Scribbler's Throwback of the Week: Billy Paul, "Let the Dollar Circulate"

You all will see many posts in the future featuring Mr. Billy Paul, the Philly soul singer known for his classic smash and creeping anthem, "Me & Mrs. Jones".  Taken from his 1975 album, When Love Is New, the late great J Dilla sampled it for Spacek's "Dollar" and so did 9th Wonder in "Dollar Circulate".  However, I first recalled hearing the sample in "Circulate" by Young Jeezy at a local community day celebration where I stopped everything I was doing--and I mean literally stopped putting ketchup and mustard on one of those good ol' burnt cookout hot dogs--to listen attentively.  Being an unofficial Philly soul aficionado, my ears perked up and recognized it as a definite brainchild of one of my biggest musical influences, Gamble & Huff.  After a while, I was less interested in what Jeezy had to say and more interested in finding the original and somehow the instrumental as well.  (I was far less successful in finding the latter...didn't quite have that inside track to Don Cannon to see if he could float me a copy.  Ah well...)

Beyond the song being melodically on-point as was customary of Philly soul music during its heyday, the timeless message of the song is a tribute to good songwriting with foresight.  Lines like "inflation's getting higher/makes it hard on the buyer," "interest rates going up/seems like no value's in the buck/meat prices up to stay/utilities are on their way," and "senators with millions going broke/the industries polluting the air with smoke/politicians talking crazy/workers being too lazy" prove that one of the only notable differences between 1975 and 2013 is that the music doesn't sound like this anymore.  I can attest to only paying rent late once, but financial hardships and social inequalities is nothing new to us inner city folks.  So if you've ever spent far too much money on lottery tickets and scratch-offs or waited for Wheel of Fortune to give you a call, this song is for all you hopeful folks needing that dollar to circulate a little more in your bank accounts.