The life sounds of soul music

I had just settled into my seat in the small theater and was reading the program when I happened to look up to see that in the darkness, a man had slipped onto the stage. He was flipping through some old record albums in a crate. Elsewhere on the stage were several other crates, and they all reminded me of the ubiquitous boxes of albums I bypass at auctions.

From where I sat, I could make out the album cover he had just pulled out of the crate. It was a woman – full face and up-close – with her tongue curled up to her upper lip: Millie Jackson. One of my favorite raunchy singers from the 1970s.

Then I knew that the play “A Boy and His Soul” was going to be jumping! And it was – lively, funny, moving, sad and a whole whole lotta fun.

The Soul Train theme.   Isley Brothers’ For the Love of You.   Stylistics’ Betcha By Golly Wow.

Four of us women were in New York at the Vineyard Theater Saturday to see this play, in which actor Colman Domingo uses the soul music of the 1970s and 1980s to show-and-tell his life growing up in West Philadelphia. About his mother who told him to keep a “song in your heart,” his soul-historian father, his street-wise sister and his man’s-man brother.

But the main character of the play was the music, always the music. The sounds we danced to, loved by, cried over, agreed with and got our black on. And the vinyls we cherished, played on a record player whose arm lifted automatically (or was oh-so-carefully placed on the record by us).

The action takes place in the family’s basement, where J.J (as the character is called by his family) discovers the record albums while preparing his parents’ home for sale. The set was vintage 1970s: white artificial Christmas tree, Salem cigarette sign, pendant lamp hanging from the ceiling, old bikes, silver disco ball, and milk and wooden crates of albums, most of them likely R&B.

Ohio Players’ Sweet Sticky Thing.   Smokey’s Cruising.   OJays’ Family Reunion.

At auction, there are usually several boxes of albums, 25 or more per box – most still in their original sleeves, some tattered, others cared for lovingly. The auctioneer normally combines them as a lot, and and they always sell. Some soul gets them for a couple bucks, picks through the boxes and leaves the rest strewn across a table.

My auction buddy got into a heated bid once with another bidder over a large lot of old rare jazz albums. It was back-and-forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth. Relentless. The bid went up to $100, then past $200 and ended way over $300. The man finally gave up.

Me, I don’t bid on albums. I did pick up a couple left behind once: a boxed set of the soundtracks for “Porgy and Bess” and “Carmen Jones” (with original scene photos on the inside covers), along with “West Side Story” for a friend who loves that movie.

In the play, the family’s albums had been forgotten in the dusty basement, except for the memories J.J. pulled from them. I never really put my life and the old albums from my past together. Certain songs do evoke specific memories, but they’re snatches of my life, not the story. I remember the feelings they evoked then and now (we all sang along and clapped and swayed and patted our feet throughout the play). And like J.J.’s family, many of us continue to keep our albums down in the basement, like the children we can’t let go. Treasures to us, years later they may become toss-aways to relatives who already have too much stuff of their own.

After the show, my friends and I got to talking about old albums. They each have boxes in their basements. One mentioned that some of hers had belonged to her father.

A couple years ago, I gave away a bunch of albums because they were just sitting around, taking up space. Most were from the 1970s, review copies that had been sent to the music critic at the newspaper where I worked at the time. I kept the ones that were dear to me (the ones I had paid for): Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye, OJays, Otis Redding, LTD, Teddy, Aretha and Millie (“When the fire starts to burning …”)

If you’re in the New York City area, be sure to check out “A Boy and His Soul” at the Vineyard Theater. It’s there until Nov. 1, and here’s a New York Times review to get you pumped up.

My friends and I were so hyped after the show that we took a photo with Colman and asked him to sign our programs (I’m not much of an autograph hound. The first one I got was a couple years ago from Denzel after his show “Julius Caesar.” Swoon!).