Betty Wright: Danger High Voltage - 1974
This was Betty's most successful album, at least critically, I'm not sure about sales-wise though, but all I know that it was an absolute corker.
Starting with the party song of Everybody Was Rockin', a song about a "Zodiac party" - "don't forget to wear your sign", this is a lively, night-time fun groover of an album, on the whole. The Memphis Stax funk has merged with Florida good-time sun-drenched funk.
Florida funk? Want to know where that came from? Well, showing a willingness to diversify within the basic soul framework, in 1974 Wright teamed up with KC & The Sunshine Band’s Harry Casey-Richard Finch songwriting team for the addictive, disco-ish hit very KC-ish Where Is The Love. Despite Wright and Casey/Finch being Floridian, that gritty, earthy Memphis-ish soul sound still generously pervades on the album. It has been described as Miami funk-soul too. So many sub-sub genres!
Just as catchy and ebullient is the energetic romp of Love Don't Grow On a Love Tree. What a great track the Motown-ish stomp of Show You Girl is too. This sure is a lively album as opposed to angst-ridden cheated in love one, such as the first two were, especially. Betty now wants to party. The vibe continues on the irrepressible groove of Come On Up. The pace isn't letting up for a minute. Want the party to continue? Comin' right up y'all -
My own favourite on here, and indeed of Betty's overall, however, has always been the Stax-influenced thumper from 1974, Allen Toussaint's Shoo-rah! Shoo-rah!, with its wonderful, catchy horn riff. It is song I bought as a single back in 1975 and, all these years later, I still can't get enough of it. I don't love this song. No sir. I fucking love it. I remember a TV drama starring Robson Green and Mark Benton about two men rivalling each other with their Christmas lights that briefly featured this song in a party scene. Kudos to the director/writer for choosing it!
The mood settles down a bit on the more typical Wright brassy soul of That's When I'll Stop Loving You and the strong Don't Thank Me Baby, Thank Yourself. These two are more like the type of material found on her earlier albums. The album ends with Betty getting loved-up on the smoochy, giving of oneself Tonight Is The Night. The album has progressed from the party venue to the bedroom, as indeed it should.
Not included on the original album but now present on the extended re-release is the afore-mentioned and totally ballsy soul-funk of Secretary, the third in that series of love-rival songs.
