Minnie Riperton - Classic or Dud?

all of you would (should) recognize the sitar sample from Tribe Called Quest's "bonita applebaum" and tons more

don't know anything else by ms. riperton, sorry.

(Admittedly, the fact that they did all those Cream covers didn't help matters.)

(White dudes with long hair = probably another strike.)

Those massive Charles Stepney string arrangements make my knees quiver every time.

Was Phil Upchurch a hippie?

Hmph.

Maybe I am just a closet hippie.

according to allmusic, andrea davis, yeah.

i really like "baby this love i have" and "inside my love"

Except for the very first album Rotary Connection, which I only have on vinyl, I got all of them on CD (usually in some disjunct two-fer form), I think.. Aladdin, Peace, Songs, Dinner Music, and Hey Love. Are there any I'm missing? (I'm missing all else on vinyl except Alladin and Peace)

I also have those two-fer releases with Perfect Angel/Adventures In Paradise and Stay In Love/Minnie. Perfect Angel and Adventures are both great, but I'm not too hot on the later two. Although it's horribly sad that there couldn't have been more, regardless.

I should find your Lucien thread, jaxon. His first three albums are gold but I've never heard anything that came after that.

I didn't know this, but it explains a lot!

"Lovin' You" is probably the greatest impromptu-karaoke-to-embarass-my-friends-(okay, mostly myself)-in-public song ever.

I highly recommend getting these CDs, at least, even if you have to byass the first one, which is not anymore crucial than any of the others really.. except Songs which is relatively eh.

The Rotary Connection CD, however, is really hard to find.. whereas the CDs of the rest are the easiest to find.

"young willing and able" on stay in love people. hot shit.

Whoa, I had no idea that Maya Rudolph is her daughter.

Also, reassessing Songs, that album is just as fuckin awesome as the other Rotary albums. If anything, Dinner Music stepped down a notch, although I appreciate how messy it is.

As for the solo Minnie albums, they drop off pretty badly after Adventures In Paradise.

But there are great songs on each one. "Young, Willing, and Able," "Can You Feel What I'm Saying," "Memory Lane," "Here We Go," etc. Can definitely understand why fans of the earlier ones would not like them. They're slick and pretty MOR.

Songs is probably my favorite RC album.

This is nuts:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=x9ZwXzdRzbU

I was thinking the revive was Alex in NYC going through his contrarian routine.

i cant stand 'loving you'

'inside your love' is incredible

lol me 2 years ago ;_;

not even close to an embarrassing post by ilx standards

anyone who hates "lovin' you" has a turnip for a heart.

Actually I can understand why someone wouldn't like it since it's so sappy and all, but it kills me to an embarrassing degree.

Per Wikipedia "maya, maya" bit is about her daughter, how could would that be.

god bless youtube

Can't find Minnie's version on Youtube but this is my jam for all time.

Don Cornelius' voice is a thing of fucking wonder as well, 'scuse pun.

Oh, that's a nice episode of "Soul Train." Saw a rerun of it a while back. Whole hour devoted to her.

Also a clip of her singing "Lovin' You" and ad libbing "Maya, Maya, Maya."

ha, quelle coincidence, i've been RINSING minnie riperton this week. i only have her les fleurs anthology though: WHAT ELSE DO I NEED?

that stevie wonder clip! yay

xxpost Oh, re-reading thread, that bit's on the record?!

lex, the Come To My Garden LP is lush, Perfect Angel is awes too.

I just found that Stevie Wonder clip a few weeks back too. Gorgeous medley of the two songs.

she just destroys this X^D

and sexxxxiest album cover ever rite??

"will you come inside me/do you wanna ride"

UGH

My other jam of hers that melts me to the floor, Memory Lane

good jow ppapa weelie

esp'incsude my love" been lovin that shit

i been told i need to chek this out

bad

O_O! Surm!

"will you come inside me/do you wanna ride"

^^^this is sexiest song ever btw

i know i'm excited

yo we should have a sexxiest songs ever youtube-off

so many ways to zing that

next post is not allowed to mention:

LJ quotes
'jackoff sesh'
'yh'/'nh'

stoked for the madness of the jackoff sesh (yh)

start the thread!

so uh, Parliament's "Placebo Syndrome" is totally ripped off from "Les Fleurs", right? Of course there's no telling whether GC had heard the latter, but those two songs sure as hell sound alike.

Well, supposedly all that Cadet Concept stuff sold some records, right? And Detroit's not that far from Chicago, etc.

Charles Stepney is kinda the Man Behind The Curtain in this thread. He produced the best of Riperton and Rotary Connection (which was most of it), and he was a mid-west staple.

The Charles Stepney Foundation website pretty much has all the stories (from the foundation's p.o.v., granted)

http://www.charlesstepney.org/

come into my garden is so perfect.

Notable non-RC/MR Stepney off the top of my head: all Cadet-era Terry Callier, Phil Upchurch's Upchurch (wind-tunnel-in-the-middle of-a-dustbowl sound in full effect, especially on the version of "Black Gold"), the Marlena Shaw album with "California Soul," the Dells' Freedom Means, Ramsey Lewis' Cadet albums (Maiden Voyage contains a bonkers "Les Fleur"), some of the Soulful Strings stuff, the Emotions' Flowers, Deniece Williams' This Is Niecy, EW&F's Open Our Eyes and Spirit.

― Andy_K (Andy_K), Sunday, October 23, 2005 6:42 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

Add The Dells Sing Dionne Warwicke's Greatest Hits, reissued a while back by Dusty Groove.

My other jam of hers that melts me to the floor, Memory Lane

Pappa Moran, one of the Detroit stations (either 105.9 or 107.5) used to play this ALL THE TIME -- as recently as a couple years ago. (Maybe it still does.)

Well, supposedly all that Cadet Concept stuff sold some records, right? And Detroit's not that far from Chicago, etc.

My dad brought the first Rotary Connection to a party just outside Detroit when he came back to visit from Chicago... would've been around the right time... but I reckon GC was not present. (I seem to remember my dad saying the album's effect was polarizing.)

RC turned down Woodstock to play for more money in Toronto. They would have become more popular than Sha Na Na, at the least.

fact: 7 out of 10 MR releases misspell her name (including my copy of Come Into My Garden)...then again, that Dells LP famously botches DW's last name...

DW as in Dionne Warwicke? There was a brief time in the early 70s where Warwick respelled her last name "Warwicke" for numerological purposes.

RC turned down Woodstock to play for more money in Toronto. They would have become more popular than Sha Na Na, at the least.

Well, there were tons of bands that played Woodstock that were far less popular than (even) Rotary Connection. So unless RC were initially offered a good slot and documentary crew...

Fixing the broken link to Alex In NYC Who has/had the most high-pitched vocals in music?

Rotary Connection! Why have I never noticed them before. Their stuff all sounds really promising. Also, even though I've always liked "Lovin You," I've also written off the possibility that Minnie Ripperton would have much else that's worth listening to, but on the contrary, I get the impression she recorded a lot that I might like more than that, and be able to listen to more often than I can listen to that (which as others have said, I too find somewhat embarrassing to like as much as I do).

(I seem to be in a discovery phase here.)

Adventures in Paradise is my favourite Minnie album. "Les Fleur" is probably the best single thing she ever did, but I think Come into My Garden suffers from the fact that none of the songs that follow "Les Fleur" are quite as good (though some of them are quite good). "Loving You" is another classic, obviously, but I think Perfect Angel too has a couple of not-so-brilliant tunes, whereas Adventures in Paradise is great from the beginning to the end. Plus it has one of the most awesomely over-the-top songs ever made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sss95IO_8us

I think there's a couple tracks I like more than Les Fleur on Come to My Garden, the title track and Rainy Day In Centerville. I'd easily rate that in my all time top 50 albums. I'm surprised I never see that or Perfect Angel in any best albums lists, they are both brilliant records. Reasons is my favourite song of hers, it's her best vocal.

I think I need to dig out Adventures in Paradise as I've never really managed to fully get into that one.

"Reasons" is pretty great, yeah. I didn't mean to imply Come into My Garden is a bad album, I think all of her three first albums are pretty essential, it's just that I feel Adventures in Paradise is most consistently good when it comes to the song material. It does have a bit more conventional sound than the first two, though, so if it's Richard Rudolph's production you most like about Minnie Riperton albums, it's more mannered on AiP. Personally, I love the fuller sound on that album with horns and everything; I think Perfect Angel suffers a bit from the lack of horns, a few of tunes on it might've sounded better with them.

I'm going to put on Adventures in Paradise this afternoon. I really don't think I've played it more than twice. I think I neglected it as I got the first three albums around the same time and the first two just blew me away. I'd probably rate her as one of my favourite voices in music but I've not heard much of her late 70's period.

I recently bought the Syreeta album that Stevie Wonder made with her and it made me want to go back and play Perfect angel again.

both syreeta's albums are FANTASTIC

"Here We Go" is so HOTTT and EPIC – defs an overlooked track of hers.

listen here

it's a song with a giddy loopy string section and disco synth zaps and horns and heavy bass and none getting in the way of each other, just taking turns underscoring her amazing sexy vocals in different ways

fwiw I am accustomed to a version (from the "Petals" CD) that cuts off at 3:40

"Here We Go" is very nice, but Love Lives Forever as a whole is a bit disappointing. Though I guess that's to be expected, considering it's a posthumous album made from tapes that she left behind.

I was just listening to "Inside My Love", I'd forgotten how shamelessly double-entendre Minnie could get:

You can see inside me, will you come inside me?
Do you wanna ride, inside my love?

Such a pretty ballad, and the chorus is all about her pussy! God, Minnie was so great!

haha to be honest i dont think you can call that a "double" entendre, really it is a "single entendre," about "doing it" with minnie riperton

Well, she does sing about coming inside and riding her "love", not her pussy, so it is a double entendre.

yeah, tbh i'd never actually "got" what this song was about before.

There's another song on Adventure in Paradise, can't remember which one, where she sings "when we f...", and you can clearly gather she's about to say "fuck", but instead of completing the word she goes into one of her trademark high-pitched wails, so it's like "faaAAAaaAAah". I guess she got a kick from slipping that sort of stuff into her songs. :)

How is "pussy" any less metaphorical than "love"?

Think about it.

the p.c. anti-bestiality police would have been on to her like a shot*

*not literally like a shot. metaphorically.

Do you wanna ride, inside my volvo?

I've only just got the joke in that Suede song.

Three dude friends of mine & I were in a car, driving to see a concert, and we were listening to a mix CD I had made. "Inside My Love" came on and they all got like palpably uncomfortable. After the song ends, one of them turns around and says, "'Will you come inside me?' Seriously?" with all this pent up frustration, like I did this whole thing just to get his goat.

have you ever heard terre thaemlitz's between empathy and sympathy is time (apartheid) ??

http://www.comatonse.com/soundfiles/lovebo02.mp3

next time play that for your friends

Think about it.

― Tuomas, Monday, January 11, 2010 9:10 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

still thinking about it

English is not his first language – maybe he doesn't know "pussy" is a slang term and that cats were called pussies before vulvas were in English.

Max, "Pussy" is one of those metaphors that has become so commonplace that people don't usually think it as a metaphor. If Minnie had sang "you can see inside my pussy", no one would think that she's performing an operation on her cat. But when she sings about seeing inside "my love", the meaning is not as obvious. Also, pussy is visually and texturally a bit similar to "pussy", while love is not.

"love" in the sense of "Inside My Love" is maybe not as common now as it was in the 70s - check out Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins etc etc etc - but it was/is every bit as transparent a metaphor as "pussy".

iirc romantic novels often used "love" to mean "pussy" to mean "vag".

exackly. tho the airport novels I'm familiar with aren't strictly "romantic" i guess.

yeah im talking by reputation tbh.

apparently 'jaws' and whatnot are pretty raunchy?

70s popular fiction almost always slots a sex scene in somewhere, no matter the genre. Don't remember Jaws being especially raunchy, but I remember it having that rep at school.

on a Minnie/Rotary kick

lol at the convo in the previous revive btw

Just played Perfect Angel again yesterday, in wake of her disciple Teena Marie's death. Was really surprised how much I liked it, how rock and psych and jazz it was. (Hadn't spun it in a long time.) Opening cut, "Reasons" -- holy moley, what a great track.

Well, she does sing about coming inside and riding her "love", not her pussy, so it is a double entendre.

― Tuomas, Monday, January 11, 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzWXYUGbi9c&feature=related

Weird, I was just talking about how amazing "Come to my Garden" is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YcrXS3s6yA&feature=related

This was probably one of the last interviews she did, right? She still looks healthy, but died from cancer shortly afterwards.

Anyway, she was a fantastic singer, and that album with "Loving You" on it is surely a great album as well. Also helped by Stevie Wonder at the height of his creatic golden age of course.

I was just listening to "Inside My Love", I'd forgotten how shamelessly double-entendre Minnie could get:

You can see inside me, will you come inside me?
Do you wanna ride, inside my love?

Such a pretty ballad, and the chorus is all about her pussy! God, Minnie was so great!

― Tuomas, Monday, 11 January 2010 13:51 (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Due to being unable to post anon, I can't tell you what my wife said when I played this track to her (she's always loved that "2 people" version of this)

Minnie is the best! And "Reasons" is sizzling sharp stuff!

loving you is uber-classic. not familiar with anything else.

She is so beautiful, too. Taken form the world far too early. I remember seeing Maya Rudolph on TV talking about her mom, and singing Maya's name at the end of "Lovin' You," and I just burst into tears.

oh what's the name of that "ensemble" thing they use on ads, that I found out was Minnie Ripperton?

Geir, when she did that interview, one of her arms was paralyzed by a tumor. I do have to say though, that it's a testament to her strong will that she could look so happy even in such a state.

i didn't know about her condition (i think i knew of her passing). very sad. she does look happy -- and still beautiful -- in that interview clip.

taken far too soon. she made some great, great records.

;_;

just watched her Unsung episode and did ^^^ through the whole second half

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK0wbdbNLcM

http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/a66148de932c1cd0e6ac8f8653fc2c78e5cf996e_m.gif

All hail Minnie. All hail Maya (Maya Maya Maya Maya).

Can one "p" be removed from this thread title, btw?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LjdR00Q0Yo

title fixed

One baby's breath bouquet for you, Bobby-fil-A.

awshucks

And a lion, too.

http://www.rapturejohnson.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Capture111.jpg

That Maya gif is too sweet!

not sure how I feel about this :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAvngHg41QY

Revive. Intriguing coverage on Morning Edition today. Didn't realize she died so young, after all those albums. Why have I never checked out Rotary Connection, or her solo albums?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/07/11/330781619/35-years-after-minnie-ripertons-death-new-fans-still-find-her

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DR_NMtBEj4

you need to remedy that, stat, as she is CLASSIC to the point of ridiculousness.

Agreed. Her first three solo albums are perfect.

I've been listening to that Rotary track a lot lately!

I need to listen to her more

We all should.

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-1545026-1237443861.jpeg

^^ This one's an all-time fave album.

god I love that record to bits

whenever/wherever is my jam from come to my garden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eyd3r4Cm2A

Just discovered Come to My Garden after learning Maurice White (RIP) played drums on it. Sick drumming too, sounds like Earl Palmer.

Yeah, that album has the whole Ramsey Lewis Trio as the rhythm section. Charles Stepney, Minnie's former Rotary Connection bandmate and producer of the album had already worked with Lewis on several of his albums, so I guess it was his idea to ask his trio to play on this one. (And a good choice it was!) And later on Stepney produced albums for EWF as well.

I love that whole album. That and Perfect Angel are just sublime to me (and Adventures In Paradise is pretty great as well).

I feel a bit envious of an era where records like Come to My Garden could get made, both as a listener and as a musician.

I've been stuck on 'Les Fleur' for the last hour - fucking hell, what a tune.

You could almost have it be on repeat for eternity. Absolutely immense.

http://infinitejukebox.playlistmachinery.com/?trid=TRQCCRH13D14010D6C

I love this album so much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vLHwyxa-FA

"les fleur" feels of kin to hazlewood/sinatra's "some velvet morning." confined classic.