A Shining Star Eclipsed (2)

Rotary Connection's first self-titled album was released in 1967, consisting mainly cover versions of recent hits but treated Stepney's truly personal vision. It was a idea revisited on the 1969 album Songs, with what is best described as a 'healthy disrespect' ¹ for the source material. Stepney was not a man to simply reproduce a song exactly, rather completely reinterpreted it². On Respect he takes the pace down, a slowed keyboard riff and funky drum beat pit against a dark string arrangement that on first hearing bears no resemblance to the Otis Redding/Aretha Franklin original at all. Yet despite this the result is a dynamic soulful sound, effectively recreated some six years later by James Brown on his production of Lyn Collins funk classic Put It On The Line. Stepney inhabits a world where soul standards are taken to darker places, rock standards lighter, more spiritual overtones. Stevie Wonder's This Town starts only with a basic organ accompaniment, before a full-blown orchestral string arrangement begins, the equal of any film score. Elsewhere on the album the work of The Band, The Stones, Cream and Hendrix receives Stepney's unique treatment. (Another fine example of his attitude to cover versions can be found in his inspired medley of I Can Sing A Rainbow and Love Is Blue, originally a French Eurovision song³, for the vocal group The Dells, it became their only UK hit.)

Other Rotary Connection albums like Aladdin (1968) and Dinner Music (1969) consisted more of original material mainly contributed by the ever shifting band members themselves. (Only Riperton and Stepney himself would remain constants throughout their six albums.) Under Stepney's supervision they became an eccentric mix of rock, soul, gospel, jazz and even easy listening music. Both musically and lyrically they reflected the time. There's as much influence from Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Beatles and Hendrix as there is from the output of the Stax and Motown labels. Stepney's production itself is full of unexpected elements. Instruments (and voices) were recorded in inventive ways to create bizarre sounds. His use of feedback and reverb effects against drums for several intervals on Dinner Music. The first track Pointillism, is an appropriately abstract collection of sounds spliced together for an album that itself seems to deliberately intended to confuse the listener. Placing upbeat stirring arrangements against Country music and very down-to-earth Chicago blues. On his production of Ramsey Lewis' version of Back in the U.S.S.R., recorded at the same time, he uses the piano as a percussive instrument. On Teach Me How To Fly from Aladdin there's even early use of synthesizer. The result is a trippy psychedelic fusion, always unpredictable, always interesting. Impossible to classify they fell into many different musical categories but failed to find an audience in any of them, gaining only minimal success.

2 'It ain't broke, don't fix it', you might say. 'It ain't broke, what you doin' fiddling with it. Leave it alone, naughty boy. Don't touch!', I say. Its an argument that never ends, but, at the risk of being contentious, if you don't have something new to say, no new life to breathe into an old song, what's the point?

3 I think!!

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