'Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man' by Low Res
Blaxploitation films could be brilliance on a budget. The genre’s best-known soundtracks, by Curtis Mayfield (Superfly), Isaac Hayes (Shaft) and Bobby Womack (Across 110th Street), have stood the test of time. Less familiar albums have long been Holy Grails for crate diggers and hip hop samplers alike. Fifty years ago, Marvin Gaye, like his Motown labelmate Stevie Wonder, had moved into the rarified air of auteur; he composed and produced the soundtrack to the film Trouble Man.
Daniel Zelonky (aka Low Res) had cut his musical teeth in Milwaukee in the mid-‘70s with ground-zero punk bands like The Drones and The Police, then moved to NYC where he recorded Bad Brains and The Misfits. After a move to Los Angeles, he was contacted about an ambitious project to perform Trouble Man live in Gent, Belgium, with Zelonky conducting an orchestra. The soundtrack album had been on his radar for decades.
In the years since his punk days, Zelonky had learned state-of-the-art recording and production methods as well as using MIDI technology to communicate orchestrations. (He currently operates National Recording https://www.natrecstudio.com/ in Milwaukee.) After nine days of rehearsal, the 36-piece orchestra performed Trouble Man at the Vooruit Arts Center. The document of the project finds Zelonky meeting the challenge head on: coming up with charts for musicians, re-imagining the marriage of soulful grooves, lush strings and woodwinds as well as the genre’s trademark wah-wah guitar sounds. The producer would later augment the recording with vocals by Kings Go Forth singer Blackwolf, whose impassioned singing sets the mood.
The recording includes an additional tune not found on the soundtrack. Zelonky’s “Chalky” creates a piece of music that ties back to a character in the film who is also mentioned in Gaye’s lyrics. As a piece, Trouble Man, rises, falls and moves at a pace that recalls Lalo Schifrin’s soundtrack to Enter the Dragon, with a haunting energy that pulses. It conjures images as a standalone work.
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