Review of What Color Is Love by Terry Callier
An almost folk-tale mystical figure, Terry Callier made some genuinely mesmerizing music, with “What Color Is Love” the clear high point, before walking away from it all. He resurfaced a decade later, but the world had mostly moved on. No wonder I had never heard of this man before last week.
But I cannot overstate how happy I am to have been pointed toward this beauty of an album. “What Color Is Love” feels like a warm summer day on the porch, doing nothing but soaking up your surroundings. What makes that strange is that the lyrics and the cover say the exact opposite, yet his voice and the arrangements are pure dopamine.
Terry Callier grew up in Cabrini-Green and started out in doo-wop before finding his footing in folk, then got pulled into the orchestral-soul world that becomes the main sound on “What Color Is Love.” Big, sweeping arrangements sit against folk-style acoustic guitar, with a voice that sounds similar to Jimi Hendrix and Nina Simone.
“Each of us is born alone
Well, welcome to the twilight zone
You can leave with only what you bring”
“Dancing Girl” is like the gate to some forgotten fairy-tale land. The song is filled with so many layers: bells tinkling in the background, violins below the guitar that slowly starts to mix into it all and keeps you on the edge of your seat trying to catch every sound. For real, listening to this on headphones feels like you’re surrounded by the sound.
But that’s just the opening two minutes. The whole song is built in distinct sections, going from orchestral to just acoustic guitar blues. It’s put together like a prog-rock track, nearly nine minutes filled with anything you can fit within soul, blues and folk. The intensity switches, some parts fading into one another while others stay clearly separated.
Instrumentals and vocals aside, Terry didn’t shy away from heavier, more topical subjects either. On “Dancing Girl” he writes about how hard life was for women in the ’70s, from drug abuse to prostitution, and he never flinches from any of it, even as the music around it stays warm and gorgeous.
Is it blue like the sky
And does it really reach that high?
What color is love?
Where “Dancing Girl” is darker and more socially conscious, the title track is a straightforward, dreamy love song. Callier asks what color love even is it near or is it far or is it distant like a star? It’s tender and fragile, carried by strong string work. If you ask me, the color of love is somewhere between pink and red, but that could just be all the Valentine’s Day propaganda talking.
“A lot of people say it’s because it was ahead of its time. But I don’t think that’s true per se. I just think people didn’t have time to listen to that then.” – Terry Callier
I do think he was ahead of his time, but I don’t think a musician this deeply connected to his music, one who could just walk away from it all, would ever call himself or his music ahead of its time. Still, the one song that convinced me on first listen that this guy is an underrated artist is “You Goin’ Miss Your Candyman.” I don’t know what happened in the studio, but this song is golden. It should be the standard for a folk/soul/jazz fusion track. From the very second it starts you hear a beautiful, flowing blend of bass and percussion. It’s a song that should be basic on paper, but it’s such a unique sound, something I haven’t heard before (so far).
It’s a song I’d put in a new genre: Mythic-Folk. A track lost in an old, abandoned wooden cabinet, found by hikers with Terry taking over their bodies until the song ends. And when it ends, so does side A. It’s easily my favourite on the album, and it climbs my personal favourites list a little higher every time I play it.
Terry Callier knows how to keep the attention of the listener. Side B takes a complete U-turn, from full-on Mythic-Folk to a blatant love song filled with piano, Callier on lead with backing vocals from Kitty Haywood, Shirley Wahls and Vivian Harrell. It reminds me more of the classic Motown tracks of the early ’70s. In fact, trade magazine Cash Box singled it out as the most likely single and most radio-ready track on the album. Sadly, just like the album itself, it never reached widespread fame. To be honest, the track itself is fine, it just doesn’t have the same unique appeal “You Goin’ Miss Your Candyman” has. Compared to bigger names of the period like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, it never stood a chance.
In the beginning
When earth and heaven had no names
All was peaceful
And everything was just the same
Here is the ending
Children dying in their daddy’s war
Heroes who’ve been there
Say they never wanna fight no more
I mean, you couldn’t have an album in the early ’70s without having a go at the Vietnam war. “Ho Tsing Mee” does its thing as the album’s anti-war song, but it doesn’t sound or read like the average one. It’s the warmest-sounding anti-war Vietnam song I’ve heard, which already sets it apart, and it goes against the grain lyrically too, questioning why God wouldn’t just wave his hand and fix everything, and doubting whether love can fix it all: “[your hearts-and-minds line].” It’s not one I’d put among the album’s best, and the instrumentals never reach the same highs as side A. But a protest song that asks hard questions instead of reaching for easy answers might be a good example of why Terry was ahead of his time.
Now this ghetto life is hard in our concrete front yard
Nothing grows except a single tree to mark our place
But the moment that I’m with you girl your light and love
Shine through and then I realize you’re my saving grace
This is the duality of Terry: he goes from a line like “Children dying in their daddy’s war” to some of the most authentic love lyrics you can get, like “It’s your bright sunshine that lifted all the shadows off my mind.” That’s just a man pouring his soul out, and it all sounds like he meant it. It’s all complemented by a sweeping string section that reminds us he’s not only a folk singer but an orchestral soul and jazz artist too.
Closing the album, “You Don’t Care” brings the female backing vocalists back but strips everything else down on purpose. The horns stay soft, the drums sit low, and where Terry’s soulful lead would be, there’s only guitar. You can hear it singing the vocals for him. It’s bittersweet, it’s perfectly Terry, and exactly how “What Color Is Love” should end.
“I think that music at the best of times goes outside the composer and performer and reaches places inside the listener. It’s like some transfer of waves from heart to heart. Certain cultures still believe that this is not only the best way to communicate, but the only real way to build anything lasting with another human being. At the best of times a song transcends my experience and reaches into other people’s lives, and concerns, and makes them live. When it does that, the music means someone else can feel – I can feel it and someone, other then I can feel it.” – Terry Callier in Ukvibe
He might never have reached the level of fame he deserved, but he succeeded in creating something far more important. He wrote this like a piece of art, pulling from so many sources and genres that it became something genuinely unique. I can’t really compare it to anything else from the time, not even to his close friend Curtis Mayfield. I love that he’s getting more praise nowadays, because he deserves it. And I hope this review sparked at least one of you to check him out.
Album Artwork
Cover art by Joel Brodsky
The album cover, commissioned specifically for the record, was shot by Joel Brodsky, and it's a perfect match for the overall theme of What Color Is Love. A woman sits in a self-conscious pose, looking traumatised or lost in thought. It's deliberately dramatic, and her nudity makes it easier to grasp the substance of the album: fragile and open, with no clothing, and no filler in the music for that matter. The lit cigarette is the detail that completes the image.
The colours pull it all together. An old grey grandma-style armchair, a blue tarp thrown over it, picked up beautifully by the typeface in the top right corner. The whole cover is finished with a blue hue washing over everything.
What I personally love most is that the model was never credited and remains unnamed to this day, which only adds to the mystique of the cover. I saw it once, and it will be instantly recognisable to me until the last day my eyes work.
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