The Feel It Advent-ure 2021: Door 19

There were so many great soul vocal groups around in the 60s and into the 70s it's no surprise that some remained a little under the radar.

(The) Natural Four hailed from Oakland, California and formed around 1967. Their first (or possibly second) 45 was released on the wonderfully named Boola-Boola label in 1969. It is a seriously rare and expensive record nowadays. It is also seriously good.

Following the local success of this single they were picked up by ABC and then around '72 moved to Curtom at which point the group members were almost completely changed. I think of them as a slightly smoother Dramatics. In '74 they broke the US pop charts twice with successive singles. In both cases I prefer the B side of these singles, the one featured here was the flip of A Love That Really Counts that just grazed the US Top 100. In all they had eight charting singles on the US Soul (or Black) charts. Both the sides of both the charting singles were taken from a 1974 album (produced by Leroy Hutson it's packed with quality tracks). From 1970 to 1976, when they broke up, they actually had four albums released; quite a lot I think for what some might call a lower division group, but I suppose they entered the music scene at just the time record companies started seriously pushing albums to a black audience in addition to the rock audience.

Natural Four – Love's Society   1974