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Crucial eighties soul. Pedigree hangdog.
Legendary Northern — the last record played at the Wigan Casino — this archetypal heart-on-sleeve stomper was originally pressed in 1965 by Motown as a handful of promotional copies on its imprint SOUL. Most of these were destroyed soon afterwards, though people say Berry Gordy has a copy, and another was sold in 2009 for just over twenty-five grand.
Sweet soul from Baltimore, produced by none other than George Kerr and Bunny Sigler.
The opener Count To Ten was their big hit, grabbing a couple of bars of Smokey Robinson; Candy is treasurably cannibalistic (‘her heart’s made of caramel’ etc); that’s a secret-weapon version of War (What Is It Good For?).
Fab, zinging Aretha, pre-Atlantic, with the dodgy jazz and showtunes sifted out, and two recordings previously unreleased — the self-penned I Still Can’t Forget, and When They Ask, recorded when she was just 19.
I Never Loved A Man, Lady Soul, Aretha Now, Spirit In The Dark, Live At Fillmore West.
Though a gold record in 1976 — with Something He Can Feel an anthem for the ages — Sparkle quickly became neglected.
It is written and produced by Curtis Mayfield, the fifth of his six seventies soundtracks, shadowing the rise and fall of the black film industry in the US during this decade. There were three more Atlantic LPs to come from Aretha, but Sparkle has a singularity and accomplishment which in retrospect take a definitive step away from her classic, southern soul sound — half-closing the church door — before Jump To It, Luther Vandross and Arista ushered her into a new era of grooving, contemporary R&B, at the start of the eighties.
The singing here is totally knockout, sparking off the sophisticated slinkiness of Curtis’ sound-world: more excursive than testifying, with a new improvisatory freedom, more warmly intimate and enraptured, over-running with sensuality, love, and expressiveness. (You get a foretaste of this from the portrait on the cover.) Mainstays of seventies Chicago Soul are present and correct, like Phil Upchurch on rhythm guitar and Henry Gibson on congas, Joseph Lucky Scott playing heavy bass, and the swirling strings arrangements of Rich Tufo.
Originally devised for a female trio — in accord with the film’s storyline, about Sister & The Sisters — the songs are all written from a woman’s point of view, and with the Kitty Heywood Singers in full effect as backing vocalists, the album is steeped in classic Chi-soul girl-group sensibilities and aesthetics, like Patti & The Lovelites in future shock. (It makes perfect sense that En Vogue would have smash hits in the nineties with both Something He Can Feel and Hooked On Your Love.)
Something He Can Feel is the killer blow, but it’s all wonderful, and over in a flash… via the dazed, defiant, junkie blues of I Get High… right through to the sultry, swinging finale Rock With Me.
A masterwork by the Queen of Soul.
Classic Miami soul, originally on Blue Candle, from this Jazzman imprint.
The great boneman’s 1974 masterwork, with highlights like the ten-minute work-out I’m Payin’ Taxes, What Am I Buyin’, the party-hearty If You Don’t Get It The First Time, the grooving, fist-in-the-air Same Beat (with that sample of Jesse Jackson), and the stunning out-funk of Blow Your Head.
With a 22” x 22” poster featuring the original cover art, as well as a 7-inch flexidisc of the rare Unrubbed Version (without Moog) of Blow Your Head, only available previously on the compilation James Brown’s Funky People Part 3.