As music documentaries go, Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet from Stardom was a rip-roaring success. It won an Oscar and a Grammy. It landed Neville intimate access to next documentary assignment, Keith Richards. Variety called it “nothing short of absorbing, as it recaps the essential role African-American background singers played in shaping the sound of 20th-century pop music.”
In terms of success for its subject matter, it did not impact in the same way that Searching for Sugarman did. That film about Rodriguez led to a world tour at theatres and festivals for a man who had spent decades of working on demolition and production line projects in Detroit.
After Neville’s documentary, just as before, the names of Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, and Tata Vega are familiar to record sleeve nerds. But they remain tantalisingly far away from the spotlight.
That doesn’t mean that their collaborators like Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and Stevie Wonder, who all contribute to the film, aren’t fully aware of what they bring to the party.
Anyone who has heard Merry Clayton bring fire to Gimme Shelter, Luther Vandross singing “ALL-NIGHT…ALL-RIGHT!” on Bowie’s Young Americans or Michael McDonald’s turn on Christopher Cross’ Ride Like The Wind will know that there is a select band of singers who were 20 feet from stardom, but crucial to the end result.
Sharon Robinson is certainly one of them.
The Californian gave a rare live solo performance in the UK this week.
When she normally sings live, it is with her frequent collaborator Leonard Cohen, whose band she has sung in on his 1978-80 and 2008-2013 tours.
The gig was an enlightening insight into why the music business, like life, is not always fair.
Cohen’s last gig in London was a sell-out at the O2. Robinson played a half-full Jazz Café in Camden.
Cohen’s band is 13-strong, containing maestros like Roscoe Beck on bass and Javier Mas on acoustic guitar. Robinson was alone, save for her keyboards, drum machine, her exquisite soul voice and a cajón (the percussive instrument also known by technically-minded musos as “that plywood box which gets thwacked by thumbs”).
As the FT noted in a 2013 cover story entitled “A special relationship”, Robinson and Cohen’s collaboration extends beyond the usual lead/back-up dynamic. Their partnership does not reflect the imbalance of power which the “special relationship” phrase normally suggests.
Cohen has a track record of bringing women to the forefront of his work, be that friend Suzanne Verdal or ex-girlfriend Marianne Ihlen (both immortalised in song), or Jennifer Warnes, a former backing singer who recorded an album of his songs, Famous Blue Raincoat.
In terms of his female collaborators, Robinson is at the front of the queue.
A songwriter for hire (Diana Ross, Patti Labelle and Don Henley were beneficiaries), she teamed up with Cohen to co-write Everybody Knows (performed at the Jazz Cafe) from 1998’s I’m Your Man and four years later, Waiting for the Miracle on The Future.
By 2001, her talents as a singer, classically trained pianist and a songwriter were put to good use on Cohen’s Ten New Songs. She co-wrote every track, including In My Secret Life, A Thousand Kisses Deep and Alexandra Leaving, all performed this week.
Robinson’s career as a solo performer has been hard graft. In 2008, her debut album was released. In 2009, the label went bankrupt. Her 2015 European tour was cancelled. She addressed the Jazz CafĂ© audience with a shy whisper – no Neil Kinnock in Sheffield-style stage presence here – but no one present was in any doubt. They weren’t watching a major singer-songwriter’s accomplice but a major singer-songwriter, period.
