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Soul Spectrum
Soul Spectrum
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Every so often the soul scene champions a secret record that’s too good not to share to a wider audience; here we have just the thing. A record styled on the raunchy sound of Chaka Khan but with the subtlety, confidence and timing of Marvin Gaye. Spun since the day it was released on Northern / Modern soul dancefloors, the charm and sophistication has been completely lost on the rest of the world - probably mostly because nobody ever got to hear it. There are almost no copies anywhere, I know because it took me over 5 years to get one. You are talking £500 all day long IF you can find someone willing to sell it to you, otherwise its a shootout on ebay. So in the interests of democratising beautiful and important music we are very proud to present this wonderful reissue.
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The band members of Exit 9 were incredibly young, their ages ranging from just 16 - 20 years old when this record came out. Despite their youth these young cats from New York released a highly accomplished debut LP in 1975 on the Brunswick label. Originally known as Qualified Funk, at the time of this finely produced record, they were 9 members deep. The album is solid and kinetic from start to finish. It's polished, powerful, brassy and funky as dirty dishwater. Like Tower of Power on speed, it’s has brass to die for.
The two standout dance tracks from the LP are featured on this 45 and are just total fire. “I Love You! Love You Completely” just builds and builds with huge anticipation that glides into a funky disco dancefloor destroyer that’s up there with the best. “Miss Funky Fox” does not let the pressure of for one second with it’s perfect dual guitar lines and smart tricky timings that bring a smile to your face as you get lost in amongst it. Huge spin for myself (Fryer) and Ian Wright, now it’s on 7” it’s time for your turn too!
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| Soul Spectrum presents two utterly mesmerizing sides from the young Jackie Stoudemire. Originally released on the ultra rare Tap Records in 1983 and impossible to get unless you prepared to fork out $1000+. It does not get more special than this, we do rare records all day every day and it never fails to make our eyes do disco sparkles! Worth it for that alone!
A chance meeting between Jackie Stoudemire & Tap's Jeremiah Yisrael at a high school talent show seemed, to Jeremiah, entirely fortuitous. In Jeremiah’s eyes, she combined the perfect trait set: mature talent and work ethic with youth and impressionability. Within a few months, she was in the studio, where she would spend the lion’s share of 1982. Jeremiah was putting significant dollars into the recordings, using dozens of musicians for every session (purportedly Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra), sometimes spending weeks perfecting the backing tracks. He upgraded studios, recording primarily at Right Track and Power Station, neither of them known for their affordability. Jackie’s voice was cool and sure, not a hint of her age coming through the mix. The real nugget ‘Guilty”, one of the last songs Gene Redd would ever pen and some of the finest production work in a career that spanned four decades. They logged eight to ten hour days in the studio, culminating at the beginning of 1983 when her 12” was given a limited issue on the Tap label. Lack of distribution and promotion killed the pressing, but Jackie still felt good about it. For a woman of any age, it was an accomplished piece of work. The end for Tap began with tragedy: Gene Redd passed unexpectedly early in 1983 from a frightening illness that as yet had barely been named: AIDS. Deeply misunderstood, the disease was half a decade away from even primitive treatments, and Redd was gone before anyone knew he was sick. Stoudemire went on and graduated from high school in 1983 and went immediately to performing arts college, after which she spent years as a somewhat successful stage player. Her hit finally came in 1994 when she signed to the Eightball Records label and blew up the club charts with Appreciate.
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Long the preserve of modern soul and rare disco collectors, the Tap records label has remained of the map for one simple reason; the records are rare and expensive, seldom dipping below the $800 mark. Arnie Love & the Lovettes entered Associated Studios at the end of 1981 to cut “Invisible Wind” & “We’ve Had Enough”. From its Rocky-esque early momentum, “Invisible Wind” is the clear gold, delivering an unrelenting five minutes of punchy, pleading horns, synth winds and slap bass.
“We’ve Had Enough” is by no means second best, producer Gene Redd kills it with hurried yet flawless arrangements. Backing singers Roberta Rivers and Linda Green (the Lovettes) doubling up the refrains and ensuring eye candy for potential live dates. After some hard work by our friends at Numero who produced a wonderful LP of all the Tap Records material we felt it was time to get these out on our preferred format of 7”, a place we feel the music sits wonderfully in all its imperfect perfection. | |||
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It’s time to put things right.....One of the Sylvester's big big tunes has been criminally underplayed and underappreciated for way too long! No doubt ignored and overlooked due to the style sitting in the middle of Disco, Soul and Funk - yet not quite fitting into any of them - DJs went for the more ‘disco’ Shaford and Simpson penned “Over & Over” when flicking through Sylvester's self-titled LP.
“I've Been Down” sees Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash (named on the album as ‘Two tons of fun’ in deference to their rotund stature) in conversation about the duality of their relationships. of fun’ thenMoaning about their men though the verse then fawning over them though the chorus the record flits between street talk and gospel highs while maintaining a solid ‘70s funk groove. The ‘Two tons' went on to become the Weather Girls and had a huge international hit with “Raining Men”. Wear this 45 out! The b-side is a mid tempo disco floater co-written and named after Sylvester’s lead guitar player Tipp Wirrick; an end of night slow groover could have been a huge Rare Groove spin were it not for disco being a bad word in the ‘90s, but all good music gets its day so out it comes, it’s time to shine. | |||
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Here we have the two big spins from the self-titled LP Allspice from ‘77. Twinspin 45 ‘Hungry for your Love’ & ‘Slipped Away’ are both included here, each a sublime ‘70s dancer. ‘Slipped Away’ was first played on the rare groove scene in the early ‘80s and you could be forgiven for thinking Deborah Shotlow was Minnie Riperton as she was similar in range and texture. The flip ‘Hungry’ is an L.A Boppers style dancer with Doug Thomas on vocal duties, edited here to include the full piano breakdown and resolution. Simply the finest 70s soul from the strongest pedigree waxed onto 7” vinyl as it should have been!
Allspice was a group signed to Wayne Henderson's ‘At Home’ imprint, a subsidiary of Fantasy Records in California. The band consisted of Deborah 'Punkin' Shotlow, Doug Thomas, Ned Perkins & Esau Joyner. The group was responsible for the background vocals on the Ronnie Laws album 'Fever' from 1976. Deborah Shotlow also sang backgrounds for Wayne Henderson on his 'Living For A Dream' album, and also for the disco group Blacksmoke in 1977. The album featured artists from L.A. Boppers, Side Effect & Pleasure but despite these connections the band never got the recognition it deserved. In the end Allspice only recorded the one album before going their separate ways. | |||
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As soon as the needle drops you hear the horn riff, instantly friendly and instantly catchy, this is mid-‘70s modern soul at it’s very best, and should be in every soul and funk DJ record box.
Here is another exclusive record we heard from top funk and soul DJ Ian Wright. Freak is a mid-‘70s outing originally on Miami label Blue Candle and the original is on 7” only so disco collectors probably won’t have heard this one before. Life Goes On is a sublime disco soul track that really comes into its own near the end with the gospel style call and response. The flip is a James Ingram penned proto-boogie number called That’s What Time It Is turned out to be really popular with the women down at Soul Spectrum. Thanks to some deals behind closed doors every DJ at the club has their own copy of this rare 45 so now it’s OK for us to let the cat out the bag, so here for the first time on super loud 12” pressing Jazzman presents FREAK. | |||
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Top Notch Soulful disco flipped with awsome 80's soul/boogie ballad. Two obscure cuts from a renowned artist. Superb sound quality from master tapes and on orange vinyl!!!Sylvester was a true disco superstar, not only in the clubs but in the mainstream also. Between himself and Patrick Cowley they defined the late disco sound with Sylvester’s distinctive voice and Cowleys layered synth. However, his chart success and his huge presence in the pop end of Disco has somewhat tainted the general music lover’s view of him, and his deeper more soulful work has remained ignored apart from the amazing “Over and Over”. So it’s with great pleasure we bring you two of his more obscure and deeper disco tracks from his catalogue of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. “Down Down Down” is the flip to the promo-only 12” of the classic “Over and Over” which regularly fetches over £100 regularly for its A side. I have only heard one or two discerning DJs in the last few years play this side (Theo Parish being one of them) so all credit to them. The flip side “Here is my Love” is a fantastic duet with Jeanie Tracy, famous on the Northern Soul scene for her “Making New Friends” 45 on Brown Door, as well as some quality later disco work. This is a mid-tempo work out is as good as the best Womack and Womack can offer, so give it the spins it deserves. Both sides of this 12” have been restored from the original tapes and the sound is guaranteed to blow you and your dancers away! | |||