The Chicago Soul thread

[rayge]

At the poppier end of soul, admittedly, and the strings are a bit of a stretch, but a lovely vocal; listen right through the fade to hear a soulman's scream escape from its restraints

[Charlie O.]

Magnificent record. And I like the strings.

[loveless]

Oh, man! That's outstanding. Obviously, performance and arrangement, but...there's some downright modern melodic/chordal movement at the end of each cycle that just stuns me.

[fange]

Ooh, very nice. Haven't heard that one for ages.


Tyrone Davis - 'Turn Back the Hands of Time'



Pretty much a perfect song for me.

[Stacy Heydon]

Time for some Barbara Acklin. A bit of an underrated artist I feel, both for her vocal abilities and songwriting.
Love the joyful swing on this one.

[Stacy Heydon]

It's funny how they all turn up on each others records. Just looked at the credits for 'Turn Back the Hands of Time' and Eugene Record and Barbara Acklin are doing the backing vocals.

[loveless]

I feel like the fact that Ramsey Lewis seemingly put out a hundred records per year for a decade or more might have the unfortunate and misleading effect of diminishing his perceived stature or import (ala, say, the Ventures or Herb Alpert). Hopefully, time has corrected this oversight, because there is so much gold in his sort of sweet spot (for me, 67-75).

There were a number of tracks I could have chosen from a number of albums (and, with any luck, this thread will live long enough for me to do just that...there's songs that could live here in multiple iterations/by different artists), but...this morning, I'm going with a gorgeous arrangement of an oft-covered Herbie Hancock standard. I want to rave effusive about the track, the arrangement, the personnel, the album artwork, but...I might argue that the recording absolutely speaks for itself.

[fearlessfreap]

[Charlie O.]

I admit that this is stretching anyone's definition of Chicago Soul a bit, but I love it. From 1961.

[davey]

The Marlynns only released two singles (though a couple members of the group contributed to other Chicago soul records). This is my favorite of the four songs I’ve heard:

[loveless]

A group with no shortage of masterpieces, but this is my current favorite.

[fange]

Ricky Allen - 'Cut You A-Loose'

[Stacy Heydon]

[rayge]

The best two doo-wop jump groups came from Chicago. i'll get around to the Flamingos later, but here's a fine mid-tempo number from the gloriously-named Harvey Fuqua and the guys. And how about that sax from Red Holloway?

[fange]

Great!