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Matthew Africa on The Identities

(Editor’s note: I recently reached out to some of my favorite music enthusiasts to see if they’d add their expertise to the site. Through the years, it’s been a delight to meet and work with these cats and, through their generosity, I’ll be rolling out some great music in the coming months. The concept was straightforward: Have a great song or record you’d want to share? The responses quickly came and the selections, as expected, are top-notch. First up is one of my favorites, Matthew Africa, whose blog is effortlessly great, as is most of his output. Here’s his contribution. –DM)

A quick listen to the Identities’ “Hey Brother” shows it’s a thinly-masked rewrite of the Billy Roberts composition “Hey Joe”. Although Jimi Hendrix’s recording of “Hey Joe” is perhaps justifiably the best-known version, it seems to be one of those rare tunes that’s impossible to mess up– of the dozens of versions I’ve heard, I have yet to hear a bad one. The lyrics here get recast as a peace and brotherhood bromide so vague Hendrix himself might have winced.

As far as I can tell this is the only record credited to the Identities. The vocal is almost certainly by producer Walter Whisenhunt’s wife, Gloria Taylor. The duo recorded far and wide throughout the seventies before a split which, according to legend, drove a vengeful Whisenhunt to wild out on her masters, giving birth to this left-field disco grail:

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