Seeing clearly, now that the rain has gone...
231. Bobby Womack "Across 110th Street"
Bobby Womack was from Cleveland, Ohio and made his living mostly as a songwriter and sessionman, playing on recordings with the likes of Box Tops and Joe Tex, and penning much covered numbers like "Looking For A Love" and "It's All Over Now" (the latter a hit for both R&B group the Valentinos and later the Rolling Stones).
This song was the theme music for one of the finest of the early seventies urban realism films. (for the uninitiated, on the west side of Manhattan, 110th Street is the unofficial border between the upper west side and Harlem). Like many R&B numbers of it's era it offers depictions of the seductions of street life and other urban problems. Unlike many, it offers neither easy triumphalism nor self-indulgent nihilism and self-pity. The strings, muted wah-wah guitar and most of all Womack's restrained vocal all add up to an incredible sense of abiding, seeing clearly all the dangers and problems in his world but also a knowledge that life goes on, and one way or another, you have to go on with it.
Bobby Womack was from Cleveland, Ohio and made his living mostly as a songwriter and sessionman, playing on recordings with the likes of Box Tops and Joe Tex, and penning much covered numbers like "Looking For A Love" and "It's All Over Now" (the latter a hit for both R&B group the Valentinos and later the Rolling Stones).
This song was the theme music for one of the finest of the early seventies urban realism films. (for the uninitiated, on the west side of Manhattan, 110th Street is the unofficial border between the upper west side and Harlem). Like many R&B numbers of it's era it offers depictions of the seductions of street life and other urban problems. Unlike many, it offers neither easy triumphalism nor self-indulgent nihilism and self-pity. The strings, muted wah-wah guitar and most of all Womack's restrained vocal all add up to an incredible sense of abiding, seeing clearly all the dangers and problems in his world but also a knowledge that life goes on, and one way or another, you have to go on with it.
