Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Identity crisis

Another cover story and, you’ve been warned, another visual abomination!


Back to my record fair visit the other week. So there I was flicking through the boxes of soul and funk 45s I had finally stumbled upon. What’s this Bob Marley & The Wailers single doing in here? Oh, wait a minute it’s not Bob. It’s The Dupars. Hang on, that’s one of those lovely Mayfield labels peeping out of the sleeve. It’s not the Dupars, it’s Marvin Smith – I like him!  

What a the sad predicament this single had found itself in. In a vain attempt to assert its identity it had decided to be a promo – i.e. same song both sides (think NY,NY – so good they named it twice!).   

Marvin Smith has featured here before on more than one occasion. The last time I featured a 45 of his bought on Record Store Day 2011, and of course RSD is just around the corner now. 

A quick reminder - Marvin used to be lead singer with The Artistics. For a moment I thought there was actually a coincidental link between this Marvin Smith 45 and the cover it found itself in. But I got my Du’s mixed up – you see, Marvin replaced Charles Davis in The Artistics, and Charles had previously been with the Dukays. Close!       

On the issue release of this single Who Will Do Your Running Now would have been the B side, which gets a lot of attention on the Northern/Crossover circuit I believe, but I prefer You’re Really Something Sadie, written by Curtis Mayfield; and the arrangement does have Curtis written all over it. Marvin himself was pretty excited about Sadie too as he recounted in a recent interview (scroll about half way down). Sadie is not really Northern and hence the value of a promo is not so high, but the song is a good one and that’s what counts.



*More than one site has this listed as a 1974 release which is much too late I think. Discogs puts it at 1969 which is more like it.  

1 comment:

drew said...

Strangely enough I bought a copy of the Outta Sight repress of the released version last week