This week’s MP3 Monday is about the great James Ramey — better known to soul cratediggers as the 400-pound Baby Huey. As always, MP3s will be online for one week.

“Mama Get Yourself Together” by Baby Huey. From the album The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend (1971).

James Ramey was raised in small-town Indiana and moved to Chicago at age 19. A glandular disorder made him a huge man — over 350 pounds for most of his adult life. He took the nickname Baby Huey from the giant duckling cartoon of the same name.

He called his band the Babysitters and played a very Curtis Mayfield-inspired brand of soul and funk — burbling, aggressive bass, rock-steady drums, and punchy horns. Over time, a little Sly & the Family Stone snuck in, too. In 1969, Baby Huey signed to Curtom, Mayfield’s label, and began recording his debut album.

Sadly, Baby Huey was by that point a big fan of heroin. In October 1970, he died of a drug-induced heart attack in a hotel bathroom. His album, The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend, was released posthumously.

“Mama Get Yourself Together” is a fine example of the Baby Huey style — clearly a lot of Mayfield, some great percussion, and joyful blasts of brass.

“A Change Is Gonna Come” by Baby Huey. From the album The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend (1971).

“A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke. From the album Ain’t That Good News (1964).

It’s hard to criticize Baby Huey as a songwriter, considering he died at age 26. But a lot of the best songs on his album were covers. Take this version of the Sam Cooke civil-rights classic (and the original, also linked above). There’s no doubting Cooke’s version wins — the overdone strings and mix of bombast and restraint pack in the emotions.

But don’t sleep on Huey — he’s got a raw, gritty take on Cooke’s essentially polite song. It’s not quite Malcolm X to Cooke’s MLK, but it’s in that ballpark. Plus Huey stretches things out to nine and a half minutes — and gives you a great spoken-word breakdown around six minutes in. Among the topics: popsicle trucks, childhood, “space odyssey” drug trips, outhouses, pointy-toed shoes, “taking care of business at the drive-in movies,” and his thoughts on race relations: “There’s three kinds of people in this world — that’s how I know a change is gonna come. I said, there’s white people, there’s black people, and then there’s my people.”

Ironically, Cooke’s version wasn’t issued until after his death, either.

“Mighty, Mighty” by Baby Huey. From the album The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend (1971).

“Mighty, Mighty (Spade & Whitey)” by The Impressions. From the album The Young Mods’ Forgotten Story
(1969).

Three of the eight tracks on Baby Huey’s album are Curtis Mayfield songs, including this one by Mayfield’s band The Impressions. Both versions are just excellent, even though the lyrics are almost completely different outside the “Mighty Mighty.” But I think I prefer Baby Huey’s, which sounds like a Southside block party — complete with singing eight-year-olds, the street Lou Rawls grew up on, and turkey dinners at Walgreen’s.

Trivia: The Babysitters initially tried to carry on without Baby Huey. Their new lead singer: an 18-year-old Chaka Khan. But that didn’t last long.

Also, sadly, there’s apparently another band calling itself Baby Huey and The Babysitters, available for your private party or bar mitzvah. This seems wrong. I mean, if there’s an ex-Babysitter who wants to carry on, fine. But you can’t use Baby Huey’s name! The man’s dead! Also, on the handy list of every song the band knows, there’s not a single Baby Huey track — nor Curtis Mayfield, nor Sam Cooke. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the band seems awfully white — I doubt there’s a single true Babysitter among them. Harrumph.

16 October 2006

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