Terry Callier
A Chicago singer, guitarist and songwriter who made three albums for Cadet with the arranger Charles Stepney, stepped away from music in the 1980s, and was brought back to the stage by British DJs and the Acid Jazz label.
Chicago
Terrence Orlando Callier was born on May 24, 1945 on the North Side of Chicago and raised in the Cabrini-Green housing area, where his childhood friends included Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Jerry Butler. As a teenager he sang in doo-wop groups. He auditioned at Chess Records in 1962 and recorded the single "Look at Me Now", released in 1968 according to Wikipedia's discography. He played the folk clubs and coffeehouses of Chicago, was for a time a duo with David Crosby, and cited John Coltrane as an influence. FACT says his sets at the Fickle Pickle coffeehouse drew the Chess arranger Charles Stepney, a claim Wikipedia does not make.
In 1964 he met Samuel Charters of Prestige and in 1965 recorded The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier, which Charters held until 1968. H. P. Lovecraft recorded two of his songs on H. P. Lovecraft II that year. From 1970 he was in Jerry Butler's Chicago Songwriters Workshop and wrote with Larry Wade for Chess and Cadet, including The Dells' 1972 hit "The Love We Had Stays on My Mind".
Cadet and Elektra
With Stepney as producer he made three albums for Cadet: Occasional Rain (March 1972), What Color Is Love (August 1972) and I Just Can't Help Myself (1973 per Wikipedia, 1974 per others). Occasional Rain features Minnie Riperton on soprano vocals and Stepney on harpsichord and organ; AllMusic's Thom Jurek called it transcendent. Cadet and Chess were sold in 1976 and he was dropped. In 1977 Don Mizell signed him to Elektra, where Fire on Ice and Turn You to Love followed; "Sign of the Times" reached number 78 on the US R&B chart in 1979, his only US chart hit. He was dropped in 1980 when Mizell left.
He retired from music in 1983 and worked as a computer programmer at the University of Chicago while studying sociology at night.
Britain
British DJs and the rare groove scene revived his records in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Eddie Piller of Acid Jazz reissued "I Don't Want to See Myself (Without You)", recorded in 1983, and brought him to Britain, and from 1991 he played UK shows on vacations. He worked with Urban Species in 1997 and with Beth Orton on the EP Best Bit (1997) and Central Reservation (1999). Timepeace (1998) won the UN's Time for Peace award. Later collaborators included Koop, Zero 7, Nitin Sawhney, 4 Hero, Paul Weller (2002), Nujabes (2005) and Massive Attack, whom he toured with in 2008. His last albums were Speak Your Peace (2002), Lookin' Out (2004) and Hidden Conversations (2009), on Mr Bongo.
Callier died in Chicago in October 2012, aged 67. In 1996 he told an interviewer that you can make accessible music and still sing about love and peace and truth and life and death.
Albums
- Timepeace 1998 · Verve
The comeback album, in two sections called Time and Peace, partly recorded in England.
Songs
- Dancing Girl What Color Is Love · 1972
The opening track of What Color Is Love, nearly nine minutes of guitar, strings and horns.
- Lazarus Man Timepeace · 1998
Track two on Timepeace, a slow-building spiritual narrative on acoustic guitar.
Sources
- Terry Callier, Wikipedia
- Occasional Rain, Wikipedia
- Terry Callier, NME (2012-10)
- Terry Callier: Timepeace, Derek's Music Blog (2011-06-28)