Smoking mid-seventies Latin from Carlos Ruiz’ Ebirac label, headquartered back then in a bustling Puerto Rican community centre on the west side of the city.

Almost preposterous, this beautiful snapshot of a US expat community fetched up in Dimona, Israel, in the second half of the seventies, holding faith with its love of Chicago soul and spiritual jazz.

Blue-eyed, West Coast soul, with the MGs’ Steve Cropper marshalling an unlikely cast, from Don Henley to the Tower Of Power horns. With the two-step favourites Get It Up For Love and To Prove My Love.

A fascinating delve into the bizarre and brilliant world of Jeremiah Yisrael and the funky disco treasures of Tap Records. The boxed vinyl is beautifully done even by Numero standards, with 11 extras and a free CD.

‘Home to Cuca Records and hundreds of Nashville-fantasizing pluckers and singers, Wisconsin’s Driftless region was a hotbed of country music in the 1960s. Influenced by old-timey ethnic songs, Bakersfield outlaws, countrypolitan rainbows, and the lonesome twang of every rural route roadhouse, these seventeen Driftless Dreamers washed up at Jim Kirchstein’s Sauk City record plant with little more than $100 and a longing.’

A dozen deadly deep funk burners.

‘Venomous Tex-Mex R&B and early rock n’roll from San Antonio’s West Side scene. From 1961-67, Bexar county kingmaker Abe Epstein cut every teen combo to grace the Patio Andaluz stage, launching the careers of Doug Sahm, The Royal Jesters, Sonny Ace, The Dreamliners, and hundreds more throughout the decade.’

Reviewing Ellis Taylor’s Kansas City imprint — from prime Marva Whitney all the way through to Sharon Revoal’s ace, slinky, early-eighties disco-funk.

‘Operating in the farthest margins of L.A.’s cutthroat music business from 1961-1991, Mel Alexander’s Consolidated Productions was among the longest running Black-owned independent record conglomerates of the 20th century. Disentangling a web of imprints — including Ajax, Angel Town, Car-A-Mel, Emanuel, and Kris — this first volume gathers 28 smouldering R&B cuts by the likes of Lee Harvey, B .B. Carter, Marilyn Calloway, the Del Reys, the Deb Tones, the De Velles, Gene Russell ’s Trio, Jimmy ‘Preacher’ Ellis, and Ty Karim.’
Presented with customary class and attentiveness by Numero.

The history of the Chicago label, and the life of its owner Arrow Brown: twenty tracks of blistering R and B, sweet soul, and discofied funk. Now on vinyl, in a sumptuous Numero box-set.

Short for ‘Capital City Soul’, this Columbus, Ohio label ran for five years during the 1970s. Founded by Bill Moss, a local singer and DJ, Capsoul released just a dozen 45s and one LP.

Twenty-six shots of late-night R&B out of Jim Kirchstein’s Cuca studio, in the late sixties.
Originally released via minuscule pressings into the Wisconsin wilderness, tracing the paths across the hinterlands of Highway 12 between the Chicago, Milwaukee and Rockford soul scenes.
The likes of Harvey Scales, Betty Moorer, The Twiliters, Birdlegs & Pauline, The Esquires, Artie & The Pharaohs… in another gem-studded chapter of the alternate history of soul music.

Four years of singles on the Lloyd and Deep City labels run by Willie Clark and Johnny Pearsall: sixties Miami’s rarest of the rare, including the vinyl debuts of Betty Wright and Paul Kelly.