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Thread started 10/24/11 4:07pm

getxxxx

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Betty Wright & The Roots "The Movie" first new album in 10 years (S-Curve) Out in Nov

This will be Betty's first album in 10 years.

Tracklisting:

1 Old Songs
2 Real Woman - featuring Snoop Dogg
3 In the Middle of the Game (Don't Change the Play)
4 Surrender
5 Grapes On a Vine - featuring Lil Wayne
6 Look Around (Be a Man)
7 Tonight Again
8 Hollywould - featuring Robert "The Messenger" Bozeman
9 Whisper In the Wind - featuring Joss Stone
10 Baby Come Back - featuring Lenny Williams
11 So Long, So Wrong
12 Leory, You and Me
13 The One
14 Go! Live

From the Florida Courier:

Coming soon: ‘Betty Wright the Movie’

BY STARLA VAUGHNS CHERIN/FLORIDA COURIER

With her new album coming out, legendary soul singer Betty Wright decided to put in a call to movie mogul Tyler Perry.

After all, her new album is called "Betty Wright The Movie – All She Wrote.’’ The artistry and verve of the storyteller or griot, as Wright calls herself, still burns hot more than 30 years after her chart topper, "Clean Up Woman."

"I call the album "Betty Wright The Movie – All She Wrote" because each song is really like a movie. I’m trying to narrow it down to 14 songs. Everything we do is very vivid. That’s why I put a feeler out to Tyler,’’ she told the Florida Courier.

Although it’s been more than 30 years since classic soul hits "Clean Up Woman" and "Tonight is the Night,’’ Wright still is very involved in the music business.

Royal treatment outside of U.S.

She has performed and recorded in London, Argentina and West Africa aswell as in the States, making music in Los Angeles with Sir Tom Jones andworking with young artists such as English soul/R&B singer Joss Stone. Wright also received rave reviews for her contribution to Angie Stone’s "Baby" and "That Kind of Love" singles from the 2007 album "The Art of Love and War."

"Her gifts and talents have taken her across international waters before kings and queens yet she remains humble and without respect of persons. In Africa when she visits, they bow down to her like she’s a God and she says ‘Ooh, don’t do that. You have this twisted.’ He is to be bowed down in reverence to, not me. Other people’s needs are important to her in both her profession and spiritual walk."

Wright insists that she isn’t the best singer in her family who were performing together as children in a gospel group called the Echoes of Joy.

The legacy of music started with Wright’s grandmother Bessie and her mother, Rosa Lee, one of the first African American-women with her own record label. "My mother played guitar, arranged music and recorded on her own label.

"I don’t think I’m anywhere near the best singer in my family," Wright told the Florida Courier. "Maybe the most anointed because when your gift has carried you this far, I don’t think it’s me doing it. For me, it’s all about the words. God gave me the gift of being a songwriter. When I approach singing, I do it as a means to carry a song. I am not at all a vocal gymnast."

Singing career wasn’t goal

Growing up the baby of seven children, Wright said she loved to play baseball and probably would have been in professional women’s sports, a physical education teacher or a lawyer.

"If they were putting as much money in women’s sports then as they are now, there probably wouldn’t have been a ‘Clean Up Woman.’ Everyone in my family could sing so singing was not a goal of mine."

Yet right from the beginning, she could pick a winner. As a teen she discovered Gwen and George McCrae and got them signed to Henry Stone’s Alston Records. The two garnered solo hits "Rockin Chair" for Gwen and "Rock Your Baby," which earned George a Grammy nomination as one of the first hits of the disco era selling 11 million copies worldwide.

‘We need some fresh meat’

Wright laments that the art of storytelling in music today has been lost. "I write stories that happen to rhyme. The record industry has put out so many songs that sound like other songs. Everyone wants to be like Beyonce or Mary J. (Blige). Some can really sing, but the producers have them all sound the same. We need some fresh meat."

The music industries’ lockdown on the types of music heard over the airwaves and control of artistic license has always been a sore spot for Wright. She’s no stranger to fighting for her share when artists sample her work and for the right to be paid when her music is heard over the airwaves.

When R&B group Color Me Badd released its hit, "I Wanna Sex You Up" in 1991, it generated controversy because the sample from "Tonight is the Night" had not been cleared. Wright took the band to court and was awarded 35 percent of royalties for writing the song.

Wright working on album tour

Today, radio stations are fighting against paying royalties to some older artists for music played on the stations, stating it will cost them too much money. But Wright maintains that they wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for the artists.

"People are very misinformed. Everywhere in the world pays royalties to artist when songs are played on the radio except America. They say it will make radio stations go broke for having to pay it and that is not true. The deejay goes to work and gets a salary, but we don’t. There would be no need to go without music to play."

For those who want to see Wright on stage again, she’s working on it. She will finalize her tour schedule for the new album in October. She’s also working on a video for the single "Go" from the new album. "I’m sending the song ‘Go’ out to all the people who have endured for far too long things they shouldn’t have endured," Wright explained.

Nick Ashford was someone I greatly admired, had the honor of knowing, and was the real-life inspiration for Cowboy Curtis' hair. RIP Nick. - Pee Wee Herman
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Reply #1 posted 10/24/11 4:10pm

getxxxx

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Nick Ashford was someone I greatly admired, had the honor of knowing, and was the real-life inspiration for Cowboy Curtis' hair. RIP Nick. - Pee Wee Herman
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Reply #2 posted 10/24/11 4:16pm

Musicslave

Sounds like a cool concept cool We'll see how it turns out...

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Reply #3 posted 10/24/11 5:32pm

Timmy84

The cover looks like Betty circa anywhere between 1970 and 1974. lol

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Reply #4 posted 10/25/11 1:20pm

kitbradley

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I hope it's better than her last disc "Fit For A King". That was terrible!

"It's not nice to fuck with K.B.! All you haters will see!" - Kitbradley
"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." - Socrates
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Reply #5 posted 11/14/11 5:56pm

getxxxx

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the disc has fully leaked

Nick Ashford was someone I greatly admired, had the honor of knowing, and was the real-life inspiration for Cowboy Curtis' hair. RIP Nick. - Pee Wee Herman
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Forums > Music: Non-Prince > Betty Wright & The Roots "The Movie" first new album in 10 years (S-Curve) Out in Nov