Warmly recommended set of sweet soul floaters and ballads, recorded by inmates of Powhatan Correctional Centre, Richmond, Virginia, in 1979.

Honest-to-goodness late-60s-early-70s group-harmony soul from Columbus, Ohio, with fine players like vibraphonist Billy Wooten, expert arranging by Dean Francis, and executive production by Capsoul boss Bill Moss.

An early associate of Ray Charles and Ike Turner, Alan Merry ran his YoDi, Gateway and Merry labels like a kind of community youth project, in tough, late-sixties East St. Louis, Illinois.

Wants-list Kansas City power-pop, from forty years ago, luxuriously revived.

Guaranteed to put a beam on your bean and a glide in your stride, the DVD here compiles moments from a local 1982 TV show, broadcast live from a club called The CopHerBox. It’s pleasurable enough just watching people get down so naturally, in a real-life club… but you also get ventriloquists, contortionists, body-builders, impersonators, ‘the full-figured ladies fashion show’, comedy sketches, android group-dancing to techno, rubber chickens… and bands like Universal Togetherness miming to their latest records. There’s also a mini-documentary, complete with Phil Cohran section; and twenty-three full musical performances. (Finally the Dingwalls posse gets a glimpse of Luba Raushiek in action.)
The CD and vinyls are culled from a trove of self-released 45s and small-time twelves; a die-cut cathode-ray jacket and six in-package stills are your tickets and souvenirs.
Great fun.

‘Numero does it again: a whole new discovery. Made some music between ’79 and ’82. Never came out until now, so the backing tracks were mixed by the Phenomenal Handclap Band’s Sean Marquand. You know what I love about that period? Around that era, it’s like jazz, funk, and disco mixed together… you get this unique sound… bands like Light Of The World and Hi-Tension… This could almost be British from that era. It’s my album of the week’ (Gilles Peterson).

A brilliant, tough, mid-70s funk work-out; and some nostalgia, with wistful falsetto and low-riding narration.
The UFB was formerly known as Bump And The Soul Stompers, led by Jerald ‘Bump’ Scott, from Kansas City.

‘Triumphant experiments in privately-issued sci-fi soul music; lonely transmissions from a planet in a state of cultural fugue. Packaged in a one-way portal to the further limits of expression. Some assembly required.’

‘Gram Parsons had been orbiting the idea of Cosmic American Music for some time. In ‘68, he’d parted ways with the Byrds and was looking to take air with a new project. “It’s basically a Southern soul group playing country and gospel-oriented music with a steel guitar” he told Melody Maker, on the subject of The Flying Burrito Brothers. So it was that when A&M’s Burrito Brothers debut The Gilded Palace of Sin made it to shelves in February of 1969, early adherents to the Cosmic American gospel were already echoing its message from areas flanking Gram Parsons’ Southern California hills and canyons. There was F.J. McMahon in coastal Santa Barbara, Mistress Mary further inland in Hacienda Heights, and Plain Jane of Albuquerque, New Mexico…’

‘Bridging the gap between American primitive pioneers John Fahey and Leo Kottke and the California Modernists… the private side of the solo guitar movement from 1966-81.’ 40-page booklet, usual Numero class.

Male folk singers mithering and dithering all the way from 1970 to 1983: very introspective, sombre, spare and intimate, most of it originally pressed privately, plenty of it beautiful and haunting.

Early-eighties R&B. (Previously unreleased, though Charles Davis cut a version for Sutra.)