Idolator Counts Down The Top 100 R&B Songs Of All Time (With My Mom) Part Five

In case you missed our earlier installments: A few months ago, Idolator’s Michaelangelo Matos sent out an e-mail to a handful of his associates with a proposition: Give me a list of your 100 favorite R&B songs. Well, those months went by and the only person to turn in a completed list was…my mother. In the penultimate installment of Kathleen Turner’s 100 Greatest R&B Songs of All Time (with bonus YouTube links), we learn how hard it is to be a grade school record store owner way before the advent of the MP3, discover an operatic taste for the work of DMX, and find out just how much Google rankings mean to preserving family unity. Sadly (well, not sadly for me) we do not learn the “truth” about my conception just yet:

Once again, aside from cleaning up the spelling and grammar here and there (and the occasional editor’s note where applicable), I have left her musings mostly intact.

20. The Four Tops – “Ain’t No Woman”

Four decades of music. Detroit in the house! A baritone as lead singer. Growing up, these fellows, the Funk Brothers, and Holland Dozier Holland were so inspirational. I am once again humbled! And for all you youngheads, Jay-Z eventually did his own twist this one! How you like me now?

19. Al Green – “Here I Am”

So it is 1972 and I am listening to “Let’s Stay Together” And the Reverend knocked my all my hippie friends’ favorite artist, Don McLean, out of number one! That year in school we had a walk out!.We just got up and walked out of school to the parking lot! We were protesting the unfair treatment of one of our classmates. That is how we did things back in the ’70s! I would love to see you kids stand up for your rights like we did!

(Editor’s note: Careful there, Abbie Hoffman. Let’s not pretend skipping school because one of your buddies got busted for smoking in the girls room was how you took down the citadels of power or anything.)

18. Cheryl Lynn – “Got To Be Real”

Okay, so my Son has 109,000 hits on Google and I have two. Am I bitter? You bet I am. Anyway, this is on my beloved Sinbad’s Summer Jam VHS tape number four. And yes I am dusting and cleaning along to it. So don’t make fun of me. And my friend Jill put this one on the Miss Kitty Mix CD for me. I think we should put together a legitimate version of this mix! This reminds me that I am going to have to talk to Jill about the Kitty Mix Number Two CD soon! And no Lionel Richie!

(Editor’s note: The Google thing really does irk her for some reason. On the other hand, the fact that this is how she measures “fame” at least means that I don’t have a helluva lot to measure up to.)

17. Maze Feat. Frankie Beverly – “Back In Stride”

Okay so Frankie, a Philly boy, helped give rise to such greats as Toni Braxton and Regina Bell. His relocation back to Philly from San Fran was obviously the best decision this boy could have ever made. This was the sound of upscale urban funk–raw, totally influnced by the Del Vikings. I could go on about Frankie forever!

(Editor’s note: Maze was indeed a daily staple in the tape deck while doing errands, being shuttled to school after we missed the bus, or going to church. Other popular Harvell/Turner family cassette faves included Teena Marie, Sade, Luther Vandross, and, uh, Swing Out Sister and Anita Baker. Yes, it was a glorious time for slick, upwardly mobile soul music being blasted by working class white folks on the way to an elementary school softball game. Then my sister and i hit puberty, became insufferable, and wrestled control of the radio away from her for the next five years or so, torturing her with whatever terrible alt-rock WDRE was crapping out that month. I don’t think she’s really forgiven us for those hours spent subjected to Stone Temple Pilots and Jill Sobule and Goldfinger.)

16. Ike and Tina Turner – “I Can’t Stand The Rain”

I am at the Pennsylvania State Fair with my first boyfriend John H. (I am making this man famous now. He should call and thank me.) And I am 17 years old. First the Ikettes come out on stage. I am instantly in complete awe of them. Then Ike and Tina come out. This was truly a monumental moment in my life. I just stared at her! She was breathtaking!

15. Jimi Hendrix – “Foxy Lady”

So Chris, my ex-bartender at the West Bradford Grill, which was right across the street from my farm–yes, a bar across the street from a farm; can you believe that?–where Jess and his Sister and my parents and one of my husbands lived with our Beverly Hillbillies cement pond, a barn where Sara had her infamous barn parties with live bands! Crazy! It was like The Walton’s: My parents, kids, and such under one roof. I get tired just remembering it. So anyway, the Grill had limited song selections, but Chris always knew when I walked in because I would play “Foxy Lady.” I think Jimi’s performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was his best. Just listened to that CD again! And I want the dispute over Hendrix estate settled ASAP. There is so much music that we need to hear!

(Editor’s note: At some point my parents decided to start playing above their economic weight class and bought a small farm-ish property with a barn and everything else my mom details here. It was a nice place to grow up during the last few years of high school, where we could pretend to be wealthy. Unfortunately for our champagne wishes and caviar dreams, the family no longer lives there for reasons too long and sordid to go into. Oh, and the woman does a helluva bizarre/awesome Angus Young/epileptic duck-style air guitar strut when this song comes on. It’s like she’s choking an invisible anaconda to death while doing a mating dance and trying to hold her pee in at the same time.)

14. Rick James and Teena Marie – “Fire and Desire”

This pick is here because it is one the true times where the power of Rick’s voice was really captured. He was truly a super freak, and this is why drugs are no good, children! But you know at the end of the day he is still Rick James, bitch! Love it!

(Editor’s note: I’m deducting part of her pay for this feature for making the obvious Chappelle reference. WTF, mom?)

13. James Brown – “Cold Sweat”

Okay so my LIFELONG friend Rosemary and I are playing RECORD STORE one day while we are growing up. We would set out my 45s and pretend to shop and play them on my little turntable. And “Cold Sweat” was part of that routine, truly the FIRST funk song! It was recorded live in one take! Isn’t that amazing? Now bow down and “give the drummer some!”

(Editor’s note: I don’t know what it is about the Harvell/Turner family that made us such raging capitalists as children. When all of our peers would be playing cowboys or house, my sister and I would be running stores and doing inventory or operating factories and busting unions, burying the bodies under our swingset.)

12. Stevie Wonder – “Do I Do”

Okay all my peeps, this is from the Original Musiquarium, which is quite possilbly the best! This one goes over 10 minutes, so I think the download for the video may be too long. Put something else in Jess, to pay homage to this Master of Funk. It has the first rapping Stevie and Dizzy Gillespie on the horn. Oh my! Ja Rule sampled this. The only other item I want to add is that “Living for the Weekend” is busting out on this album!

(Editor’s note: She’s mostly worried about the download time because she’s one of the few people in the continental United States still using AOL dial-up as her Internet provider. Also, I didn’t even know my mom knew he who Ja Rule was, let alone who his producers were sampling. However, one morning during a Christmas vacation trip back to the ol’ homestead many moons ago, I came downstairs to find her dusting the china cabinet in the dining room while singing “Y’all gonna make me lose my mind, up in here, up in here” in a voice that was far more Julie Andrews twirling with orphans on a mountaintop than Dark Man X covered in fake blood on a motorcycle. So there’s that.)

11. War – “Slipping Into Darkness”

This is true vibe of dark California funk, and I’ve had the vinyl of The World Is A Ghetto longer than either of my children has been alive. Jimi jammed with War the night of his death; talk about a lost opportunity! And for all of you gamers out there, Grand Theft Auto featured War on its soundtrack. Jess knows how I feel about video gamming. How many times did mother say, “I am going to throw that GD Nintendo out the window if you don’t go outside and play!”

(Editor’s note: She really does hate video games, but I always wondered how much that stemmed from her not being able to get through one level of Super Mario Bros. without running off a cliff or into a deadly mushroom while my dad managed to somehow beat The Legend of Zelda. “GD” stands for “god damn,” in case you were wondering. Because apparently talking like an eight-year-old is less sacrilegious than saying it out loud. She has only sinned in her heart.)