Thursday, May 28, 2015

Deep... and Sweet... and about time!


Regular visitors here will know I like my soul deep, with a capital D. Casting around Youtube recently I stumbled across an excellent deep soul mix (shared below). It is certainly one of the best I have ever heard. It includes quite a few tracks that are new to me and has set me off to hunt down copies of the singles to add to the collection (I've overlooked Don Bryant for too long, that's for sure). 

I actually have four of the records in this mix. One of them being a 1967 UNI release by Ural Thomas. I must have had my copy nearly ten years now. Searching around on the Internet back then there was not much info to be had on Ural, but I must have found something because it stuck in my mind that Ural (born Ural Thompson) had some link to James Brown. The Internet now is more forthcoming. I found this article on Ural in which he says he did indeed play the Apollo with James Brown. It is good to know that Ural is alive and well and, more than that, is in fact a current fixture on the Portland, Oregon music scene in the band Ural Thomas and The Pain (named after his 1967 single).

Here is that UNI 45 freshly extracted from one of my record boxes. It's funny, for years it has been on and off my radar as a 45 to feature here. It's as Deep as you like:

Ural Thomas - Pain Is The Name of Your Game  1967

The flip (which I think I have overlooked until now) is in a much sweeter vein. Don't be fooled by the intro (which sounds like it might have come from a twee period documentary ramble through the English countryside), it is charming in every way, and I can't stop playing it at the moment.

Ural Thomas - Since You Went Away  1967       




        

2 comments:

george said...

That second song's intro sounds like it comes from an Episode of The Herbs! It does become a pleasant enough song, but that first one! TopTastTune Darcy

C said...

Love that Ural Thomas! Really really good.