Sanctified, southern soul — lost, crying, frank harmonising, and swaying horns and organ — recorded at FAME, Muscle Shoals, in 1964, by cousins Johnny Simon and Ervin Wallace from Atlanta. Lover’s Prayer is a scorcher.
The vinyl is a facsimile of the original LP (on Russell Sims’ Nashville label); the ‘Complete Sims Recordings’ CD from Kent adds ten more sides.

Expert, ecstatic, technicolour disco from the Orlando Riva Sound.

Surely there’s a word missing from the sub-title. Ivan was terrible; Coxsone wasn’t downbeat. Coxsone was the Downbeat Ruler, with the Downbeat Sound System, spinning fabulous tunes like these.
An embarrassment of musical riches here, still.

Off-the-wall James Brown runnings, coming apart at the seams in Antananarivo, Madagascar, in 1967.

Terrific fun; full of life and invention.
‘This first exuberant wave of innocent, upbeat, ‘party on the block’ rap records re-created the sounds heard in community centres, block parties and street jams taking place in the Bronx in the mid-1970s. But where Flash, Kool Herc and Bambaataa were back-spinning, mixing and scratching together breakbeat records, these first rap sides were all made using live bands, often replaying current disco tunes, whilst MCs rapped over the top…’

An expert sampling of the original Studio One dub LPs, plus a couple of wild cards.