‘The Spice Of Life’: how Marlena Shaw captured the soulful spirit of the 1960s
Flower power, the civil rights movement, sexual liberation, Woodstock, Vietnam, The Beatles, LSD, and Motown; it is near-enough impossible to summarise the cultural landscape of the 1960s in a neat little package. The decade was one of radical change, revolution, and defiant artistic expression, the likes of which had never been seen before and have rarely been seen since. Social historians have tried for decades to offer an all-encompassing account of the era, but few have managed to rival the spirit of Marlena Shaw and her 1968 record The Spice of Life.
Shaw cut her teeth singing in jazz clubs around New York during the early 1960s. She was a devotee of jazz stars like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie and had a healthy appreciation of gospel vocals. Her quality as a singer was obvious immediately, but it would not be until 1966 that she impressed the legendary soul label Chess Records while performing at a Playboy club. Chess was already well-known across the United States for its iconic gospel, soul, and R&B releases, but Shaw would become one of their greatest artists.
At the time, Shaw was signed to the Chess subsidiary label Cadet Records, which released records by legendary figures like Etta James, Zoot Simms, and Ahmad Jamal, to name only a few. Shaw’s first release on Cadet came in 1967 with the album Out of Different Bags. Failing to gain much attention and with little to no mainstream success, the album was quickly forgotten about, but Shaw was brewing something much more profound and captivating.
Those plans were realised two years later, as the end of the 1960s loomed. Much like its predecessor, the singer’s sophomore album, The Spice of Life, failed to chart, and Shaw left Cadet Records shortly thereafter, viewing the album as a failure. In truth, though, The Spice of Life is among the greatest albums of the decade, capturing the revolutionary spirit of the time in addition to the sweet soul sounds that had dominated the American mainstream throughout, thanks to labels like Motown, Atlantic, and Stax.
Largely composed of covers and standards, the album includes a version of the civil rights anthem ‘I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel To Be Free)’, popularised by Nina Simone two years prior, as well as blues standards like T-Bone Walker’s ‘Call it Stormy Monday’.
Appearing alongside original works ‘Woman of the Ghetto’ and ‘Liberation Conversation’, the album’s content was focused around an idea of freedom and liberation, a theme that had come to define the 1960s, both from the perspective of the civil rights movement, and the traditional society-subverting attitudes of the hippie age.
Inarguably, the stand-out track on the album is ‘California Soul’, Shaw’s recording of Ashford and Simpson’s funk and soul anthem. Shaw’s velvet vocals sound as though they were tailor-made for the song, even if she hailed from the East Coast rather than the West. Its grand orchestral backing and the timeless beauty of Shaw’s voice give the song a unique quality that can cut through a room like a knife through butter; as soon as those violins start up, all the attention is on Shaw and the era-defining music emanating from the speakers.
Not only did the vocalist give a storming performance on the song, making it a cult classic among funk and soul fans, but its expansive sound reflected the ever-increasing musical spectrum of the 1960s. Incorporating elements of soul, R&B, funk, blues, rock, and psychedelia, the composition of ‘California Soul’ is much more complex than meets the eye.
So many musical revolutions occurred throughout the 1960s, from Motown’s pop-centric attitudes to the subversive experimentation of LSD-fueled psychedelic rock, and The Spice of Life acts as a lush journey through that ever-expanding sonic landscape.
