Top flight; still burning bright

*UPDATED*

Here are my two latest acquisitions to drop through the letterbox.

As I opened the mailer there they were, tucked up tight together between two pieces of card: two pieces of vinyl, one containing the sound of Chicago, the other of Detroit - utterly distinctive, both totally irresistible, the perfect marriage.

There was a picture of The Five Stairsteps 45 World of Fantasy here. But I have received a takedown request so the perfect marriage was short-lived I'm afraid. 

The Five Stairsteps –World Of Fantasy 1966

You might have noticed I’ve been overboard on The Five Stairsteps in recent months. The title of this one might be said to aptly describe the state of GB, team and country, this last couple of Olympic weeks.   

Flaming Embers – HeyMama (What'cha Got Good For Daddy) 1967

Flaming Embers were actually a white group keen to emulate the black soul sound of the day, and the sound of Detroit is certainly perfectly formed here. Note the names Clinton and Terry among others in the credits: sure fire marks of quality. (Thanks to Mr Finewine for leading me to this one).   

Moody and magnificent

A bit of virtual digging (just for a change!) led this 45 to drop through the letterbox recently and it has stayed close to the deck ever since. It continues to amaze me just how many old and obscure records are on YouTube nowadays, and this one is there. A comment on it describes this track as “great moody mid tempo”. A good description and I will go one step further and say moody and magnificent.    

Just about all I know about Patty & The Emblems can be found here on the now sadly defunct Supersoulsisters blog. The group debuted in 1964 with what turned out to be their one and only hit “Mixed Up Shook Up Girl”. “You Took Advantage Of A Good Thing” was on the B side of the follow up “Music Makes Me Want To Dance”. The A side was aimed fair and square at the dancefloor catching the Motown tide and was co-written by Leon Huff. This follow up single, as a double header,  was in my opinion much stronger than their hit debut but did nothing chartwise; possibly because at the time of its release the British Invasion was gathering pace and the R&B charts had been temporarily dropped. After a few releases on Herald Patti & The Emblems resurfaced a couple of years later in the Sixties with a handful of 45 releases on Kapp, but again chart success eluded them.

Pat Russell had a rich, strong voice and puts in an excellent performance here (and with some good phrasing on this track I would have thought she could have made a good jazz singer). The Emblems give an almost doo wop backing (demonstrating their influences and background?, after all this was 1964), and then there are the horns accentuating the tempo of the song as well as giving us some wonderfully dramatic fills.

A moody, magnificent masterpiece. I love it.           

   

Patty & The Emblems – You Took Advantage Of A Good Thing  1964  

I Get Lifted

I am a fan of Huey Morgan’s Sunday show on BBC 6 Music. He plays an eclectic mix with more than a smattering of oldies in the soul, funk and hip hop vein. 6 Music are learning, finally, that it doesn’t have to be rock slanted music all the time. A few weeks ago Huey evidently could not make the gig at short notice so 6 Music stalwart Tom Robinson stepped in to do the talking. I stress the talking bit, because he was sticking to an already laid down play list prepared by Huey. It was quite amusing at times listening to Tom, who I respect, seemingly coming over all quizzical at some of the tracks he was required to introduce. One example was a track from George McCrae – “I Get Lifted”, and Tom appeared to sound surprised that George had recorded something other than the ubiquitous “Rock Your Baby”.

If you are of a certain age then “Rock Your Baby” will certainly be familiar and probably loved too, even if you are not generally of the soul persuasion. Memories and all that. I loved “Rock Your Baby” and quite liked some of George’s follow up singles even though I recognised they bore more than a passing resemblance to his big hit. “I Get Lifted” was a single that was released after the big hit and is one I couldn’t recall but, boy, did it sound good pumping out of the radio on that Sunday afternoon.

I resolved to go out and snag a copy. It is not a rare record by any means but to date I had not managed to find one on t’internet that ticked the boxes on both price and condition. Today, almost as an afterthought, I paid a quick visit to a couple of chazzas and what do I find in one of them? For 50p, a mint copy of George’s album “Rock Your Baby” – and I do mean mint, it was as if I had just stepped back in time nearly 40 years and walked into a record shop.  Side one of this album is predictable inasmuch as it contains all the hits, but side two is a great surprise, as well as “I Get Lifted” there are two more killer tracks, and I think they all sound really fresh to this day.

On the back cover of this album George is sporting a rather fetching denim suit, including cut off shorts. It may take a few more years for denim shorts to be cool again, but there can be no denying that the Jay Boy label in the middle of an LP will forever be uber cool.  

I will leave you to find one of the, to my mind, killer tracks on this album -  “I Need Somebody Like You” - and give you these:       

George McCrae – I Get Lifted 1974

George McCrae – Look At You 1974       

Capricorn needs the sunshine...

... and Scorpio.

I couldn’t resist buying a David Ruffin 45 in a charity shop today – from 1977 a track entitled “I Can’t Stop The Rain” – I thought it would be the perfect post considering the (lack of) summer we are experiencing in the UK this year. Spookily as I walked out of the shop the sun came out. When I got home and gave the record a spin it frankly wasn’t up to the standard necessary for posting here anyway (although the B side – “My Whole World Ended” from the previous decade -  was worth the price of entry and so the 45 was a neat summary of how soul music and Motown in eight short years had lost its magic).

So instead I give you Leo’s Sunshipp rare groove gem “Give Me The Sunshine”. Actually, it is almost five years to the day since I featured another track from their only album “We Need Each Other”. Reading that post again I notice I commented that “the British summer has been a damp squib so far”, and so here we are again. I went on then to describe a sunny weekend and it’s that I am hoping for now (actually with some optimism looking at the forecast) as Mrs Darce and I are off to Sidmouth for the weekend.

Sunny here as I type! Have to stop typing now as fingers are crossed.

Leo's Sunshipp - Give Me the Sunshine (another new link)

Awareness

Back in the day many groups and artists were making disco retreads of older songs. In 1980 Coffee had a big dancefloor hit with “Casanova”, a record that brings back fond memories for me. At the time I think I knew it was a remake of an older song but it wasn’t until many years later I heard the original (at least I presume it is the original) version of the song as sung by the great Ruby Andrews. Released in 1967, it is, of course, a very different animal to Coffee’s disco take on the song.

A couple of months ago I became aware (ha!) of another version of “Casanova”. It was released in 1975 on the Atlanta based Aware label and so, in memory lane, appeared roughly mid way between Ruby’s original and Coffee’s remake. 1975 was just before the disco bandwagon was seriously rolling and this version is a lot closer to Ruby’s original in style. Ruby Andrews is one the many great, but lesser known, soul singers that graced the scene during Soul’s golden age and this Aware outing is sung by another singer that fits very much into that category – the late, great, Loleatta Holloway.

I really love all three versions of this song. As soon as I bumped into Loleatta’s version on YouTube I had to go out and snag a copy for my collection. I now have all three versions on 45 and right now, featuring a really wonderful arrangement by Tommy Stewart, Loleatta’s is my favourite and has been on heavy rotation on the Dual 505 in recent weeks.

Loleatta Holloway –Casanova 1975

The B side’s worth a spin too…

Loleatta Holloway – OnlyA Fool 1975                  

The Early Bird..

My planned post will have to wait a few days as I have another car boot haul to document.

The signs hadn’t been good for car booting at the weekend, the weather forecast until late in the day on Saturday had been for more(!) rain. But I caught a late forecast that had put the rain back to Sunday afternoon so went to bed Saturday night with some, albeit muted, anticipation. As it happened I actually naturally awoke at 5.30am (unheard of). I looked out the window and, yes, it was dry, and a pleasant looking morning. So I hauled myself out of bed , pulled on some clothes, made Mrs Darce a coffee, fed the cats and (finally) hit the road. Arrival at the car boot was at 6.45am, the earliest I have ever made one, by about 20 minutes. So for once I was very much among the early birds, and dreaming of worms!

Actually, finding the venue might have been a problem if I wasn’t a regular as the whole area was initially shrouded in thick fog! Great. But it soon lifted. There were much fewer sellers (and early birds) there than usual it seemed, and as the minutes passed the numbers didn’t increase as much as expected either. It became apparent that the weather forecast that had prevailed for most of the previous day had put a lot of people off. Typical, I arrive really early for once and there aren’t many wares to inspect. There was an upside though, because it also became clear that the forecast must have put off a lot of the record dealers and collectors too. Most of the regular faces were missing, and the few that were there seemed to be more in my mould i.e. not too pushy. (I had heard a story the previous week, backed up by somebody else telling it the same way on Sunday, that at the same car boot a few weeks ago two guys had all but come to blows over a box of folk albums).  

So, not many stalls potentially offer digging opportunities, but also not many diggers.

A little more than an hour later the early morning had proved that you only need a couple of sellers with an interesting boxes of records and, crucially, not much in the way of digger competition to have a great day. My record bag ended up almost full with the best, and most eclectic, haul I have gathered in quite a while. I haven’t had a chance to play many of them yet but they look to be in generally excellent condition. Here is what I picked up for a total outlay of £11 (all LPS bar a couple and, except for the Jazz LPs, all originals I believe):

Mick Ronson – Play Don’t Worry

Pockets – Come Go With Us (White Label Promo)

Tower Of Power – We Came To Play (WLP)

Lindisfarne – Dingly Dell

John Mayall’s Blues Breakers – Bare Wires

Ashford & Simpson – Found A Cure (12” single)

Dennis Brown – Love Has Found Its Way

The Fatback Band featuring Brother Johnny King – Feel My Soul*

The Dave Brubeck Quartet – Jazz At Oberlin

The Modern Jazz Quartet – European Concert Vol II  

Free Spirit – Love You Just As Long As I Can (7”)

Pink Floyd (The Screaming Abdabs) – The Dark Side Of The Moo

Sandy Denny – Like An Old Fashioned Waltz

John Martyn – Solid Air

Queen – It’s A Kind Of Magic

Talk Talk – It’s My Life

*I’ve always been a fan of The Fatback Band but I have to say their “Feel My Soul” album had completely passed me by. It was their third album release, in 1974, and the final one on their first label, Perception. Looking at their discography I notice that no singles were pulled from it, which I suspect is because they were about to move away from the label, and possibly explains why I was unaware of it until now. Playing Side 1 my initial thoughts were that it has some nice moments, is very laid back and soulful in comparison to their more well known funkiness, and is OK without being great. Side 2, however, completely blows me away. Funkier, and trippier. My son walked in as I was playing it and immediately asked what it was and when was I going to record it so he could get it onto his computer. I see that it has been reissued more recently, but my freshly acquired copy has all the hallmarks of an original – thick card sleeve and paste on back cover, and it has that certain smell (aaahhh that smell, excuse me while I inhale again!), nice! Side 2 also has the smallest runout dead wax I think I have ever seen on an LP. The side is not that long, just under 20 minutes, so there is no reason for it other than the grooves have maybe been stretched out a bit (is that possible?) - it certainly has a really good fidelity. I reckon, as an original, you could easily expect to pay £30 for this in a second hand record shop. I paid 85p so I’m well happy!

So, after a slow start to the digging season, things have picked up in the last few weeks, and this haul in particular will ensure I will be full of optimism and anticipation for the next few weeks at least.  Or then again, perhaps I should give myself some time to properly listen to what I have bought and stop booting for a bit – but I know that’s just not going to happen!

Deciding which track to play from this Fatback Band album is difficult. It has to one from Side 2, but I could easily post the whole side. I’ll settle for tracks 2 and 3 which are the funky meat in a trippy sandwich. Johnny Flippin’s bass just kills me on these, the horns are none too shabby either. After listening to these be sure to head over to YouTube and Feel My Soul.

The Fatback Band featuring Brother, Johnny King – Makin Love 1974   

The Fatback Band featuring Brother, Johnny King – Why Is It So Hard To Do 1974                 

Buy the album Feel My Soul

        

PS: Never satisfied?: The box I pulled a few of these from I didn’t get to first. At least one person had three from it ahead of me. Now, I wonder? If I hadn’t made my wife a coffee, and left the cats to cry for their breakfast, what else might I have found?                  

PPS: The best overheard car boot “nuggets” of the day:

1.      Lady seller draws up and of course is immediately surrounded by a hoard of booting vultures (yes, including me). Opening the car door she immediately says “I haven’t got any records, jewellery, or mobile phones”.

2.     Girl, about 15?, running back from a distant stall: “Mum, they’ve got a great pair of daps up there, but they’re £2”.       

Sunbeams

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post and I could blame the weather – you have to take advantage of the sunshine when you can in the UK – but it has been as much about blogging apathy, a state that has been difficult to shake for most of this year in truth. I am almost awash in my recent vinyl purchases though so hopefully, like little sunbeams, these will spur me on to some more regular posting in this little corner of the ‘net.    

     

I was very pleased to pick this 45 up at a local record fair recently. The fair focuses primarily on ‘50s and ‘60s sounds – rock & roll, early r&b, early British pop stuff, that sort of thing. But there are usually some boxes of soul to root through. So while the rock & roll and rockabilly was blasting out in the room on seemingly duelling turntables there was I, no doubt being a tad unpopular,  intermittently commandeering a communal deck to listen to my little stack of possibilities, and struggling to turn the volume on the headphones up loud enough to hear them!

I made a few purchases and this 45 from The Emotions is probably my favourite of the bunch.             

I love the label on this one, and this is my first Twin Stacks 45 (Does anybody know why the label was so named? a local landmark?) . The Hutchinson sisters as The Emotions had their first releases on the Chicago based sister labels Brainstorm and Twin Stacks in late ’67 and ’68. Robert Pruter, in his excellent book “Chicago Soul” comments that their initial two releases were local hits only. National chart success would evade them until they signed to Volt, and of course in the ‘70s, when they teamed up with the Earth, Wind & Fire collective, international success would follow.

My interest in music began in the ‘70s and I am always fascinated to delve into the back catalogs and learn the back stories of many of the artists and groups that burst onto the UK scene for the first time back then. They all seemed like new talent to me then, but in many cases of course these artists had “paid their dues” and had been on the scene for a number of years. The Emotions very much fell into this category. Like most of the black soul singers that came up in the ‘60s Sheila, Wanda, and Jeanette Hutchinson first exercised their vocal cords in church as young children. They became the Emotions in 1967 and had a total of five releases on Brainstorm/Twin Stacks before  Pervis Staples took them under his wing and got them a deal with Stax/Volt. The Chicago releases had not been their first recordings, however. Taking various names, including The Hutchinson Sunbeams (I like that name) in the early ‘60s their first release was entitled  “Santa Got Stuck In The Chimney” that appeared as early as 1962 and there would be at least one more 45 before they settled on The Emotions as an identity.  Whilst at Stax/Volt Jeanette would leave the group for a time to concentrate on motherly duties, to be replaced by a friend, Theresa Davis. Jeanette returned to the group in 1974 and stayed until 1977 during which time, with the exception of their duet with EWF “Boogie Wonderland”,  they would enjoy their biggest hits, particularly “Best Of My Love”. When Jeanette left the group again to pursue other interests, another sister – Pamela – took her place. Very much a sister act then throughout their career.                  

“Somebody New”, their second 45 as The Emotions, was a local Chicago hit in the spring of 1968. The sisters ranged in ages from 15-18 at the time this was recorded, and this was also written by the eldest of the three, Jeanette. It's a gorgeous slow mid-tempo meander, perfectly suited to the lovely weather we have been having lately , and has been getting a lot of plays at the Darcy abode in recent weeks. (As I write the impending Jubilee Bank Holidays here in the UK have, true to form, seen off the good weather though, for the time being at least).

(The Hutchinson Sunbeams freshly minted as:)

The Emotions – Somebody New  1968