Asha Puthli, the lead track from her debut self-titled LP on CBS in 1973
It’s a JJ Cale composition, but in her voice, becomes much more funked up, and much more sexed up
“He holds me right down here…
He leaves no roads open, all day long…”
Del Newman responsible for the arrangements and production
This was two years after she contributed appropriately spacey vocals to two tracks on Ornette Coleman’s iconic (or iconoclastic?) “Science Fiction” album of free jazz – the first time he featured voice in his music
(e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHv0VWPAIjU)
To whom she had been introduced by John Hammond, head of Columbia Records
Whom she met because after being featured in a book of photography called “Portrait of India”
She was in New York on a graduate dance scholarship
Which she was able to secure after personally chatting up Martha Graham at a show in Mumbai (then Bombay)
And gaining an audition she could attend by virtue of her her job as a flight attendant
Work she got with the expressed purpose of getting out of India, an arranged marriage, and the more staid education expected by her parents
Listen to her incredible life story in this comprehensive interview from the Red Bull Academy (?!)
https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/asha-puthli
Definitely worth your time — you can watch the video or read the transcript, depending on your preferred modality of interweb consumption
Pierre LaRoche, the Algerian genius who did makeup for Freddie Mercury, Twiggy, Hall & Oates and most famously David Bowie, is responsible for the look she’s getting off on the cover
Puthli later went on to become a european disco icon — see her classic Devil is Loose from 1976
Containing her most sampled cut Space Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VWtzFnWD9M
She was also a tv and movie star
And liberated sex symbol
A precursor and inspiration for Donna Summer, who saw her perform in Berlin
Asha gave up the music game for a bit while devoted to parenting
But has come back in the new century via both sampling and her own new performances in jazz, electronica, funk, pop, and hip hop
A fusion pioneer with with true vocal, genre, media, worldly, even extraterrestrial, range
