‘How Lengthy (Betcha’ Bought a Chick on the Aspect)’: The Pointer Sisters’ Traditional

Once they launched their debut album in 1973, The Pointer Sisters performed on the then-current nostalgia for the earlier technology. For Anita, Ruth, Bonnie, and June, it made sense: Their tight harmonies have been tailored for a revamp of Forties, big-band jazz swing. When critic Vernon Gibbs’ wrote a couple of efficiency by the group within the NME, he peppered the evaluate with phrases like “classic” and “custom.” Author Ellen Willis noticed the identical present, and stated the group’s nostalgia was “fantasy that didn’t danger getting too actual.”

For not less than a couple of years extra, although, the Pointers discovered it helpful to maintain one foot within the Forties and one sooner or later. Their self-titled debut blended laments that “they’ve taken my reminiscence lane and made it a six-lane freeway” and the New Orleans funk of Allen Toussaint’s “Sure We Can.” Their subsequent album, 1974’s That’s a Loads, adopted the identical blueprint, with a number of harmonized jazz requirements (“Black Espresso”), slick R&B (“Love in Them There Hills”), and nation (the Grammy-winning “Fairytale”). However what are you able to be whenever you’re every little thing directly?

Listen to The Pointer Sisters’ “How Long (Betcha’ Got a Chick on the Side)” now.

That was the query that the Pointers tried to reply with their third album, Steppin’ (1975). As Ruth wrote in her 2016 autobiography, Nonetheless So Excited! My Life as a Pointer Sister, “The Pointer Sisters’ nostalgia act was beginning to get slightly stale.” They needed to point out the general public who they have been, “our personal spirit,” as Ruth put it. And should you’re going to point out them, present them.

That’s simply what they did on their first single from the album – “How Lengthy (Betcha’ Bought a Chick on the Aspect)” – written by Anita, Bonnie, and David Rubinson. This isn’t a track that appears again. It is a distinctive type, combining all of the items of funk, R&B, and disco that make these genres nice. That is lush strings punctuating funky guitar. It is a beat that builds and builds, ready to blow up. It begs for dance flooring and home events. The signature harmonies that made them well-known are there all through, too. They present up once more within the whispered chorus, with Ruth’s deep alto holding down Anita’s lead. The result’s highly effective, assured. The track would rating the Pointers their first (and solely) R&B primary.

They’d made one thing particular, and so they knew it. “The album was a mom,” Ruth writes. With songs written or co-written by Stevie Marvel (“Sleeping Alone”), Isaac Hayes (“Straightforward Days”), one other Toussaint (“Going Down Slowly”), and appearances by each Marvel and Herbie Hancock, Steppin’ tapped into one thing new for the Pointers, one thing that each artist and viewers may really feel. With the album, “We planted our flag as true track stylists,” Ruth writes. “We felt our days as a gimmick act have been coming to an in depth.”

Listen to The Pointer Sisters’ “How Long (Betcha’ Got a Chick on the Side)” now.