Over the past few years, Spanish boutique label SOUL4REAL has established itself as one of the world’s premier collectors’ reissue labels. Alex Subinas and his team have done this via a series of wonderfully curated 7” singles and one vinyl LP, ‘It Hurts So Good’ .That long player featured plenty of big soul names like Aretha, Dionne Warwick, Willie Hutch, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, Walter Jackson, Esther Phillips and James and Bobby Purify.
The good news is that Soul4Real is gearing up to release a second long player, ‘Win Or Lose’. This is a twelve tracker and once again there are plenty of star soul names in the line-up. The set opens with two great tunes from Bobby Bland, ‘For Men Only’ and ‘This Time I’ll Be True’. Both come from his classic Duke period when he was in his pomp and show why he is held in such esteem by real soul collectors. Van Morrison, we believe is a huge fan!
Then there are three cut from Etta James. There’s the jaunty ‘Can’t Seem To Shake It’, the searing ‘It’s Here For You’ and the sweeter but none the less soulful ‘I Never Meant To Love Him’ for which Ms James left Chicago for Philadelphia to record with Bobby Martin. The album’s A side closes with Fontella Bass’ ‘Joy Of Love’ – a classic Chess recording featuring the same musicians who played on tracks by people like Billy Stewart.
The LP’s six B side tracks are devoted to Motown rarities. There are two stunning David Ruffin cuts (‘One Lucky Day I Found You’ and ‘You Ought To Know Me’) and one each from the Velvelettes (a classic early Motown sound, ‘Your Heart Belongs To Me’), Johnny Bristol (‘Tell Me How To Forget A True Love’), Brenda Holloway (her take on ‘Love Woke Me Up This Morning’) and Marvin Gaye (his ballad ‘I Wish I Didn’t Love You’ is a lovely finale to this wonderful collection).
The Soul4Real crew tell us that this soulful dozen were never released at time of recording (amazing when you hear the quality) but over the years a number of the tracks have been issued on CD compilations or digitally. So, now it’s so good to have all this delicious music delivered to us as it was meant to be – on vinyl. The album, as we’ve said, is ‘Win Or Lose’ – but there are no losers here, just 12 solid gold soul winners!
We believe that the release date is 15th July, but pre-orders are being taken. Learn more @ https://soul4real.es/
