Take one large impoverished family from a humble one bedroom shack from Nowheresville, USA and you’ve got the embryo of right royal story of soul pride on VARIOUS ARTISTS Eccentric Soul – Smart’s Palace (Numero). From 1965 to ’75 – under the business acumen of the entrepreneurial Dick Smart, ably assisted by his fellow musician brothers – the Smart family were responsible for putting the soul into their local Wichita, Kansas nightlife.
The story starts in the early ’60s, following a couple of false dawns; the Smart Brothers band had returned home to find their brother, Dick had opened a thriving club and restaurant. The Smart Brothers band played most nights putting on wild, horn driven, over-the-top performances involving back flips, handstands, crazy dancing and all kinds of acrobatics. In ’65 the group enlisted singer Cornelius ‘Baby’ Neal as vocalist and recorded a couple of primitive sounding singles for the Vantage label capturing some of the live energy of the band.
In ’66 the same line up cut the Sam Cooke influenced ‘I’ve Got A Funny Feeling’ in a better studio but a general lack of support for black music in the area meant the band could never expect a bigger break and were limited to selling small quantities of discs at their own shows. The lack of resources and support prompted the entrepreneurial Dick Smart to launch his own label and record store.
Solo Records was born and in ’69 the search for that elusive hit began in earnest with Fred Williams & The Jewels Band. ‘Tell Her’ is a brooding ballad with strong vocals whilst the driving beat of ‘The Dance Got Old’ name-checked some of the latest dances form the shing-a-ling to the tighten up. It would prove to be the start of some brilliant but quite sporadic releases over the next decade.
Kenneth Carr was another one-off who turned up at the label with a half-baked song that, with the help of the Smart family, became an infectious social commentary styled groove called ‘Don’t Hate, Let’s Communicate’. The instrumental flip, ‘Herbie’s Bag’, allowed the Smart Brothers Band to strut their stuff. LT & The Soulful Dynamics released a killer 45 coupling the scorching deep funk of ‘Everybody Needs Somebody’ with the sublime ‘Crazy About You Baby’. Local DJ Tim Jacob created a raucous gritty garage stomp when he added his catchphrase to the jovial ‘Mercy Baby’.
Smart stumbled across his next big hope, a Sam & Dave type duo called Theron & Darrell, in ’70 and released another strong single ‘I Was Made To Love Her’. A lack of distribution limited the chances of success and bad luck struck when the ill-fated duo struck up a deal with Isaac Hayes just before Stax went bankrupt.
Probably the slickest players are the wonderfully named Chocolate Snow, a mixed group who looked to emulate the hippy soul of Sly & The Family Stone. Check out their mellow cover of The Beatles’ ‘A Day In The Life’ – truly unrecognizable from the original, inspired more by Wes Montgomery’s jazzed up version. It proved the band could play and the four tracks featured are the most modern sounding. Finally, Hard Road formed from the ashes of Chocolate Snow and are represented by the tight funky dancer ‘If You Really Love Me’ and the gorgeous mid tempo floater ‘Dedicated To You’ from ’75.
Disco effectively killed off the Smart soul supply and all that was left was the restaurant, which limped on until it finally closed its doors in ’89. The guys at Numero certainly do their home work and have done a sterling job on this charming release thanks largely to the fact that the hospitable Smart brothers are alive and well and delighted to tell their tale.
From the ’65 Northern Soul favourite ‘Love Runs Out’ b/w ‘The Duck’ on Dunhill to the much sampled ghetto funk of ‘Brothers Gonna Work It Out’ on Motown in ’73 you’d have thought the career of WILLIE HUTCH had been well documented. Yet Soul Portrait (Shout), originally released in ’69 on RCA, has not been re-issued on CD until now. The album was the missing link between his mid-60s label hopping and his subsequent seventies superstar status working as a songwriter, producer and artist for Motown. ‘Ain’t Gonna Stop’ kicks off the album in style. The pleading vocals, complemented by a sweet chorus of female backing singers, are to die for. The instantly recognisable ‘Lucky To Be Loved By You’ is pure feelgood Northern Soul heaven.
Detroit soul siren BETTYE LAVETTE’s fiery R&B vocals sounded much more Southern than her more famous Motown based neighbours. She recorded for the Silver Fox/SSS labels from ’68-’70 and Do Your Duty (Sundazed) compiles the compelling sides she cut for the label. All these recordings were made in her spiritual home of Memphis ably backed by some of the finest local session players. Four decades on, she continues to release critically acclaimed albums to this day.
Talking of legends still doing the rounds, Latin soul guru JOE BATAAN has recorded brand new material for King Of Latin Soul (Vampisoul) with a bunch of enthusiastic Spanish musicians called Los Fulanos. This is the second set of new recordings for the label following the terrific Call My Name from 2005. This one revisits some familiar territory (‘The Bottle’, ‘Gypsy Woman’, ‘Ordinary Joe’) but whilst you can’t beat the originals, the band sound like they’re having fun trying.
The rich tapestry of soul that originated from the studios of 926 East McLemore Avenue has long provided the backbone to many a hip-hop hit, proving that the most durable grooves come from those made by hand; the bulk of which were provided form the fingers of four players – Booker T, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Al Jackson AKA Booker T & The MGs. Most of the tracks featured on The Soul Of Hip-Hop (Stax) have been released previously on BGP’s excellent “Super Breaks” series, which is still in print – on vinyl too – making this CD oddly superfluous to serious soul fans.
Similarly, you can’t dispute the heavyweight soul featured on 100 Soul Classics (Rhino) a four CD set of Atlantic Soul. But, surely these songs have been overcooked many times already? Writing about the tracks is akin to Shindig! writing about The Beatles.
If you know your onions you are more likely to be tempted by the many unheard sounds complied on The Soul Of Money Volume 3 (Kent). This third volume raids the vaults of the LA based label that spawned Bettye Swan and Don Julian & The Larks of ‘The Jerk’ fame. Kent has already issued career retrospectives on both these artists so over to the more obscure tracks for spotting hidden gems. In particular, some strong dance-floor friendly femme soul from the likes of the sultry Pat Livingston and the funky Delilah Moore, whom both recall those cool seventies Patti Jo dancers, ‘Make Me Believe In You’ and ‘Ain’t No Love Lost’. Bookended by two strong Bettye Swann dancers this is a fitting conclusion to a rewarding series. |
