Daddy B. Nice's #90 ranked
Southern Soul Artist
"If I Back It Up"
Nellie "Tiger" Travis
Composed by Floyd Hamberlin
In late 2005 a song called "If I Back It Up"
electrified the Stations of The Deep South. Blessed with an unerring hook, a
punching bass, and a horn chorus (and intro) so sweet it made sexagenarians
jump out of their lawn chairs and chug to the beat, the song was an unabashed
come-on from a female to a male suitor. The crystal-clear, instrumental
introduction was so good almost any vocal treatment would have insured the
song's good fortune, but it wasn't just any vocal. A young woman no one had
heard of--Nellie "Tiger" Travis--segued into the body of the song
with a voice so brawny yet feminine that it recalled the Peggy Scott-Adams of
vintage classics like "Sweaty Men" and "I'm Willing To Be A Friend."
"I've been dancing in this club,
Babe, all night long.
You've been sitting over there,
Staring at me like something's wrong.
"I heard you holler, 'Back it up,'
And you gave me that sexy smile.
Baby, you sure look good to me,
And I like your style.
"If I back it up, what you gonna do?
If I put it on you, what you gonna do?"
Your Daddy B. Nice stumbled upon Southern Soul a decade ago, much like a dying
man crossing a desert landscape crawls into a depression filled with
life-giving muddy water. The desert was commercial R&B, and it all wasn't
bad. Never mind that it sometimes seemed a little silly for an older man to be
watching BET's teen-aged Top 10 rap and hiphop shows in the after-school hours of the late
afternoon. At least there was some substance (danceability)
and revitalized soul (through the samples) in the male-dominated rap of the
day.
What was even more barren and arid (for me) was the "smooth" and
"urban" romantic soul favored by the kind of music people (and
especially women) put on for mood or background music on weekend nights around
midnight. This was the musical world of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey and
their many female imitators, in which the same half-dozen melodies were worked
over and over again (American Idol style), as if the singing of songs was akin
to working out in a gymnasium. So-called "women's" commercial R&B
was all about melisma, the art of sustaining single
notes over bars of music in a kind of roller-coaster performance of technique. Borrrrrring.
At least it was for your Daddy B. Nice after spending three, going-on-four,
decades in the discos of the world, hearing it over and over again.
Then I re-found soul music. What a joy it was to stumble upon the stable of
Southern Soul divas led by Scott-Adams, Shirley Brown, Lynn White, Barbara Carr
and Denise LaSalle. What a thrill it was to hear Ann Peebles--just as if it
were yesterday--singing "I'm Gonna Tear Your
Playhouse Down" or Sheba Potts-Wright singing "Slow Roll It" or
Ann Nesby teaming up with Al Green on "Put It On Paper."
Nellie "Tiger" Travis was a performer in that storied soul tradition,
and her “Wanna Be With You”
CD was as deep in material as Floyd Taylor's distinguished Legacy or the
Sir Charles Jone debut a few years earlier.
A slew of new female soul singers had emerged in the previous year, among them
Little Kim Stewart ("Bootleg Baby"), Tazz
Calhoun ("Stroke It Easy") and Miz B.
("My Name Is $$$$$$"), and another group of up-and-coming singers
including Betty Padgett ("Never Coming Home"), Renea
Mitchell ("Seventeen Days Of Loving") and Ms. Jody ("I Never
Take A Day Off" and "Your Dog Is Killing My Cat") was
matriculating even as Travis was.
But what distinguished Travis' CD was the song material--all written and
produced by Floyd Hamberlin, one of Southern Soul's
best composers--and the extraordinary number of radio singles it spawned.
Travis benefited from Hamberlin's songwriting gift in
the same way Peggy Scott-Adams had been blessed to be able to use her longtime
collaborator and songwriter, the late Jimmy Lewis, to rule the soul diva charts
in the nineties.
"If I Back It Up" was the first Travis song
to rise up the charts, in late 2005. Next in line, dominating airwaves through
much of early 2006, was "You Gone Make Me Cheat," another song with a
great hook and horn chorus. A trifle more mellow than "If I Back It
Up" (think Scott-Adams' "I'm Getting What I Want"), "You Gone
Make Me Cheat" nevertheless stressed the powerful nature of Travis' style,
always hinting at an underlying reservoir of strength and nastiness.
The latter half of 2006 marked the emergence of two more Travis songs from the
CD: "Baby Mama Drama" and "Super Woman". "Baby Mama
Drama" was a delicious concoction--almost poplike
in melody. Yet it too had a cutting edge, thanks to lyrics that focused on
issues all too familiar to second-time-around couples.
"Now your baby's mama is a clown.
I thought I was gonna have to beat her down. . .
"She calls your cell phone
A hundred times a day.
She ain't ever gonna stop,
No matter what you say."
This domestic strife played out over chord changes so sweet they made you want
to drop to your knees and beg for more.
"It's a sad situation,
Bent on hate.
It ain't gonna do nothing
But escalate. . .
"I ain't used to
Looking over my shoulder.
If she rounds up on me again,
I'm going to floor her."
The ballad "Super Woman" was the slowest of the major chitlin' circuit hits from Wanna
Be With You. A burned-out housewife's lament, it
contained one of the most telling messages of this or any year:
"I ain't no super
woman.
I'm only human.
No cape in the closet,
No magic wand. . . "
And it kept getting better:
"I hear kids running in the door,
It's the man of this house.
He's got this look in his eye,
And I know what that's all about.
"He wants to make love,
But I don't have the strength
He gets upset--
Now it's an argument."
Nellie "Tiger" Travis will be a force to be reckoned with in Southern
Soul music for quite some time, if Wanna Be
With You is any indication.
--Daddy B. Nice
About Nellie "Tiger" Travis
Nellie Travis was born in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Although reportedly a
"tomboy" growing up (she was also a Homecoming Queen), she didn't
pick up the nickname "Tiger" as a youth. That came later, as a result
of a decision by Nellie to add something memorable to her performing name in
the fashion of artists like Koko Taylor, Big Time Sarah, Big Cynthia and Little
Kim Stewart.
Nicknames are best bestowed by others. One night (the story goes) while
brainstorming the idea with her cousin, Nellie came up with the nickname
"Angel." Nellie's cousin immediately rejected it. "Nahhh. How about 'Tiger'? Nellie
'Tiger' Travis?" It had a special ring and a special rhythm to it,
and "Tiger" stuck, not least because it hinted at the feline-like
intensity of Travis' vocal style.
As a child, Travis sang in church and local competitions throughout Mississippi, graduating to lead vocalist of a regional
group called SSIPP (fronting touring R&B headliners) before moving to Chicago in 1992. In
Tyrone Davis' Windy City Travis honed a nightclub act that featured classic
blues and R&B favorites like Koko Taylor's "Wang Dang Doodle,"
Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind" and Tina Turner's "Proud
Mary," material that amply showcased Travis' own powerful and gritty
style. Her debut CD, an out-of-print blues-dominated disc titled "I Got It
Like That," appeared in 2000.
For Travis and Southern Soul fans, the most fortuitous development in her
career was her introduction to and collaboration with Chicago-based, Southern
Soul composer Floyd Hamberlin. Hamberlin
had established a reputation as one of the most unique and prolific of the
current generation of songwriters, having written everything from Artie
"Blues Boy" White's classic "I Can't Afford To Be Broke" to
Will T.'s recent "Mississippi Boy," along
the way writing major portions of the Southern Soul catalogs of Tyrone Davis,
Stan Mosley, Charles Wilson, Lee Morris and Cicero Blake.
Hamberlin was ready to produce a record, and in late
2005 the CD Wanna Be With
You came out on the Floyd Hamberlin/DA Man label. Filled with first-rate Hamberlin songs
executed by Travis in a strong and distinctive Southern Soul style, one track
after another found favor with chitlin' circuit
audiences, giving the album a high profile through 2005 and the entirety of
2006. Besides garnering her a slew of awards,
the album's depth and quality established Travis as one of the most visible
young artists on the Southern Soul circuit.
Song's Transcendent Moment
"If I back it up, baby,
What you gonna do?
If I put it on you, baby,
What you gonna do."
Honorary "B" Side
"You Gone Make Me Cheat"
