soul music
Kieron Tyler
The Isley Brothers: The RCA Victor & T-Neck Album Masters (1958–1983)Head straight for Track 14, Disc 10’s quadrophonic mix – which plays fine on a normal stereo – of The Isley Brothers’ version of Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze”. It’s an instant head-turner as it highlights melody lines in the vocal which were not apparent on the familiar single. The jazzy piano is also more to the fore. Then nip to Track 11, Disc 13’s instrumental version of “Harvest for the World” which, shorn of its vocals, reveals the complex arrangement and intricate, lush production of this seemingly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Ian Levine’s Stax Soul SensationsTaking 41 years to follow up a successful compilation is perhaps not sound in commercial terms. No matter. Ian Levine’s Stax Soul Sensations is not about marketability, but instead about celebrating the music heard. This new collection of tracks drawn from the Memphis operation and its related imprints comes not-so-hot on the heels of 1974’s Solid Soul Sensations, another Levine-compiled set, which was dedicated to the associated Scepter and Wand labels.Beyond his fascination with Doctor Who, Levine has dedicated his life to soul music. Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Joss Stone is one of our most popular and successful soul singers, with a rich bronze voice and supple delivery that’s already earned her two Brit Awards and a Grammy, and made her Britain’s richest woman under 30. She burst onto the scene at the age of 16 with Soul Sessions, an acclaimed album of soul classics from artists including Arethra Franklin and Carla Thomas. She has also had some high-profile acting roles, and her choice of musical collaborators is refreshingly eclectic, from Damian Marley and virtuosi of the Indian tabla to English hard-man footballer Vinnie Jones.She has always Read more ...
joe.muggs
Jill Scott albums should, in theory, be a bit of a chore. Everything about them, this one included, is like listening to a life coach: positive affirmations, exhortations to self-care, expressions of gratitude to the universe, homely snippets of advice... It's all so wholesome you almost feel as if it should be printed in a curly script over tranquil beach scenes and shared on your more uncomplicated school friends' Facebook feeds. Almost.In fact, Scott pulls off the miraculous, and makes all these homilies not just bearable but really uplifting. This is, after all, the singer who turned the Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
No, don't check your calendar – it's definitely not March. I associate flamenco at Sadler's Wells so strongly with their annual two-week festival in early spring that watching Paco Peña Company at the Wells last night felt a bit like a cheeky out-of-season treat, akin to buying foreign strawberries before the native ones have come in. Fortunately, this was no watery, bland, forced berry, though: Peña and friends are some of the best in the business, purveying reliably high-quality goods in smart, well-produced packaging.The new show, Flamencura, does not follow Peña's last, Garcia Lorca- Read more ...
peter.quinn
Hosted by self-confessed jazz nut John Thomson, a.k.a. The Fast Show's “Jazz Club” presenter Louis Balfour, the winners of this year's Jazz FM Awards were announced on Wednesday evening in the atmospheric setting of the Great Halls at Vinopolis.Produced by Serious, the evening kicked off with a thrilling call to attention by the House Gospel Choir, before musician, producer and comedian Ian Shaw presented the first of 11 awards for Vocalist of the Year to the great Zara McFarlane. Noting a positive change in the jazz vocalist genre over the past three or four years, Shaw said that, rather Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marvin Gaye: Marvin Gaye 1961–1965On single, Marvin Gaye’s earliest years were defined by a head-long rush beginning with his fourth 45, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow". After that, future classic followed future classic: "Hitch Hike", "Pride and Joy", "Can I Get a Witness", “How Sweet it is (to be Loved by You)", "Ain't That Peculiar" and more. The years 1962 to 1965 were a musical goldmine for this multi-faceted singer and songwriter.On album, Marvin Gaye’s earliest years were somewhat more complex. Where his label Tamla (odd issues came via related imprint Motown) went for the direct and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bobby Womack: The PreacherCover versions of standards like “Fly me to the Moon” and “I Left my Heart in San Francisco” were hardly going to make a mark with a hip – or, for that matter, any – audience in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Nor was reinterpreting The Beatles’ “And I Love her" and “Something”. Chuck in the adaptations of The Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’”, Jonathan King’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and Ray Stevens’s trite bubblegum-gospel hit “Everything is Beautiful” which pepper the first five solo albums from Bobby Womack, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
No soul singer has been associated with one hit in quite the same way. Percy Sledge, who died last week at the age of 74, recorded “When a Man Loves a Woman” in 1966 and launched himself as a tearful balladeer. Its simple chord structure, featuring a descending bassline familiar from Pachelbel and Bach, was the bedrock over which Sledge howled plaintively of a lost love. There were other hits, until his producers retired in 1974 just as soul music was going priapic, but the first cut was always the deepest.When I met Sledge in 1994 he had his first new album out in 20 years. He was a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: The Odyssey - A Northern Soul Time CapsuleIt begins with “Open the Door to Your Heart” by Darrell Banks. Over a mid-tempo rhythm, Banks sings in an affecting voice obviously schooled in gospel. Choppy Motown-style guitar is punctuated by brass, lifting both singer and the song through the choruses. A US hit for the independent Revilot Records label in 1966, it reached number two on Billboard’s R&B charts. The UK issue on London Records barely sold. A copy went for £14,500 last year. The song was early floor-filler on the Britain’s then emergent Northern Soul scene, Read more ...
Thomas Rees
You know what really grinds my gears? Bands that only have one. One gear, one level of intensity. For a good hour of last night’s set, diminutive diva Alice Russell, the voice behind countless Quantic hits and that cover of “Seven Nation Army” that no one would shut up about back in 2005, was guilty of just that. She was flatlining at mid-intensity, lost in the no man’s land between tension and release and it was a shame, because everything else about her set, the first of two sold out shows at Camden’s Jazz Café, was hard to fault.For starters, Russell’s voice is the real deal. It’s powerful Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: I'm Just Like You – Sly's Stone Flower 1969–70Although a fixture on America’s mainstream charts since 1967’s “Dance to the Music”, Sly and the Family Stone’s August 1969 appearance at Woodstock changed things forever. After seizing the attention of a massive white audience at the festival, Sly Stone would move from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. The band then gradually fell apart. The greater success brought chaos yet also offered Stone the opportunity to stamp his personality on a new record label where he would be the house producer and writer. The appropriately named Read more ...