Door #4

When I picked this up at a car boot I didn’t notice it had a crack, all the way from the edge to the label. All things considered it plays pretty well. Could you say that about a CD?

Honey Cone were Carolyn Willis, Shelly Clark, and Edna Wright and were active between 1966 and 1973. 1971 was their big year – “Want Ads” made #1 in the US and they had another couple of top 20 hits that year too. By 1972 this single barley made the top 100 in the US. My UK issue would have been one of only a few to have troubled the UK chart compilers I guess.   

Their Wiki entry tells me that Shelly Clark married Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire. So they have now been hitched for about the same number of years as Mrs Darce and me.

Honey Cone – Sitting On A Time Bomb 1972

Honey Cone – It’s Better To Have Loved And Lost 1972  

Door #3

I promised more from my recent hat trick of Reggae/Ska album finds. I picked up “Brixton Cat” for the princely sum of 15p at a car boot. Whoa! The only shame is that the previous owner tried to peel the sticker off the front cover. I would have been perfectly happy with an intact big yellow 19/11. Never mind.

As the back cover says: “Joe’s All Stars present their first album for your dancing pleasure”. That’s Joe Mansano, featuring here, ladies and gentlemen, the great Rico Rodriguez, MBE.

Ethereal, and hypnotic….

Joe’s All Stars – Reco’s Torpedo 1969   (link corrected)

(you may have to crank this one up a bit, it's a quiet pressing). 

Door #2

Behind door #2 we have another NOLA based label that doesn’t scan well!  

Here’s a great double sided slab of R&B slanted Soul from Bobby Powell. Everything I know about Baton Rouge native Bobby I read here (how I miss the Brown Eyed Handsome Man! J )

I bought this 45 recently from a, by all accounts, legendary UK based Northern Soul dealer who has just moved into semi-retirement due to ill health. I suspect it had occupied his garage (or wherever he stored his records) for more years than it had spent in its place of birth. Something I find fascinating.

Bobby Powell – Question 1967

Bobby Powell – Just A Matter Of Time 1967

Buy Into My Own Thing (You may have heard the term "Rip Off Britain". Here is an example - the CD linked is issued by Westside a UK based company. On Amazon UK it is c£21 on Amazon USA it is correctly described as an import and is only c$16. Huh?!) 

All I want for Christmas?

I’m a bit of a grumpy old Darcy at the moment:  had a tooth out a few days ago (of all the ones it had to be the one with the gold crown – reminds me of one of my favourite Steely Dan tracks “.. you throw out your gold teeth…” ), it remains as painful now as it was before it came out …hmm… did he take the wrong one out I wonder? On top of that the car wouldn’t start yesterday, so that is bound to be more pain (in the wallet). And then of course there is my football team and the little problem of the basket case owner with loadsamoney and no sense. Never mind, keep drinking the wine, and the whisky (for medicinal purposes, of course).

Oh well, at least its December so I get to have a chocolate every day from my Advent calendar.

And a chocolate a day means a record a day, that’s the way it works here now.    

First up is The Ballads, a West Coast (SanFran) harmony/ sweet soul group that formed in the early Sixties and had a number of releases through into the Seventies with little success. Four of those releases came out on the Venture label which was set up by MGM to feature Soul acts.

I’m really liking this one at the moment. Leon Ware and, latter day Supreme, Susaye Greene on writing credits (reading Susaye’s Wiki entry I see she shares a birthday with my mum). Warm vocals, tasty background harmonies and a memorable arrangement. The Ballads deserved some success with this one.

The Ballads – I Wish I Knew 1969

Reggae warm up

As promised here are a couple from the batch of reggae 45s I managed to grab on a cold morning last Sunday at a local boot, I say "managed" because my fingers weren’t working very well due to the cold. I actually suffer from Raynaud’s which can make riffling through records difficult on cold mornings (my fingers go white but not blue which would look really scary).

I can offer nothing at all in terms of background to these records beyond the fact that I like them and hope you do too.

The Sunshot 45 is a bit quirky – the K Poppins sticker is covering up another title and the label on the other side quotes Linval Thompson Jah Jah Reder Than Red (actually what attracted me to it), but the grooves contain Keith Poppin and a Version. The vinyl is also incredibly thin to the point that it almost feels like a flexi disc! I think this is a reissue.

After these by way of a sweet and mellow warm up I’m off to the local pub to jump on the Ska Train.

Sister Stern – Last Date 1975

Keith Poppin – Who Are You 19?? 

Another Banksy

There! All it takes is a couple of comments on one of my posts (thanks Davyh and dvd) and a successful weekend of digging to banish my blogging blues and put an end to my latest posting crisis.

There was a little record fair in town at the weekend. It happens roughly quarterly and tends to be focussed on 50s and 60s R&R, rockabilly and early R&B. I think I may have mentioned it before. There are usually a few soul boxes as well and this time one of my favourite dealers made an appearance. He always carries a good selection of soul 45s it seems and this time was no exception. So while the room was filled with the sound of rockabilly on various decks hooked up to speakers, I was pulling soul 45s, spinning them on a portable deck, and desperately trying to hear them with headphones clasped tight to my ears.

I picked up six 45s in the end that I later admitted to Mrs Darce left a bit of a hole in the wallet – “you spent how much?!”. Yes, well, £25 on just one of those 45s sounds a lot to the uninitiated I guess. It’s quite a lot for me to pay as well really, but I know it’s peanuts to many of the vinyl hungry. The rest of them didn’t come close to being that expensive though, and it’s one of these I’m featuring here, and is the one I’m really punching the air about.

A while ago I featured a Bessie Banks 45that was an issue copy of a release I had only ever seen as a same sided demo before. Well here we are again with another Bessie Banks release that, although is out there as an issue, seems to mainly surface as a same sided demo. This was Bessie’s only outing on Volt, neither incarnation are easy to find, and when they do turn up they usually seem to sell for quite a bit more than I paid for my copy. I bought it for the “Try To Leave Me…” side, one of the greatest examples of soul music you could wish to find, mellow and deep all at the same time. But turning it over what did I find? Another song in the same mould almost as good as the A side, and that puts this 45 fair and square in the “killer” category. 

I notice that “Aint No Easy Way” has very recently made a couple of appearances on YouTube.  But apart from that there doesn’t appear to have ever been a “buzz” about this song. It clearly warrants some “buzz”, and Bessie Banks is a singer held in high regard too, in soul circles at least; so I wonder if a batch of issue copies have been found recently in some forgotten warehouse and are now trickling out into the wild? Certainly the only picture of it on YouTube shows a copy just like my latest prize – an issue copy with a promo stamp on it.      

Bessie Banks – Ain’t No Easy Way 1974

And the sublime…

Bessie Banks – Try To Leave Me If You Can 1974

There are a couple of car boot sales ‘round abouts that are continuing on into the winter. Sunday’s early morning visit to one of them (where I had to cope with malfunctioning fingers due to the cold!) turned out to be worth it too. A nice little batch of obscure reggae 45s, mainly of the Lovers variety. Some of those next time.

One minute of your time

I’m conscious it’s been some time without a post again. I’ve sort of lost the beat of this thing recently. It’s partly because I have become completely obsessed with reading a couple of record collector forums – Waxidermy and VG+ – which seem to take up most of my online time lately. I’m what’s known as a lurker on them at the moment and it's possibly just a phase... but there again I am in the process of trying to register on VG+ to allow me to post (Waxidemy is a bit more intimidating and heavily US biased, and quite frankly I struggle to keep up with the lingo sometimes). Anyway, registering on VG+ is proving difficult and I’m beginning to think that is a good thing because if I end up posting on the forum as well as reading it could be curtains for this blog – and I don’t want that to happen.

I was chasing a Cynthia Sheeler 45 on ebay recently but in the end the bidding ran away from me. To make myself feel better l have been playing this 45 a lot, the only one of hers I do own. Once again I have Sir Shambling to thank for bringing Cynthia to my attention. She has a lovely voice and didn’t record enough.

I particularly love the subtle change of gear and what amounts to an extended outro on this song. And it’s on my favourite label!

Cynthia Sheeler – One Minute Of Your Time (1973? originally)