Grover Washington, Jr. - Winelight (1980)

Note: the CD I listened to was the 1990 reissue.

A brief comment on the cover photo: I'm not much of a wine drinker, but am aware that I'm to fill my glass only to the widest part of the bowl. However, I'm by no means a wine snob, so I normally fill my glass(es) on up near the top, just as in the cover photo above. Experts might want to "elevate the flavors and aromas of wine by exposing it to air" but I follow the usual "if a little bit is good, more is better" mindset when it comes such things. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

I don't remember from who I borrowed the vinyl albums, but somehow I ended up with a C-90 cassette with this album on one side and its 1981 follow-up, Come Morning, on the other. Now that I think about it, it might have been a C-60 tape with some creative dubbing/editing involved, but in any case - lemmetellya I wore it out in the '80s everywhere I could play the thing: car stereo, home/dorm stereo, Walkman. And those songs still get plenty of play to this day. I later bought a CD of Washington's 1985 greatest hits compilation, foolishly thinking that disc would replace that tape and I wouldn't need to buy CDs of those two albums, both of which I now own on CD, of course.

In the world of smooth jazz, this thing was groundbreaking - a smooth jazz album that also became a top 5 pop album with a #2 pop hit - the first of its kind since Jazz Samba a generation earlier. Washington got involved with Ralph MacDonald and many top-shelf studio aces including members of Stuff: Steve Gadd, Eric Gale, and Richard Tee, alongside Marcus Miller on bass (and if you like the sound of that line-up, there's also a couple of Sadao Watanabe albums from the early '80s you should check out - "if a little bit is good..." right?). Liner notes also state that the album was mixed using the "Aphex Aural Exciter" and I don't know what that is but it sounds fun. Speaking of things I don't understand, the Billboard review called the songs on the album a "journey into gossamer entanglements."

As noted at the bottom of the above CD cover, the album won the Grammy award for Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance, Vocal or Instrumental, while the song Just The Two Of Us won the category of Best Rhythm & Blues Song.

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard Top 200: #5
• Billboard Jazz: #1 [atop this chart from December 20, 1980 through July 4, 1981, later followed by two more nonconsecutive weeks for a total of 31 weeks at #1]
• Billboard R&B: #2
• Billboard Rock: #48
• CashBox: #5
• CashBox Jazz: #1
• Rolling Stone: #7

Tracks: 6 tracks, 39:15. "Only" 6 tracks and they're all worth your time. I briefly entertained the idea of ranking the tracks, but what's the point? I normally badmouth the practice of including a vocal track on an otherwise instrumental album, but maybe that's because Just The Two Of Us is so perfect that nothing else measures up - Richard Tee's intro, Bill Withers' vocals, the steelpan solo from Robert Greenidge, the subtle change of feel when MacDonald brings in his percussion backing track at around the 5:30 mark for the final choruses. The whole album is perfect for late night romance on a Saturday night and then again with brunch the next day.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD (upcycled from a previous post): I was a freshman in high school when this album was released. At the time, I could best be described as an annoying, scrawny 14 year old geek. Still, I never ended up with my head stuck down a toilet nor stuffed in a locker or lunchroom 55-gallon trash can, facts which surprise me to this day. (I was once handcuffed to a school auditorium urinal as a sophomore, but that's a story for another time.)

Your humble blogger's yearbook photo
from freshman year, 1980-81

No comments about the cowlicks, please; I've had a bad hair life. Like any new high school student, I searched for extracurricular activities where 1) I'd kinda sorta fit in, and 2) I wouldn't get beat up. So, in addition to playing in the school band, I got involved in the drama program (neither of these activities did anything to jeopardize my standing as an annoying, scrawny 14 year old geek).

In the spring of 1981, I was doing some sort of crew work backstage one afternoon and we had the radio on. Just The Two Of Us came on the air. I liked the song from the first time I heard it and I'm fairly sure I had recorded it off the radio.  In any case, I sang along while I worked. Other stage crew members overheard me and couldn't believe a skinny white kid would be familiar with a R&B tune (little did they know...). Before I knew it, I was surrounded by 4 or 5 other geeks and we had a little dance party backstage. And for a brief moment, I kinda sorta fit in.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Prime Cuts: The Columbia Years 1987-1999 (1999)
All My Tomorrows (1994)
Time Out of Mind (1989)
Anthology of Grover Washington, Jr. (1985)
The Best Is Yet To Come (1982)
Skylarkin' (1980)
Mister Magic (1975)