Results for “compilations”

Sheila B. has spent most of her life in the dusty old record shops of New York, London, Paris and Tokyo in an attempt to own every 60s girl-pop 45 in existence. She has worked as an artist manager, editor at progressive girl culture magazine BUST, head of A&R for UK production house Xenomania, columnist for MTV Japan, DJ and music supervisor. She has produced and written the liner notes for several compilations including Rhino Records’ Grammy-nominated “One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found” box set and Big Beat’s “Nippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat & Bossa Nova 1966-1970”.

At age 15, she founded her first fanzine, Plume, as an attempt to escape suburban hell and share her enthusiasm for My Bloody Valentine, Bikini Kill and the Blake Babies. Plume was selected as “fanzine of the month” in popular alternative teen-girl mag Sassy, which resulted in a larger-than-expected readership and sacks of fan-mail. Three years later, she moved to London to pursue a career in the music biz, but instead found herself hanging out with a crew of British record collectors, learning the crucial difference between a VG+ and M- vinyl record. Upon returning to NYC in 1998, she started her subsequent fanzine Cha Cha Charming, as a way to reconcile her love for record collecting, 60s girl singers, heavy metal + Japanese chart pop. After three print issues, Cha Cha Charming found its home online as the go-to site for girl-powered pop – from the past, present and future, and from all over the globe.

www.chachacharming.com

At long last! John Broven, a consultant with Ace Records between 1991 and 2006 with many of his CD compilations still in catalogue, has updated and revised his history of New Orleans R&B, originally titled Walking to New Orleans and now known as Rhythm and Blues in New Orleans. He discussed the major changes in the introduction to the new edition, published by Pelican Publishing Co. of Gretna, Louisiana:

Thanks to the brilliant Rough Trade for including four of our releases in their year-end poll. If you're ever in London (East or West), Nottingham or Brooklyn we strongly recommend visiting one of their great stores.

roughtrade.com/compilations-of-the-year
roughtrade.com/re-issues-of-the-year

The vaults of Scepter, Wand and Musicor were the first to which we gained unlimited access. The great thing about that from a personal point of view was that my co-founder of the 6Ts soul club, Randy Cozens, had championed Scepter and Wand since the mid-60s. Wand’s main acts, Chuck Jackson and Maxine Brown, were the most played and revered artists to feature at our dances.

Florence Greenberg had formed the labels in the late 50s, recording mainly black acts from the New York area. The success of the company was guaranteed once the Shirelles began a string of hits in 1960 with the chart-topper ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’. An astute businesswoman with a great feel for the music, Florence knew to employ the cream of producers, arrangers and songwriters available and could hustle with the best of them. This was shown with her purchase of Maxine Brown’s contract from the major ABC label when her career there stalled.

Florence’s ability to get some of the best songs from the Brill Building and 1650 Broadway writers was demonstrated in the stream of pop-soul masterpieces that she secured for Dionne Warwick from the hottest composers in town, Bacharach and David. Scepter also boasted Tommy Hunt, whose record ‘Human’ was a big R&B hit, and later pop singer B.J. Thomas, who sold millions of records in the second half of the 60s. Those major talents were augmented by acts such as Rosco Robinson, Freddie Hughes and Nella Dodds, as well as great one-miss-wonders Jack Montgomery, Wally Cox, the Ivorys and the Gentleman Four.

The first few various artist compilations Kent issued featured mainly the lesser-known acts whose discs had been adopted by the Northern Soul scene. There were also solo sets from Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, Tommy Hunt and the Shirelles. In 1984 we gained access to the Nashville-housed master tapes and unearthed a slew of wonderful unissued recordings. To British soul fans’ ears it was almost criminal that they had been deemed not good enough for public consumption. Tracks from Maxine, Chuck, the Shirelles, Tommy, Bettye Lavette, Maurice Williams and others helped revitalise a sub-culture that had struggled through the early 80s.

Playing an equal part in this belated New York soul explosion was the Musicor catalogue. Musicor sported the Platter’s stunning mid-60s period, Porgy & the Monarchs, Jimmy Radcliffe, Sammy Ambrose and a single by the young Melba Moore. By the mid-70s, Melba’s 45 had enjoyed enough plays on the UK’s soul dance circuit to warrant bootlegging, but it was the discovery of the third track from the session, the soulful original version of ‘The Magic Touch’ (as recorded by the Bobby Fuller Four), which shook the rare soul world. With all the qualities of the best Wigan Casino dancers, it became massive across the UK’s Northern scene and quickly spread via scooterists and mods right across Europe. Coming at the peak of that first Euro soul movement, it was one of the key records to convert so many devoted soul fans. 

Urged on by rare soul collector Gilly, who had solved the Northern Soul mystery of “What was the identity of the singer who recorded the Rose Valentine cover-up ‘When He's Not Around’?” (as played on acetate by Richard Searling in the latter days of Wigan Casino), Ace Records went ahead and purchased the tapes and rights to the work of Detroit producer Dave Hamilton. Gilly told me how Dave had been an original member of Motown’s Funk Brothers, had played guitar on ‘Reet Petite’, ‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Please Mr Postman’, had recorded the Chalfontes for Mercury and had run the Topper label. He also said there were some great unissued numbers that Dave had copied onto a reel for him to get played on the Northern Soul scene.

I was not that knowledgeable about the Wigan cover-up, but I realised it made a great story and would create much interest. After Dave’s untimely death, I visited his widow Alice and listened to some of his tapes. I thought they were worth gambling on. At the time I could identify only one full CD’s worth of material with a few spin-offs for other compilations. We shipped the tapes back to London, allowing us the luxury of time to fully explore the material.

Our first “Dave Hamilton’s Detroit Dancers” CD featured most of the tracks that had drawn us to the catalogue. In further researching the tapes we began to discover unheard gems such as ‘Who Are You Trying To Fool’ by Little Ann (the true artist on that Rose Valentine cover-up), a recording later described by Ian Levine as the best non-Motown Detroit soul production. The rare soul collecting scene continued to view Dave’s work favourably and records such as ‘Sweep It Out In The Shed’ by Tobi Lark, Dottie & Millie’s ‘Talkin’ About My Baby’ and James Lately’s super-rarity ‘Love, Friends And Money’ went from strength to strength. Then the rare funk scene exploded and Dean Rudland was able to compile a BGP CD of late 60s and early 70s grooves. Additionally Dave’s jazz productions on himself and his tight band came out as the unreleased “Soul Suite” LP he had hoped would make his name in the late 60s. Dave’s jazz background also led to several of his tracks featuring in our “Mod Jazz” series and there were some excellent modern soul recordings from artists such as of Gil Billingsley and James Carpenter.

Meanwhile, we had been sitting on many unmarked tapes. Every few years we would haul a couple of boxes up from our storage facility, don the headphones and plough through several days’ worth of recordings. These varied from poorly copied old jazz radio shows to fully produced versions of songs Dave was trying to get to Motown’s Jobete Music publishing company. Tapes for some incredibly rare 45s eventually turned up, along with odd acetates, allowing us to release a third volume of “Detroit Dancers” and a new volume of funk, followed by a general “Detroit Soul” CD.

The EU then joined in the fun with a request from the Finnish company Timmion to issue an LP of Little Ann’s recordings. The faux 60s album was a great hit, particularly among the younger soul demographic, and it led to a similar project on O.C. Tolbert, who also cut enough tracks for a very impressive Kent CD of his own.

That one mythical 1966 recording that remained embedded in an old acetate was responsible for eight great CDs and we’re still counting. From small acorns, mighty oak trees do grow, and we’ve not even started on the gospel tapes yet.