SOUL COLLECTOR
Bruce Watson set up Bible & Tire in 2019 to reissue ELIZABETH KING’S early 70s gospel sides on Juan D Shipp’s D-vine Spirituals label. He also persuaded King, then 79, to come out of retirement to record Living
In The Last Days, her long overdue debut album – she’d spent the past five decades raising her 15 children. Working out of Delta-sonic Sound in Memphis with Watson and the four-piece Sacred Soul Sound Section behind her, King hit the ground running. Her vocal was deeper than it was in her youth but still immensely powerful and totally commanding, kept in shape by Sunday morning singing in church and captured again in
2022 on the great I Got A Love. Soul Provider (★★★★ Bible & Tire), her third album in four years, is once more driven by King’s mighty energetic life force. She’s joined by her daughters on backing vocals on Tables In The Temples, which mines the same gospel funk territory that the Staple Singers did while on Stretch Out, a song dating back to her early days. Fuzz and wah-wah guitar summon a more apocalyptic feel, redolent of Funkadelic as she screams, “His eyes are like balls of fire.”
Beehive Breaks (★★★★
Numero) is an excellent guide to late 60s to mid-70s rare sister funk collated from the Numero label’s reissue archive. Tracks include Sandy Gaye’s Watch The Dog That Brings
The Bone, written by Richard Marks of Funky Four Corners fame and a combustible mesh of thundering bass, scratchy guitar and brazen brass and Gaye’s screaming vocal. Also included are Betty Wright’s Mr Lucky, a funk noir with gunshot sound effects on Solid Soul from 1967; Marva Whitney’s Daddy Don’t Know About Sugar Bear, a raw, forceful shout on the Forte label from 1972; Oklahoma City high school outfit The Trinikas’ Remember Me, a 1969 yearning lament pinned to a propellant backbeat on Pearce and Houston’s
Fay Cooper’s Closer Together from 1970 on Kris which brings dynamical R&B and a bluesy keen to the funk.
Producer, songwriter, singer
Mel Alexander started out with Consolidated Productions in 1961 and never stopped, over the next three decades launching imprints such as Ajax, Angel Town, Car-a-mel and Kris which made few commercial inroads but based in LA and taking Motown as the blueprint – his slogan was ‘Sounds Of Success’ – created gorgeous out-on-the-floor dancers and proto-quiet storm ballads. Eccentric Soul: Consolidated Productions
Vol. 1 (★★★★ Numero) is a satisfying introduction to his work. The Deb Tones and The Del-reys knock it out of the park with their ecstatic girl group take on Eddie Floyd’s Knock On Wood and BB Carter’s Cool It Baby is a demonstrative call and response.
The aforesaid Del-reys on Walk Proud, meanwhile, channel the silky, slippery tones of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and Billy Williams’ So Called Friend summons a mood evocative of a woozy late night.
CEDRIC BURNSIDE honed his craft playing drums in his grandfather RL Burnside’s band and like him, he makes hypnotic hill country blues – he calls himself the “inheritor” of the genre. Hill Country Love (★★★★ Provogue/mascot) is the follow-up to 2021’s Grammy Award-winning
I’ll Be Trying and every bit as good as its predecessor. It was recorded live with no overdubs over two days in an abandoned legal office filled with trash cans – it had initially been earmarked to be turned into Burnside’s jukejoint – and it’s buoyed by positive energy and good vibes. With his three-piece band, including producer Luther Dickinson, he delivers covers of Mississippi Fred Mcdowell’s You Got to Move and RL’S own Po Black Maddie alongside originals such as Love You Music, which touches on African desert blues.
CHAKA KHAN’S Chaka (★★★★ Rhino) is her 1978 debut, recorded with producer Arif Mardin in New York’s Atlantic Recording Studios and notable for US R&B No 1 I’m Every Woman, written by Ashford and Simpson. But also ripe for rediscovery are her cover of Stevie Wonder’s I Was Made To Love Her and the gospelly ballad Roll Me Through The Bushes.
This Is Mod (★★★★ Kent) and This Is Street Funk 1968-1974 (★★★★ Kent) fanfare the arrival of Ace records’ new ‘this is…’ genre specific vinyl compilation series at a budget price with tracks culled from the label and its associated catalogues. The first named includes such choice cuts as Clarence Carter’s Looking For A Fox; The Ikettes’ Camel Walk, Hank Jacobs’ Elijah Rockin’ With Soul and Mary Love’s Lay This Burden Down. The second Millie Jackson’s Hypocrisy and the Fame Gang’s Grits And Gravy.
Also out: CYMANDE’S Promised Heights ★★★★ Partisan), their third album, produced by John Schroeder and originally issued on Contempo in the UK, and featuring Jimmy Lindsay on lead vocals. High point: Brothers On The Slide. CANDI STATON’S
Candi Staton ★★★★ Kent) is her 1972 third album for Fame, produced by Rick Hall at Fame Studios and including her classic reading of In The Ghetto plus Lovin’, You, Lovin’ Me and Do It In The Name Of Love.
JAMES BROWN’S Please Please Please (★★★★ Waxtime) is the soon-to-be godfather of soul’s first album on King from 1958. The title track and Try Me, both singles, set out his stall, drop to his knees yearning ballads, they’ve still not been beat.
DONNIE ELBERT’S What Can I Do? 1957-1962 (★★★ Jasmine) is just that; named after his debut solo single on Deluxe which hit the US Number 61, it includes everything he put out during the timeframe on labels such as Vee Jay, Red Top, Jot and Jalynne.