Friday, October 27, 2017

Chart Song Cinema: Cool Breeze (1972)


"Love's Street and Fool's Road" (1972) - Solomon Burke

Written and produced by Solomon Burke * 45: "Love's Street and Fool's Road" / "I Got to Tell It" * LP: Cool Breeze * Label: MGM * Billboard charts: Hot 100 (#89), soul (#13) * Entered: 1972-04-15 (Hot 100), 1972-04-22 (soul)

Directed by Barry Pollack, Cool Breeze did whatever it could to live up to the term "blaxploitation."  On display most prominently were the era's favorite caricaturizations of urban blackness and, as a dreary bonus, an unwavering commitment to chauvinism. Its biggest mishap, though, was closing credits that stunned viewers by even being there. Their first line should have read, "we didn't know what else to do, and we're out of money, so we're just gonna end this." Even so, Cool Breeze does have the makings of a cult movie (which it's becoming) due to its funny dialogue and time capsule visuals, such as scenes where Thalmus Rasulala's assembled gang of diamond thieves wear Nixon and Agnew masks.

The choice of influential R&B singer Solomon Burke—whose chart success was on the wane after a busy 1960s—as the movie's soundtrack man is apropos because he, like one of Cool Breeze's characters, had something of a world-tainted preacher aura. As his obituary in the New York Times reports, Burke was known in his youth as a "wonder boy" at the pulpit whose competing love for life's temporal pleasures led him toward a music career that made them all available. (As the "king of rock and soul," he would appear on stage wearing a crown and robe.) In the film, a preacher who's also a safe cracker joins the heist squad, and one scene shows three of his cohorts awkwardly discussing business on a church pew, surrounded by elders and children who are trying to worship. It's a scene full of inner angel-devil conflict that Burke probably appreciated.

After the soul chart (and minor Hot 100) success of "Love's Street and Fool's Road," which features the kind of spoken interjections he was known for, Burke had only one more Hot 100 appearance and two more on the soul chart. In 2002, though (eight years before his death), he'd release the rally-round comeback album Don't Give Up on Me, full of songs by contemporary songwriting icons.

Side B previewed a song, written by J.W. Alexander and Willie Hutch, that would later show up on Burke's We're Almost Home LP the same year.

Side A: "Love's Street and Fool's Road"


Side B: "I Got to Tell It"



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