Product Code Database
Soul Caddy is the fourth studio album by American band the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, released on October 3, 2000, by Mojo Records.
Written and recorded after the multi-platinum success of their 1997 compilation Zoot Suit Riot, Soul Caddy moved away from the swing revival movement which had brought them temporary fame, drawing upon retro pop, rock, and soul influences and addressing themes of cultural alienation in its lyrics. Released to little promotion or mainstream recognition, Soul Caddy was a commercial failure, bringing the Daddies' full-time touring career to an end and initiating a hiatus from recording until the release of Susquehanna in 2008.
Singer-songwriter Steve Perry explained in interviews that the album's primary stylistic elements were derived from the rock and pop music of the 1960s and 1970s, namely Motown soul music and British Mod, of which Perry has long been influenced by.
Much of Soul Caddy is punctuated by tracks of soul, ska and rhythm and blues, also incorporating such diverse musical styles as funk ("My Mistake"), jazz ("The Saddest Thing I Know"), punk rock ("Irish Whiskey") and psychedelic folk ("Grand Mal").
The leading track and first single off Soul Caddy was the glam rock pastiche "Diamond Light Boogie". Following the huge success of the band's 1997 swing single "Zoot Suit Riot", Perry sought to write a song which would introduce a truer perspective of the Daddies' sound to a wider audience and help bridge the gap between their swing-oriented fanbase and non-swing music. "Diamond Light Boogie" worked as a musical and lyrical homage to the glam era of the early 1970s, written to fuse the guitar riff-driven melodies of bands such as T. Rex with the rhythmic backbeat and upbeat horn section common of jump blues and swing.
Perry has described Soul Caddy as a loose concept album reflecting his own temporary experience with fame, drawing upon feelings of social alienation, disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the cultural zeitgeist. Perry described Soul Caddy as a "bittersweet" record about "being alienated and hoping to connect", noting the central themes of the albums as being about loneliness and the search for meaning in a "technically sophisticated yet soulless society". In an interview with Gallery, Perry explained:
When the Daddies finally returned to the studio in the fall of 1999, Perry felt the previous recordings had become "stale", and the band began work on writing new songs and re-writing the older ones. Openly discontent with the media's persistent typecasting of the Daddies as a generic "retro swing band" at the expense of their dominant ska and punk influences, Perry started writing more diverse musical textures into the album rather than merely return to an overtly swing-oriented sound. In interviews given during this time, he voiced his desire to create an album which could bridge the gaps between their swing fanbase and their non-swing music. "We don't want to disappoint people", he told ABC News, "Hopefully, now we can give the a sense of what they want but still be able to be ourselves. The ultimate thing would be to be popular and have a lot of people know what you're really like and like you for it."
To help lend a vintage authenticity to the album's 1970s-influenced sound, Perry brought in several notable guest musicians and producers from the era. Legendary glam rock producer and David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti served as a supervising producer on "Diamond Light Boogie", while former The Turtles and Mothers of Invention vocalist Mark Volman featured as a backing vocalist on the song. Further backing vocals throughout the album were provided by Motown artist Ada Dyer and Luther Vandross and Quincy Jones singer Paulette McWilliams, while free jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman featured on "The Saddest Thing I Know" and world music percussionist Carol Steele, who recorded with Peter Gabriel and Tears for Fears among others, played on the song "Stay (Don't Just Stay)". Lee Jeffries, for western swing band Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, supposedly performed on a song which didn't make it onto the album.
Soul Caddy met with mixed to negative critical reviews upon release, the majority of criticism ironically centered on the album's lack of swing music. Some reviewers, however, seemed oblivious to the Daddies' eclectic ska punk history: Steve Greenlee of The Boston Globe began his review with "neo-swing fans, beware", openly accusing the Daddies of abandoning their swing "roots" in favor of a trendier sound, while the Los Angeles Daily News echoed similar complaints, placing the album on their list of the 10 worst albums of 2000, the reviewer wondering what made a swing band "think it could get away with an album of recycled psychedelic pop". Critics were evenly divided over Soul Caddys mix of genres; UGO Networks's Hip Online wrote "covering five or six genres on one album is just insane", noting " Soul Caddy has no cohesion and that ruins the enjoyment". Entertainment Weekly was annoyed by the way the band tackled each genre with the same "insufferable enthusiasm", remarking "Perry is a far better writer than he is a singer" and giving the album a C− rating. MTV.com offered perhaps the most overwhelmingly negative review, saying that Soul Caddys "cheesy, super-compressed studio shine" had drained the album of its energy, leaving the "confusing" mix of genres feeling "washed-out and a bit depressing and Weird Al-like", summarizing the Daddies as "a band that's trying to show off their record collection, rather than their creativity".
On the positive end of the critical spectrum, some reviewers responded well to Soul Caddys eclectic bent. Allmusic, despite rating it with a modest score of 3 out of 5 stars, wrote " Soul Caddy is flat-out fun and there's no way around that", praising the album's "witty and smart lyricism" and assortment of genres as "certainly refreshing coming from a band who was assumed to be generic retro swing" and noting "for the listeners who take time to believe in it, Soul Caddy will be impressively surprising". The Westword lauded the band for breaking away from the retro mentality of the swing revival, saying of the Daddies "they've got more spunk, more sense of adventure and more life than nearly every other swing act on the scene", praising the album's streaks of rock and punk for giving neo-swing "a much-needed facelift".
In December 2000, the Daddies mutually agreed upon taking an indefinite hiatus from performing, citing both Soul Caddys commercial underperformance and the band's personal exhaustion from nearly non-stop touring since the release of Zoot Suit Riot as reason. The Daddies would eventually reform in February 2002 to sporadically play one-off local shows and festival appearances for the next several years before returning to touring and recording with their self-produced and independently released album Susquehanna in early 2008.
Guests
Production
|
|
