Gonestone by Amalgam Men

"Perfect while drinking elderberry wine and soaking in my outdoor clawfoot tub...[with] woodland animals congregating around for a listen and one sip each." - Bobby Salmon

We were moved to contemplate the musical legacy of Barry White.

Barry White was born in the mainland part of Galveston County, Texas- not far from where I grew up at the southern end of Harris County. For two people born within a long walk of each other, and with names that rhyme, we couldn’t be more different. Bryan Crotts also has nothing in common with Barry White. White was a Black musician and entrepreneur who rose from poverty to become a successful and famous musician, composer, producer and finally legendary singer whose name is a byword for sultry, sexy seduction. We are old, sweaty, poor white men who have sunk below the expectations we had for ourselves.

Are we trying to glom onto his cachet, his aura, to steal a little bit of his generational wealth to hack apart and market as our own? No. We wanted to talk about him with music, our music, to talk about him with you (meaning whoever decides to listen to this) and share a little about what we find interesting, inspiring, and eternal about the legacy of Barry White. One way great art endures is by entering into a cultural conversation, being influential, changing minds, and we live in a world where you don’t even have to buy a Barry White album to hear Barry White with fair regularity. If you have been in a car, a store, a disco, a movie theater, or near a television, chances are, you have heard Barry White at some point. And this is not something that anyone I know objects to.

Barry White and Isaac Hayes both worked on a compositional / poetic framework that starts with a long monologue over a orchestral vamp that prominently features the dual-cymbal percussion assemblage commonly known as the hi-hats. The idea of setting up a song with a spoken intro of course goes way back in many forms from gospel to musical theater. But Barry White particularly made use of this form with great effect, due, I think, to the beauty of his speaking voice.

We are, as noted above, white, and you will notice that this is a sort of hillbilly version of Barry White. I hope this does not offend anyone. I hope that if Mr. White were alive today it would bring a smile to his face. If it instead causes him to spin in his grave- if we are approached by authoritative media (by which I mean the plural of medium, the spiritual type) with complaints to this effect from the other world, we will happily pull this album from circulation insofar as we are able.

In our tribute to Waylon’s magnificent “Dreaming our Dreams” album, we felt confident that, since everyone in Nashville has ripped Waylon off for 50 years already, no one would mind. But since Barry White is African-American we want to make it clear that not only do we upfront acknowledge that in a way Barry White owns the monologue-to-song-with-prominent-hihats form, on the other hand a form cannot be copyrighted or owned by anyone. And in our humble opinion, imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery, it’s an homage to the original. It can be and ought to be a exaltation of the greats who come before. And we hope this is taken as an invitation for other artists to do some homage to Barry White too! He is in the pantheon of great American soul composers with Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, the aforementioned Isaac Hayes, Booker T. Jones, Willie Mitchell, George Clinton, James Brown and Sly Stone. Without these greats there arguably wouldn’t be the form that is known internationally as pop music.

The Perceiver of Sound League is a group of individuals
united for the spiritual practice of artistic production,
the study and practice of sound production and perception.

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