Carl Bean – I Was Born This Way

I’ve been trying to dig up more info on the Timmy Regisford and Boyd Jarvis mix. Very hard to find information about it.

Bruce Forest: “Ok, Carl Bean, funny story. It was around 1985. I was already playing the Motown 12” when I got a call from my pal Eddie O’Laughlin, who owned Next Plateau records, asking if I knew the track, and should he reissue it. I suggested he do so. A few weeks later he asked me to come by the office and pick the right master from a box of 1/2”s he had received.

I opened the box, and started rooting through 1/2” tape, and at the bottom...found the multitrack. After breathing into a paper bag for a few minutes to calm down I asked Eddie if he would mind if I “borrowed it” to see if anything interesting was on it. Sure, take it he says. (!!!) I run home and call Shep. “OMFG, I have the Carl Bean multitrack! Let's call Arthur (Baker) and get a night at Shakedown.” (Arthur's studio back then.) We managed to get a free night (maybe five hours total, on a manual desk, so all the studio work was done in that short time. Redid the drums, added percussion, and a sampled finger snap...(don’t if it’s Shep's or me) but kept the original bassline, with a doubled (pretty much just for the low end) synth bassline underneath to give it some meat. We worked like maniacs and didn’t bother with edits...we just cut reel after reel of 1/4”. Dozens of them. We knew we would edit it at Shep’s apartment eventually.

The Better Days mix was actually the first thing we edited. Hacked it together, brought it to the club and they almost died when I put it on. I've never quite seen a reaction at any club like that. The floor stopped, someone screamed, the place went volcanic - and that was still during the a capella intro. Played it off tape for months..finally we had to edit the rest, which we (very slowly) did, but nothing seemed to work as well as that first edit. we had one 1/4” machine, and we only had the master tapes..no copies, so what we used, we couldn’t use on anything else. So, every edit is different es.

But all in all, it wasn’t a huge overdub production like most of the stuff we did back then. Sure, we went to 48 from 24 track, but it had lots of great hidden stuff that the original hadn’t used. It’s easy when you have a great original, right? And we knew exactly what would work at Better Days, so it wasn’t a guessing game to try and figure out an audience. Also, it was never supposed to be commercial...it was just for me to play, really. After Eddie saw the response, he decided to release it, and the rest is history, so to speak….

Dimitri says the reason he puts fingersnaps on Salsoul/Philly records is because it worked so well on our mix of Carl. I think the sound quality is what would be expected in a rushed mix that was mastered off 1/4” tape, but he uses it to test sound systems.

Shep was asked recently about that track, and he said the magic we created in a few rushed hours on a manual desk was something he never experienced before or again.

The funniest thing to me is that of all the mixes, the Better Days mix is the only one without verses: it’s just a 10 minute vamp/chorus/coda, but it’s the one that gets people nuts.

The best record I ever mixed? Probably not. But it's absolutely my favorite, hands down.”

Wonder if this is an official CDr Promo?
It sounds slightly better than the normal CD.

Listen up, the A1 of this is the only version thau shalt play !! ... You are forgiven if you play "Earth People" - "Dance" ... Otherwise this is the only version thau shalt play !! ... // Tommy

Larry's edit is super lo fi, but it's still nice to get an official reissue of this. Wish Bruce got credited too though!

So it's ok to rename mixes with a "Shep Pettibone" prefix and simply discredit Bruce Forest at the same time? How is it even possible? I was really looking forward to this, but when I noticed it was a bit of a bummer. I think you could do better Above Board... How hard can it actually be to get it right?

Did James Jamerson play bass on this track?

2 more words

These are different versions of the classic track. no where near. I would not describe as "Disco".

This song has so much soul & so much power. I love the extended Motown release. The way I got to know about this song was trying to find the original break from Pal Joey's 'Earth People "Dance"' (itself a personal favourite / classic!)
From the soul-stirring string intro onwards, this can cause quite an emotional dancefloor reaction! Up until I decided to hang up my headphones earlier this year, I'd often drop the intro "I'm walking through life, in nature's disguise..You laugh at me, and you criticise" over pretty much anything (most often just for myself). I consider this song a soul classic, and like Walter Gibbons would say "It's good for the soul".
If you don't know this song, in any of it's mixed forms - Just buy it - and that's coming from a very straight man!

Nah, the mixes were indeed off the original 24 track (I did them with Shep) but in truth we did them in less than a night...limited studio time. By FAR the favorite mixes I ever did. I getting chills up my back as a thousand people at Better Days screamed when I played the BD mix off tape the night we mixed it. A religious experience.

Thanks for the very kind comments.