wrote every word, Lonette doesn’t just sing these songs as embody each selection’s turbulent emotions with intimate knowing and theatre-savvy sensitivity.

The album opens with “Sometimes,” a misty watercolor diary entry reflecting the push and pull of romantic notions…unfolding like heart-on-sleeve poetry. “Sometimes I want to crawl right into your soul / Sometimes I only want to be left alone…”

“Maybe There Are Reasons” is the most popular piece of the project for its haunting, rolling melody, and the reflective confessions of a woman torn between love and exciting new directions in her life. Patrice Rushen’s Fender Rhodes work here echoes McKee’s sentiments with sublime empathy. The late Carl Anderson interpreted this from a man’s p.o.v. on Munich-born guitarist Nils’ 1998 Gerald McCauley-produced CD, Blue Planet.

“Blues” is a bedrock yet feminine sample of such, graced with the sweet weepin’ guitar work of Dennis Budimir and the cool walkin’ bass of Abe Laboriel. Here McKee muses on being taken for granted…all the while dreaming of “a man’s hands.” The rise and fall dynamics of the music mirror the throes of her longing… This is the one song Lonette switches places with Rushen to take a turn at the Rhodes – gettin’ her Ray Charles on!

“Colors (Of the Love of My Life)” picks up the pace with a hand-clappin’ horn-fortified declaration of exhilaration as McKee stakes her claim on a taken man she has dubbed “my sweet, hot stuff you’re the love of my life!” This song never fails to bring a smile.

“Train Tracks” closes Side 1 with a melancholy goodbye song. “Train tracks in the morning due to take me far away / Pain wracks every thought of you, you know I could not stay…” The reprise of a distant train whistle at the end evokes a bittersweet feeling.

“Delayed Reaction” opens Side 2 with an extended groove that finds Lonette gettin’ down with her Detroit homeboy Ray Parker Jr. on guitar, Scott Edwards on bass and James Gadson on drums, plus features some funky trombone from Garnett Brown.

“At Least I Had You One Time” is Lonette’s “If Only For One Night” – a provocative and evocative fever dream of the sensual memories that play on repeat in one’s mind within the wee hours. “The fire deep inside me / When you lay beside me / Can’t be a dream I conjured in my head / All the things you gave me / Oh, the way you made me / Yearn…to have you in my bed.” Here Johnny Pate ladles in strings to shadow the sketch of a guitar solo sensitively woven by Lee Ritenour.

“Come to Me Softly” is an eerie movie-for-the-ears love song that introduces us to a lonely outside woman who has fallen for forbidden fruit. “…because you did not stay it will only make me want you more…”

“I Wanna Be With You” brings the mellow magic carpet ride to a sassy close as Lonette gamely attempts to coax a shy man out of his shell. “I guess I’m just overly anxious / And it won’t kill you to get a little outrageous!” The horns return for an encore, co-signing her every desire as Lonette shakes things up with a lil’ shimmy out the door.

It was downright criminal that Lonette McKee’s Words and Music went all but ignored except for a taste of Quiet Storm radio support before finding its way to used record store bins. However, it was in those very bins that many discovered a diamond, snatched it and made it a cherished part of their collections.

33 years later, Ms. McKee has dusted off her personal set of the master tapes she walked away from the session with, making 8 of the 9 songs available for the long-overdue first time on CD under the new title Acoustic Tracks (Words and Music). If my loving words have done their job, you will run, not walk, your fingers over your computer keyboard tohttp://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lonettemckee2 and cop yourself a copy. The artist’s Website islonettemckee.com

Beautiful

Non-music related, I'm dying to watch this short film.....

wow... i've never heard this album... it's definitely got some good people on it.

MJJstudent said:

Don't sleep on this now! - It's such a great album from beginning to end.

played it today, and I want to hear it again!!!

"Colors" is probably my favorite

and "Delayed Reaction" too

they were all good

very good music & vocal

I love her even more now

which I didn't think was possible

Wow, I like this. Never knew she was a singer.

thanx Bulldog!!!

this album should keep me

occupied for a while

just when I was looking

for something fresh & new

1978 was a very good year

(Prince's debut.. Natalie Cole's LIVE! album... Rufus' Street Player)

DirtyChris said:

thanx Bulldog!!!

this album should keep me

occupied for a while

just when I was looking

for something fresh & new

1978 was a very good year

(Prince's debut.. Natalie Cole's LIVE! album... Rufus' Street Player)

My Pleasure! If only WB's put some promotion behind this masterpiece, everyone would know about it. It's funny, there is a bit of a cult following with this record, and If you run into someone else that loves the record, it's almost like you're part of some exclusive club!

I hope its get its due recognition now. It's still sounds amazing!

my bf is tickled at this

lil obsession I got goin on

with this album

#greatthreads

Purchased and downloaded, very nice.

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One of my favorites too, especially the track, "Sometimes".....

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