The O'Jays--"Ship Ahoy"

From Ship Ahoy (Philidelphia International: 1973/ Sony: 2003).

The O’Jays inhabit a privileged position in the Great Old Soul pantheon. They employed much of the same lush instrumentation and smooth production of the Philadelphia groove, but they didn’t shy away from introducing new sounds and Big Ideas. 1973’s “Ship Ahoy,” a sprawling nine-minute track from the album of the same name, is an equally hypnotic and challenging song that forms the thematic crux of a markedly direct and political record from a group who’d topped the charts a year before with “Love Train.”

“Ship Ahoy” emerges out of punishing tides and creaking timbers, the relentless crack of a whip punctuates a repetitive minor key vamp over a dirge-like beat. The idea, as expressed by songwriters Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble, is a musical nod to slave ship’s middle passage, builds through vocal harmonies, the introduction of a pealing psychedelic guitar, a chorus of strings and the shouting of horns. Eddie Levert’s vocals soar over the arrangement both beseeching and resigned. This isn’t a game. This is no sugar-sweet metaphor for a failed romance. This is soul taken to a place few soul singers had ever taken it before. And this, byt way, several years before “Roots” made talking about the slave trade safe for popular media

Ernesto Lechner of Rolling Stone probably summed it up best in his 2003 review of the reissue: “Ship Ahoy's main achievement was proving that it was indeed possible to be thoughtful and articulate without losing your funk.” If only that were always the case.


You can hear the song in entirety here, though the accompanying fan-made video is a bit rough.