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Various Artists - Body And Soul Duets Disc 1 (2004)

Track listing:
  1. Put It On Paper Ann Nesby Featuring Al Green 5:08
  2. Don't Look Any Further Dennis Edwards Featuring Siedah Garrett 4:06
  3. Hope That We Can Be Together Soon Sharon Paige & Harold Melvin &The Blue Notes 3:43
  4. I'm Gonna Make You Love Me Diana Ross & the Supremes and the Temptations 3:10
  5. Ain't Understanding Mellow Jerry Butler and Brenda Lee Eager 4:24
  6. Endless Love Diana Ross and Lionel Richie 4:31
  7. You Don't Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show) Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. 3:55
  8. Reunited Peaches and Herb 4:03
  9. Solid Ashford and Simpson 3:48
  10. Tonight, I Celebrate My Love Peabo Bryson with Robera Flack 3:33
  11. Two Hearts Stephanie Mills featuring Teddy Pendergrass 4:42
  12. Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell 2:17

Notes

Body and Soul Duets. The best soul duets are like mirrors. They enable you to see yourself and your own romantic history in the lyrical interplay between the two singers. The finest of these anthems exercise the power to call out to anyone who has ever fallen in love, and always seem to bear an uncanny resemblance to any lover's real life romantic predicament. In these songs, you can relive the first ethereal quivers of passion that caused you to dive head-first into the uncertain waters of love and relationships, You can decipher the unwritten code of romance by observing what's going on in the song, relating it directly to your situation, for the duet partners are merely stand-ins for you and your true love.



In fact, it's downright supernatural that when your failing love, the right song just seems to come on the radio—a song you claim as your own, memorizing all the words and returning to it again and again to rekindle emotions. At their best, duets are like the most tender of slow dances, both romantic and elegant, with two heartfelt voices, or unapologetically sassy ones, gracefully weaving around each other, creating a perfect moment of musical architecture and emotion.



Artist Spotlights



Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell set the high-water mark for duets when they first came together in 1967, creating some of the most Gaye had recorded duets with such stellar partners as Mary Wells and Kim Weston, but something transcendent happened when he paired with Terrell. Initially, he was skeptical when producers Johnny Bristol and Harvey Fuqua suggested that Tammi would be the perfect foil for his voice. Gaye recorded the vocals for their first effort, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, alone, sending the tape to Tammi so that she could embellish the track with her strong, flirtatious soprano. Despite the snub, their chemistry was immediate and the song entered the pop Top-2O, beginning a collaboration that produced a string of hits including the majestic Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing. Though the twosome radiated heat on stage and on record, they weren't actually the "real thing." They were, however, such good friends that after Terrell' s tragic death from a brain tumor in 1970, Gaye went into seclusion for three years.



Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson earned their stripes writing Ray Charles's biggest smash of the '60s, Let's Go Get Stoned, and continued with a career at Motown where they produced Diana Ross's first solo album and wrote and produced many hits for Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. When the terminally ill Terrell required a stand-in for what was to be her last album with Gaye, Simpson stepped in to assist. Simpson continued to perform after Terrell's death, and the following year she released the first of two solo efforts. But it wasn't until 1984 that the duo of Ashford and Simpson achieved success as performers. They finally took Solid to the top of the R&B charts after a long run of mediocre albums. Although the song tells the story of the travails of long-time love, Simpson insisted it was not autobiographical. "You write in the third person and people always want to read something into the lyrics... We've written hundreds of songs, to think I could have been all of those songs, I'd be so tired."



It was Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli who helped pair Lionel Richie and Diana Ross on Endless Love, After hiring the Commodores singer to pen an instrumental title song for the movie, Zeffirelli changed his mind and asked Richie to write lyrics, and find someone like Diana Ross to sing. Although he barely knew Ross, Richie persuaded the glitzy diva to work with him on the song. Neither artist could find the time to record, however, so in order to make the deadline for the movie, they finally were forced to book studio time in Reno, Nevada, at 3:00 a.m., following Ross's show at a nearby casino. Despite the fact that Ross had never seen the lyrics before that night, the duo was on fire. The song achieved an Academy Award nomination and spent a breathtaking nine weeks atop the charts. Ross and Richie went on to record Missing You in 1985, a song Ross dedicated to Marvin Gaye, following his untimely death in 1984.



Former beauty queen Marilyn McCoo and her husband, Billy Davis Jr., met while singing in the Fifth Dimension. The vocal group won six Grammys and had seven Gold albums, but even with these accolades, McCoo and Davis were restless and wanted to go out on their own. The couple found the courage after taking est training, a self-awareness course devised by Werner Erhard. "[T]hrough est I was able to strip away most of my negative feelings about myself and understand how I used them to keep me down or safe or inactive," McCoo explained to Essence magazine. "That freed me to do what I really wanted, to leave the group. Like Billy, I wanted to try new things." Despite their original intention to launch separate solo careers, McCoo and Davis recorded an album of duets. It proved to be the right decision. The infectious You Don't Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show) reached No. i on both the pop and R&B charts, and the couple snared a Gold record and a Grammy on their first time out.



- Jaan Uhelszki