DENNIS BROWN / “Westbound Train”

In African-American culture, the train metaphor is probably second only to the river metaphor. And not coincidentally, both metaphors are about escaping something. Go figure. In this case though, we're not talking about a freedom song. This one's a love song. It's Dennis Brown's classic "Westbound Train" (from the 1978 album of the same name) and it took about three seconds for me to realize I was going to like it. That's how long it took for me to recognize that Dennis was using the opening guitar line from Al Green's "Love And Happiness" to start off his reggae lament. The lyrics too, are borrowed (although the origins are less certain). Dennis gets home and finds one of those "Sorry, baby, you'll never see me again" letters. Next thing you know, his girl is on a train, headed west. Before the song is over, Dennis is on a train too, heading in the same direction trying to find her. But you already knew that. Sometimes, reggae is like hip-hop: you just go ahead and use whatever you got, whether it's 'yours' or not. Midway through "Westbound Train," Dennis even throws in little bits of Eric Donaldson’s 1971 classic "Cherry Oh Baby." Then there’s a mellow little break followed by the “Love And Happiness” guitar line playing again. Man, that's perfect.

If that's not enough for you, “Westbound Train” is actually the second time that Dennis intro’ed one of his songs with the Love And Happiness riff. The first time was for a song named "Cassandra" (originally released as a single in the early Seventies, but don’t quote me on that). The guitar player on the “Cassandra” session throws in a couple of extra notes, but it's still obviously "Love And Happiness." I feel like I've heard the horn riff before too, and probably on an old soul record, but I can't place it. BTW, both “Westbound Train” and “Cassandra” are available on a Dennis Brown hits compilation called Love & Hate. There you’ll also find Dennis’ best known records (outside of Jamaica) like “Money In My Pocket” and “Sitting And Watching.” You really can’t go wrong. Next week, we'll take a look at the opposite situation: a classic soul record that borrows musical ideas from a classic reggae cut, then itself spawns at least two classic hip-hop records. —Mtume ya Salaam         The hip bone connected to...          Mtume, when you connect the dots, it helps us see the big(ger) picture. Keeping on showing us what we listening to. Respect. —Kalamu ya Salaam  

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 1:10 am and is filed under Classic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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