In praise of Terry: “All those notes won’t take the pain away…”

Quite embarrassingly for someone with an alleged interest in music, I’ve only just discovered Terry Callier. This has mercifully filled a Curtis Mayfield-sized hole in my life, vacant since I took a break from the man Paul Weller called “a little Buddha” due to over-listening.

When a friend described Terry Callier, I had a mental image of the cheeky Geordie from the Likely Lads (Terry Collier, I now know) moonlighting as a purveyor of 70s blue-eyed soul. I imagined lyrics written on beermats in a lonely corner of some smoky Tyneside drinking den, lamenting the decline of British industry, pit closure and his fading youth. Intriguing stuff (to me anyway), but sadly not the case.

Instead, Terry Callier of Chicago, Illinois (a childhood friend of Mayfield’s, incidentally) has bequeathed a legacy of music that aches gently with soul and longing. Consider Lover (Where Have You Gone To), its over-familiar sentiments made fresh by its slow-burning intensity and Dancing Girl, a considered odyssey of folk, jazz, funk and soul that is too short at nine minutes long.

This is the work of a man whose output veers from stomping Northern Soul to lambent acoustic guitar epics that build incrementally to an orchestral crescendo. With a quietly assured velveteen baritone and lyrics that illustrate a prophetic social conscience, Terry deserves a place amongst more lauded contemporaries like Curtis, Otis, Al and Stevie.

Sadly Terry had to retire from music in the early 80’s to become a computer programmer, in order to secure a steady income for himself and his young daughter. And yet, the likes of Posh Spice and Jade Goody can coin it in via fatuous self-promotion whilst the great British public oinks for more. For shame. Mercifully, he’s been coaxed out of retirement in recent years to record and tour: get yourself out to see him next time, there is still one “little Buddha” flying the flag.

http://www.myspace.com/terrycallier