After winning custody of his son, Barrett Rude Jr. moved to Brooklyn, and there sank gradually into a cocaine-fueled desolation. Rude’s father joined the household after his release from prison in 1977; his relationship with Rude was uneasy at best. The atmosphere was volatile, a bad blend of Rude’s hedonism and his father’s quirky brand of Pentecostalism, with its moral fervor, its love-hate fascination with music and sensuality, its arcane Sabbathdays. (It’s odd to consider that Marvin Gaye, Philippe Wynne, and Barrett Rude Jr. were all, by choice or upbringing, weird black jews.) On August 16, 1981, during a family dispute, Barrett Rude Senior aimed a pistol at his son and grandson. Whether he intended to use it can’t be known. Another gun appeared, and grandson shot grandfather to death. Rude’s son, who’d turned eighteen two months earlier, was convicted as an adult, of involuntary manslaughter. Though Rude was uninjured, the gunshot ended what remained of his public life. His silence since that time is complete. For what it’s worth, the man is still alive.
That’s the story. But what matters is a story in song. The music in this collection tells a tale-of beauty, inspiration, and pain-in voices out of the ghetto and the suburb, the church and the schoolyard, voices of celebration and mourning, sometimes voices of pensiveness and heartache so profound they feel unsustainable in the medium of pop. The voices may propel you to warble along, or to dance, they may inspire you to seduction or insurrection or introspection or merely to watching a little less television. The voices of Barrett Rude Jr. and the Subtle Distinctions lead nowhere, though, if not back to your own neighborhood. To the street where you live. To things you left behind.
And that’s what you need, what you needed all along. Like the song says: sometimes we all must get bothered blue.
Disc 1: 1-2: The Four Distinctions, singles on Tallhat 1961, “Hello,” “Baby on the Moon.” 3-4: The Four Distinctions, canceled Tamla single, 1965, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” b/w “Rolling Downhill.” 5-8: BRJ singles on Hi, 1967: “Set a Place at Your Table” (R &B #49), “Love in Time,” “Rule of Three,” “I Saw the Light,” 9-10 Unreleased demos, 1968: “Step Up and Love Me,” “So-Called Friends.” 11-14: From Have You Heard the Distinctions?, Philly Groove, 1969: “Step Up and Love Me” (R &B #1, pop #8), “Eye of the Beholder,” “Heart and Five Fingers,” “Lonely and Alone.” 15-19: From The Deceptively Simple Sounds of the Subtle Distinctions, Atco, 1970: “(No Way to Help You) Ease Your Mind” (R &B #1, pop #2), “Far More the Man,” “Raining on a Sunny Day” (R &B #7, pop #88), “Happy Talk” (R &B #20, pop #34), “Just in Case (You Turn Around).” Disc 2: 1-4: From The Distinctions in Your Neighborhood, Atco, 1971: “Sucker Punches” (R &B #18, pop, did not chart), “Silly Girl (Love Is for Kids)” (R &B #11, pop #16), “Jane on Tuesday,” “Bricks in the Yard.” 5-9: From Nobody and His Brother, Atco 1972: “Bothered Blue” (R &B #1, pop #1), “Finding It Out,” “So Stupid Minded,” “If You Held the Key,” “The Lisa Story,” 10: From The Subtle Distinctions Love You More!, Atco, 1973: “Painting of a Fool” (R &B #18). 11-13: from On His Own (BRJ solo), Atco, 1972: “As I Quietly Walk” (R &B #12, pop # 48), “It Matters More,” “This Eagle’s Flown.” 14-16: From Take It, Baby (BRJ solo), Atco, 1973: “Careless” (R &B #24), “Lover of Women,” “A Boy Is Crying.” 17-18: BRJ solo single, Fantasy 1975: “Who’s Callin’ Me?” (R &B #63) b/w “ Crib Jam.” 19: Casablanca, 1978: BRJ guest appearance on Doofus Funkstrong’s “(Did You Press Your) Bump Suit” (R &B #84, pop #100). 20-21: Unreleased BRJ demos: “Smile Around Your Cigarette,” “It’s Raining Teeth.”
Part Three. Prisonaires
chapter 1
In the attic room I called my office sat a daybed that was usually spread with paper, the press packets which accompanied promotional copies of CDs and the torn bubble wrap and padded mailers the CDs arrived in. This morning, though, the bedspread, bathed in sideways seven A.M. September light, Indian summer light, was clear of packaging husks, clear of publicity. Instead the daybed held two things: a CD wallet, with plastic sleeves to hold twenty-four discs, and Abigale Ponders, in threadbare Meat Puppets T-shirt (mine) and Calvin Klein men’s underwear (not mine, she bought her own), her limbs bent in sleepily elegant disarray. Only one of the two would be joining me on the nine-thirty flight to Los Angeles. Discman and headphones were already packed, along with a single change of clothes, in a small overnight satchel waiting at the door downstairs.
It wasn’t usual to see Abby in my attic office. In truth, I was peevish to have her there. I’d been hoping to slip from the house while she was still asleep in the room below. Instead she’d trotted upstairs after me. There, in slanted light, her white shorts glowing against her skin and the maroon bedspread, she made a picture-one suitable, if you discounted the Meat Puppets emblem on the thin-stretched white shirt, for the jacket art on an old Blue Note jazz LP. She resembled a brown puppet herself, akimbo, head propped angled, mouth parted, lids druggy. I would have had to be a scowling Miles Davis to feel worthy of stepping into the frame. Or, at least, Chet Baker. Abby’s whole being was a reproach to me. I loved having a black girlfriend, and I loved Abby, but I was no trumpet player.
Shopping at my wall of CDs, I opened a jewel case and dropped Ron Sexsmith’s Whereabouts onto the spread beside the wallet.
She yawned. “Why are you staying overnight, anyway?” Abby counted on groggy insouciance to break the stalemate of the night before. We’d been in a silent war, worse than ever. This was worth a try-I rooted for her, even if I couldn’t cooperate.
“I told you I’ve got a friend to see.”
“Are you going on a date?”
I mumbled the lie out. “An old friend, Abby.” Bill Withers’s Still Bill was my next choice. I flipped the disc to the bedspread without looking away from the shelves.
“Right, old friend, dinner, I forgot. Oops.” The CD clattered to the floor. “I kicked it.” She laughed for an instant.
I caught the disc still spinning, and slid it into the wallet, near her toes.
“I’m trying to make you talk to me.”
“I’ll miss my plane.”
“They leave on the hour, I’ve heard.”
“Right, and I’m expected at Dreamworks at one. Don’t fuck this up.”
“Don’t worry, Dylan, I won’t fuck anyone. Is that what you said?”
“Abby.” I tried scowling.
“Not even you. So don’t be jealous of yourself, because you’re not getting any.”
“Go back to bed,” I suggested.
She yawned and stretched. Hands on her bare thighs, elbows dipping toward her middle as if seeking to meet. “If we were fucking anymore, Dylan, maybe that would help.”
“Help who?”
“The nature of fucking is it involves both people.”
I tossed Brian Eno’s Another Green World onto the bed and envisioned a row to myself at sixty thousand feet.
She ran thumbs under elastic. “I made myself come last night after you were asleep.”
“Telling someone else about masturbation involves two people, Abby, but that doesn’t make it fucking.” This sort of stuff passed easily between myself and Abby. The tang of déjà vu to the banter made it a simple task to carry on browsing my record collection.
“Do you want to know who I was thinking about when I came? It’s gross.”
“Could you see the whites of his eyes?”