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closeThursday, Oct. 22, 2009
Four-disc set brings Hall, Oates accolades
By DAN DELUCA
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Hallandoats.com
Hallandoats.com
NEW YORK — The booklet that accompanies Do What You Want, Be Who You Are, the new four-CD box set devoted to the music of Daryl Hall and John Oates, is full of testimonials to the Philadelphia-bred soul-pop tandem.
It’s not so surprising that many of the encomiums come from old-school R&B acts. Both Hall and Oates were soul-fixated teenagers in the 1960s, an affection returned by the likes of the Temptations and Smokey Robinson.
More surprising are the contemporary acts who see the duo, which scored such No. 1 hits as Rich Girl, Kiss on My List and I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), as a primary influence.
It’s a long list that includes Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, and Dave One of Chromeo, who says of H&O: "They must be acknowledged as the only group who managed to fuse styles as diverse as prog, doo-wop, folk, funk, and rock ’n’ roll into inimitable, intelligent pop."
Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes goes even further: He wears his affection on the back of his hands, which are tattooed with images of Hall and Oates.
In the midtown Manhattan offices of Sony Music, Hall and Oates recently spoke of their four decades together, their Philly roots and extremes of adulation such as McCoy’s.
"I e-mailed him," says Hall, "to tell him to watch what he does with his left hand."
But seriously, the respect of their fellow musicians is something both Hall, 63, and Oates, 60, greatly appreciate. Hall regularly comes face-to-face with intergenerational admiration on his Internet music series, Live From Daryl’s House, in which he has collaborated with artists such as roots songwriter Chuck Prophet and soul-pop ingenue Diane Birch, along with Chromeo, Robinson and Todd Rundgren.
"Everybody who I ever cared about has told me that they like my music," says Hall. "Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Al Green, the Spinners, Smokey Robinson. Everybody that matters."
Hall and Oates met at a record hop in West Philadelphia in 1967. Their bands, the Temptones and the Masters, were playing, along with Howard Tate and the Five Stairsteps. A gang fight broke out, and they fled into a service elevator.
Since then, the blond-tressed (and now bearded) Hall and the bushy-haired (though no longer mustachioed) Oates have been making music together. (They also make it separately: Hall has a solo deal with Verve Records, and Oates is planning a bluegrass-flavored release with a subsidiary of Blue Note.)
They have scored 28 Top 40 hits. Sara Smile, She’s Gone, Private Eyes — the list goes on. Oates says that although they were MTV staples in the ’80s, "we never fell into an easy category to pigeonhole us in. We have a wide range of musical tastes and interests."
Shortly after they were signed to Atlantic Records in the early 1970s, the duo moved to New York to record with Arif Mardin, who produced their folk- and rock-flavored first LPs, Whole Oates and Abandoned Luncheonette.
When the Sound of Philadelphia, masterminded by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, was gathering steam in the early 1970s, Gamble offered the duo a deal. "I thought about it," says Hall, "And I said, 'Thank you, but we really have our own version we need to explore in our own way.’ "
"They’re a product of the R&B era in Philadelphia," says Gamble, a co-founder of Philadelphia International Records, "but when they became Hall & Oates, they evolved into something completely different. . . . They’re very unique."
Hall and Oates have always appealed to black and white audiences. That has led them to be dubbed "blue-eyed soul," a tag Hall finds "very annoying. It’s made up by white people. And, I think, inadvertently racist.
"The premise is that you are an anomaly or some kind of freak of nature if you are a white person that sings soul music. A soul singer is a soul singer. There is no color involved."
Everybody who I ever cared about has told me that they like my music. Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Al Green, the Spinners, Smokey Robinson. Everybody that matters."
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