Mama Coco
Gino Vannelli, what were you thinking? Oh. Right.
Hello all! Still struggling with writing in a timely manner. I’ve been thinking about this post for 10 days now. It started off being about another 70s Gino song, Love Me Now, which I was using to soothe me as I was going to do work I really didn’t want to do. (A valuable lesson I might get around to writing about on Catalysts, which has gone months without me writing for it.) But this was the next track on the Best of Gino Vannelli album1 and it’s wormed its way into my head.
This is a song that could only be written in the 70s. It’s a song about wanting to seduce a black woman. In researching, I ran across this post that claims it’s about his mother2 but come on.3 Look at this lyric:
Mama coco I'm just a male Caucasian4
Mama coco I'm virgin to your kind
Now don't get paranoid
I ain't a horny little mongoloid5
All I wanna have is a little bit of love and joy
Pretty obvious the dude wants to get laid. Seriously, the top of the song lays it right out.
Mama coco hey you're lookin' heavy
Mama coco ho you're lookin' good
Mama coco yes I've been getting hungry
Mama coco feed me woman food
(As a side note, can I get people who were actually not little tykes in 1975 to explain to me how he’s using “heavy” here? I always understood it to be an intense topic, like “that’s heavy, man” but it doesn’t fit here. I looked up a slang dictionary that said it also meant “cool”, which would fit but I’ve never heard it in that context.)
So why the hell can’t I get it out of my head? Probably because the music slays. The song is off his third album Storm at Sunup, a jazz-fusion album produced and arranged by Vannelli and his brother Joe Vannelli. On his previous album Powerful People you can already hear his interest in jazz. Graham Lear6’s drums are holding things down to give the spotlight to Joe Vannelli’s synths7 and Jay Graydon’s8 screaming guitar in the bridge and outro.
Best as I can tell, it was never released as a single so its appearance on the Best Of album is surprising. Once again the internet is failing me so I haven’t been able to find the whole story. If someone could enlighten me, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Just for fun, here’s a cover of Lear’s drum part to really isolate how great it is.
Enjoy your song of the day!
They were back t6o back because I had sorted alphabetically rather than by track number. Turns out they’re actually back to back on the original album.
They have a set of lyrics that bear no resemblance to the song. I’d say it’s AI and since it’s from last November, very bad AI.
This guy gets it right, although I disagree with the interpretation of “heavy”. https://www.songtell.com/gino-vannelli/mama-coco
Turns out Gino was the second Caucasian to appear on Soul Train and he toured with Stevie Wonder just before writing this, so this may be a bit of a flex on his part.
This term as it refers to a indigenous racial grouping that has been discredited seems to be the intent here, not the later usage referring to those with Down’s Syndrome, which would make the lyrics even more icky.
Santana heard Lear on this album, tracked him down (he had been bouncing between LA and Toronto), and convinced him to join his band.
He was an utter pioneer in working with synths.
LA session musician, composer, arranger, producer. His credits are too long to even highlight here - check out his wiki.
Great spotlight on a little-remembered ladies man with a handful of hits (and, far too much hair...everywhere)!😁My ticket for entry, MK: I was 20 in 1975, and while Gino's songs could've (and might've!) been played on my daily soft rock/MOR afternoon shift at the U of Houston radio station, the next year, his albums wouldn't have even darkened the doorway to the control room at the commercial FM-rocker, Houston's KLOL, where I managed to gain employment!
As for his use of "heavy" in the song, I don't think I would've thought it was grossly out of place. He's not rhyming it with anything, and it does set up an awkwardly forced rhyme with "hungry," so, there's that curiosity, but "cool" or an "intense interest" is what I'd think, and that would be consistent with the hip'n'happenin' mid-'70s! I think if asked (if this was a concern), he'd likely say that if anyone was reading into the lyric a possible notion of a chunky lady, he likely wouldn't disagree, and might sign off on that interp!
Never heard "Mama Coco" before....really just his hits: "People Gotta Move," "I Just Wanna Stop," and "Powerful People," which leads us to this album's title. It's all about semantics...and, yes, sales or lack of 'em! The Eagles could have "The Eagles Greatest Hits." So could many hundreds of artists whose chart successes and sales earned them that right.
But, if your label wants to pad your catalog with product (or, if you, as the artist, have a contract to fulfill, and you wanna split), and you don't have an Eagles-like cache o' hits, then you default to the next "best" thing: "The Best of Any Given Artist Who in No Way Deserves to Have a Collection of Greatest Anything, Much Less Hits"....So, while those 3 Gino songs I mentioned were A) singles and B) hits to varying degrees, he just didn't have the sheer volume of singles and/or hits to warrant a "Greatest Hits" album.
Now, how'd A&M pad the LP? With any artist where the intent is to have a "Best Of" 'cause actual "greatest" hits are noticeably absent, the artist and label heads (likely the A&R guy/gal) will get together, and assemble what can easily be agreed upon as "best of" a certain catalog (including a small amount of legit hits there may have been)....in this case, "Mama Coco," officially a 7-incher or not, was an obvious agreed-upon popular album cut by fans/critics, etc, or had become known as a popular song played in Gino's concerts....hence, "Best Of" without running afoul of "truth in advertising laws" that might rate a guffaw or two at things like "The Shaggs Greatest Hits"!
I was not a tyke in 1975. “Heavy” IIRC, was an all purpose approval word. Like “cool”, just slang of the day, sorta. It was like, “frosty, man, frosty…” - which I think was a closeout phrase from a snack bar commercial during intermission at the drive in (movies - yeah, that was a thing then…)