Bobby Cotter ★★★★ Missing You WE WANT SOUNDS. CD/DL/LP
Super-rare super-groove from Chic’s first vocalist. Robert Cotter’s debut album, Missing You, was released briefly on Morris Levy’s tax-loss label Tiger Lily in 1976. Cotter burned briefly and brightly as the singer of Best Of Both Worlds, a New York rock-funk ensemble. He then joined forces with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards to sing in the Big Apple Band, the precursor to Chic, and indeed, Love Rite and Saturday here mark their debut recordings on vinyl. Out of the band by 1977, after one further album, Cotter vanished: not to an acid-drenched netherworld, but becoming a successful computer programmer.
Missing You is a real find – all the Chic components are in place on their two tracks (Cotter’s co-write, Saturday, went on to become a disco standard) – but the other numbers, backed by Best Of Both Worlds, are more spiritual and soulful, notably God Bless The Surefire People and Three Wise Men, sweet and spaced-out. Daryl Easlea