고정 헤더 영역
상세 컨텐츠
본문
/robinson%20smokey123.jpg "Robinson")
If you go by typical album canons, you would think there were only a small handful of great soul albums by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield, and a couple live albums by James Brown and Sam Cooke. Considering the large scope of soul, that’s a pretty miniscule sample. The argument is that aside from some exceptions in the 70s, it was a singles based genre in which albums were haphazard collections of singles padded by filler. This is partly true, especially for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. He seemed to have little interest in issuing strong albums, spreading his best singles thin throughout several albums a year.
Two of his best studio albums, Think! (1960) and It’s A Mother (1969) are marred by out-dated tracks that clash with the revolutionary music. Sam Cooke and, during her nine album Columbia tenure, Aretha Franklin also suffered in varying degrees.It was a combination of that presumption, and the fact that Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971) and Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life (1976) were almost unanimously considered two of the greatest soul albums, that kept me from digging deeper for many years.
While both albums had some great lyrical moments, What’s Going On sounded to me like noodly supperclub music, with light jazz arrangements that reminded me of music from “The Love Boat” and meandering vocal tricks that try to distract from the lack of hooks and melodies. Songs had more musical highlights, but was bloated beyond redemption with sacharine, trite ballads. If that was the best soul had to offer, why bother digging deeper?
Youtube Smokey Robinson And The Miracles
My opinion of those albums have softened somewhat over the years, but I maintain that critics have put far too much importance on them, while unjustly ignoring the richness of talent bubbling beneath the hits.My revelation of how vast the soul catalog really is started in the early 90s with the incredible nine volume Stax box set, the Motown box, and brilliant collections issued by Atlantic/Rhino of Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge and Clarence Carter. With a properly blown mind, I ended up buying every album I could by favorites Aretha, Otis, Curtis and Al by the end of the decade. Peter Guralnick’s book Sweet Soul Music inspired me to pick of collections of O.V. Wright, James Carr, Don Covay, Garnett Mimms, Joe Tex and others.
After the binge of reissues, further treasures continued to be issued on CD for the first time throughout the 00s. That’s when I started realizing that even these so-called second tier artists had a lot more to offer outside the compilations, with deep album cuts that were just as good as some of the hits. With more albums in print than ever, and MP3s available of out of print albums, I’ve been able to hear more albums in the last few years than I had throughout the 90s. At least 18 years after picking up the earliest reissues, I finally feel like I have heard enough to come up with a useful list of 200 favorites. Hopefully this list will convince some who still think there are only five or six classics, that there are easily more than a couple hundred classics out there, with plenty more I still haven’t heard yet.In a just world, or at least at Fast ‘n’ Bulbous, Donny Hathaway, Terry Callier and Bill Withers stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Gaye and Wonder, and even surpass them at times.
Smokey Robinson And The Miracles Radio
Despite her range delving further into blues and jazz than most of the artists, Nina Simone gets her rightful place in the soul pantheon. Etta James and Irma Thomas’s Muscle Shoals sessions nearly rival Aretha’s best work. While recent hipster favorites Rozetta Johnson, Doris Duke, Shuggie Otis, Baby Huey, Betty Davis, Candi Staton, Bettye Swann and Swamp Dogg make the list, they don’t quite measure up to underrated albums by James Carr, Percy Sledge, Solomon Burke, Clarence Carter, O.V. Wright and Jimmy Hughes.
