Startlingly hot, raw, late-sixties funk and soul scorchers by this Arkansas band, named after the Stevie Wonder song, but evidently inspired by James Brown. Mostly out here for the first time, so this is terrific work by AOTN, who says it’s maybe the best LP they’ve released so far.
Warmly recommended.
A terrific compilation of vintage UK street soul — at its nexus with rare groove and lovers rock, so intensely nostalgic for us at HJ — by the same crew which put together the excellent For The Love Of You volumes.
A dozen gems here: treasurable DIY labels and whites teeming with raw longing and overproof sincerity, riding limber Soul II Soul-style grooves, wannabe Jam & Lewis, and crunchy, synthy, electro-soul. (The System were the US overmasters of this.)
Just a touch of cheese, a smidgen of sublimely out-of-tune singing, splashes of sploshy beatbox and dodge sampling, a brazen Roy Ayers pinch… components of loveliness.
Calling all midnight ravers and undercover lovers. You know who you are.
Says AOTN — ‘The rarest and best genuinely outsider soul 45 to come out of America. (We know that’s a controversial shout.) Lee Tracy’s super rare single outing from the outskirts of Nashville is a dream of something bigger that never came in time for him. A beautiful, haunting song cut to cassette with help from his friend Isaac Manning on Casio. Flipped with an almost unrecognizable version of Whitney Houston’s hit Saving All My Love For You. Beyond essential cut of outsider soul.’
Ace kid funk, with coolly blunted singing by the little un, and a good old-fashioned break-and-a-half.
Choice sides from the recent LP reissue.
Ace, freaky deaky boogie — dense, extrovert and synthy — originally out on Oil Capital.