Lee Moses, Time and Place

Photos of dogs with records have stopped pouring into the NVP offices but we still have plenty in the can for future use. Still, if you have a pup, a favorite record, and a camera-phone, just send it in and I will review it. Even if all you have in your entire collection is one Huey Lewis record! You can find out more here. 

The lovable pup above is named Sancho. This dog, who you may see around town placing an order at La Palma, fretting about urban raccoons,  or chasing seagulls at the beach, may be a combination of a border collie and a basset hound.  Sancho has a big dog’s body and a stout little dog’s legs. On a human this would be tragic but on a dog its adorable. Sancho’s owner, Jon, collects rare records. He goes even beyond that and collects willfully obscure vinyl box sets. You can discover only a small part of his vast musical writings here.

Sancho is pictured with the Lee Moses album Time and Place.

I’ve heard about this record over the past few years but haven’t heard it, or anything else by Lee Moses, before now.  Its considered a neglected classic, a little heard gem from an artist who deserved much better.

There are some fine artists who toiled in relative obscurity and released catalogs that deserved immediate success that didn’t come until much later — The Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, Terry Callier, and John Martyn spring to mind. Though, of those, maybe only the VU and Nick Drake really had material cross over to a (semi) mass audience after the fact.

Then, there is the one great secret album by an otherwise unknown artist. Off the top of my head, Margo Guryan’s Take A Picture, The Blades Of Grass, The Blades Of Grass Are Not For Smoking, and Billy Nicholls‘ Would You Believe qualify. Hmmm.. those are all records from the 1960s. Just to add one from the 1970s — Leon Ware’s Musical Massage, which gets extra points for having an extra groovy fold-out cover. I think I just listed  a bunch of records I need to cover in the future!

Where is Lee Moses’ Time and Place going to fit into all of this?

The cover

I like this one though the combination of the ornate, beautifully produced and balanced Renaissance borders and the “Hey, Lee, we need a photo, any photo” black & white artist picture in the center probably speaks to the fact that Lee Moses was on an indie label. Barry White was just as physically imposing as Lee Moses but he was sold as a guy who could make you swoon. With the photo used Lee Moses looks depressed on his own album cover. Even his name is lost/obscured instead of being front and center on his own record sleeve!

That juxtaposition of fine details/tossed-off detail on the record sleeve is actually mirrored in the music on the album itself, which bears fruit but also probably explains why this one didn’t catch fire when originally released. Or, even worse, didn’t attract attention from a larger label who could have re-released it, or more probably, signed Lee Moses and then re-recorded him.

The music

The title track, “Time and Place,” starts off with a rumbling rhythm guitar riff, Latin percussion, and horn punches. I am all-in before Lee Moses’ voice even comes in! There is a little warning bell in the sound of the drum kit though. The drummer is on the money (though more firm-foot planted in rock’n’roll than in swinging soul) but the drums themselves definitely have an unpolished thud to them for a record that came out in 1971. Drums are famously the hardest thing to record for music — its one of the reasons why the drum sound is so low on older records — they didn’t want them to ruin the recordings. In concert, the drums were usually louder. Part of the problem may also be that I don’t have this LP myself on vinyl so I am listening to a digital version of Time and Place on headphones where you really notice imperfections more.

Then, the voice comes in. Lee Moses has a hoarse, powerful R&B voice that is actually tougher than such ultra manly singers as Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and Levi Stubbs. I guess it can be likened to the voices of Wilson Pickett, either Sam or Dave, and James Brown. Great voice! I am really into Moses’ rhythm guitar playing too. It’s propulsive and full of finesse but also a little off-kilter — in a weird, less pre-punky way, it reminds me of Bowie’s playing on Diamond Dogs, another album with a fantastic guitar sound.

So, big thumbs up to the track “Time and Place,” with its soul-rock sound and it’s “Me and Mrs. Jones” illicit love scenario. “Got That Will” opens with a completely different rock guitar riff that goes into an almost funky go-go rhythm. There are blues licks in the solo guitar and lyrics that name check B.B. King, Joe Simon, and Jimi Hendrix, Moses’ old session guitar playing colleague back in the ’60s. Ironically, this one is a boast about how Moses is gonna keep at it until he breaks through. He didn’t and he didn’t.

Things slow down with “What You Don’t Want Me To Be,” an intense torch song that features angelic back-up singers behind an intense Moses lead vocal. The tune is over in under three minutes (classic pop song style) but it could have ridden the stream of those (wonderfully arranged) voices much longer.

Three songs in and I am completely sold on this album and Lee Moses. That feeling doesn’t last long. A cover of “California Dreamin”  comes on and it works at first — its a fantastic cover of the pop hit. Great song, another solid vocal from Moses, and I appreciate the almost glass shard sound of his guitar playing but this is where the recording or remastering problems come up again. Even after the horns come in this sounds like a bootleg concert performance or a demo for a later studio session instead of a polished album track. Its either the way the  drums are recorded, or the too-exact way they are keeping heavy rock time that stops this from totally working. Too bad because Lee Moses is otherwise fantastic on the cut. Worries that the rest of the album will be dragged down from here on out are vanquished by the next tune, “Every Boy and Girl.” This ballad comes with another completely committed vocal (Moses gives 100% every single moment), gentle vibraphone pings, back-up singers, and an organ, played in a 1960s garage rock, frills-free style that, unlike the thudding “Californa Dreamin” drums totally work. The first side ends on a high note.

Side two kicks off with another shout out to Hendrix on a cover of “Hey Joe.” I’m going to guess Moses plays the tart rhythm guitar which, very un-classic rock, dominates the lead guitar until the main solo at the bridge (though, come to think of it, I believe the rhythm guitarist plays the main solo). My gripe about the drum kit returns here half-way through. I’m more into “Free At Last,” which is somewhere between a deep soul cut and a mainstream ’70s R&B radio ballad. The song, because of the drum kit again, starts to plod before it fades out (even I am growing bored with mentioning the drums but its a problem you don’t find too much, especially in the 1970s). “Would You Give Up Everything” ups the energy and rides on another tough Moses vocal, his mean guitar playing, and, in contrast, warmer horns.

The album ends with the old fashioned ultra ballad “Adorable One.” Fantastic track and Moses really shines with a roaring vocal that never threatens to sink the laid-back, swooning feel of the song.

So, I like Time and Place, and plan to listen to it some more, but not as much as much as I thought I would when the intro to the title track went into gear. I recently read an interview with Dean Wareham where he said that he loves the magic sound of commercial 1970s records even if he doesn’t care for the song or the artist. Time and Place doesn’t have that sound. It sometimes sounds like an air check or a bootleg of a well recorded live show. Ironically, this would most probably be a bootleg I would love if it was from an artist with a swank studio set to compare to. Sometimes the almost garage rock feel works to Time and Place‘s advantage, sometimes it makes me think Lee Moses deserved the extra attention that all of his peers received at the major labels.

Instead of being an amazing album, I think Time and Place is a good record by a first-rate singer-guitarist who deserved to be signed, developed, and pampered. Still, through no fault of his own, I’m not even sure that Moses would have hit the big time in this exact form. The soul/rock/folk convergence of the early ’70s wouldn’t last too long; maybe the A&R guy with the cigar and toupee would have made Lee Moses put his guitar down all together and concentrate on his voice. That would have been a shame because the way Moses plays guitar while singing is just fantastic. Curtis Mayfield was a singing soul guitarist but he wrote his own songs, produced records for himself and others, and controlled everything about his career. If Lee Moses had that intense drive inside of him he wouldn’t have stayed in Atlanta if it wasn’t helping his career. Very few artists have that kind of drive.

Teddy Pendergrass had a voice not that different than Lee Moses’ but he learned to mellow it out and only released it full force when it was needed. Pendergrass was a solid drummer who became a star by default. Besides having a powerful, raw voice, he was also tall, handsome and was in the exact right place (Philadelphia), with the exact right people (Gamble & Huff) at the exact right time (the 1970s) for his career to take off. The stars aligned.

Part of the appeal of Time and Place is that it leads me to wonder what would have happened if Lee Moses had, like Pendergrass, found people like Gamble & Huff to showcase him to his best advantage. Others will love Time and Place exactly because it sounds nothing like the typical product from Philadelphia International, Atlantic, Motown, or even Stax.  But while those labels all did things differently, they all knew what they were doing.

Everything went right for Teddy Pendergrass (and, you could probably say, that his success caused much to go wrong for Harold Melvin). Pendergrass’ fame and fortune also earned him a defective Rolls Royce, which left him a paraplegic. He went from being the biggest R&B singer of the late 1970s and early ’80s to becoming a tragic footnote overnight.

Everything went wrong for Lee Moses. But, eventually, everything goes wrong for everybody. And, I’ve never thought twice about the drum sound on a Teddy Pendergrass record.

— Nick Dedina