Ms Holloway may be more known in certain circles as possessor of one of the great oft sampled disco diva voices ........ but..... this is the real soul from her early 70s recordings on Aware
The Soul Book (the influential book by Clive Anderson, Ian Hoare et al-.-Methuen, 1975) said of her "there is no shortage of singers waiting in the wings, artists like Loleatta Holloway who have been making ripples in the business for some years. Numbers like her impassioned Cry To Me...continue to knock insistently at the door". By the late 1970s, the door to fame had opened for Loleatta and she went on to become one of the great disco divas of the era. The sides she cut for Aware between 1971 and 1975, however, (including 1974's Cry To Me) stand alongside the very finest soul music ever made.Born in Chicago in 1946, Loleatta started out as a gospel singer, moving to secular music in 1971 with Rainbow '71 b/w For Sentimental Reasons (Apache) which was picked up nationally by Galaxy Records (who swapped the B-side for Bring It On Up). That early A-side (a Curtis Mayfield-penned number), the two differing B-sides and twenty of the brilliant sides she made for Aware Records (including the afore-mentioned Cry To Me) are brought together in this definitive collection of Loleatta's Hotlanta Soul. Powerful deep soul ballads, finger-snappers and the odd funky offering set the mood while the skills of such great songwriters as Sam Dees, Curtis Mayfield, Ashford & Simpson and Loleatta herself ensure that the songs are always more than just convenient hooks for her stunning vocals. For collector's: Rainbow '71 is here in a full-length, six-minute version and This Man's Arms (originally slated for the Galaxy single A-side) emerges again after 24 years! Though it would have been nice to get all of Loleatta's Aware sides on one CD, it wasn't possible and there have had to be some personal choices made by Ady Croasdell. He assures soul fans everywhere that "if there is an outcry...(about the missing tracks)...we can always make up for it on a Various Artists CD later!"
