Europe’s brand-leading boutique, vinyl soul label, SOUL4REAL, continues its dalliance with albums with this new one – a superb, properly soulful 14 track compilation of music trawled from the 60s and 70s vaults of Atlantic and Atco.
The long player is named for the included Darrell Banks’ version of the Gerald Sims penned ‘Here Come The Tears’. This classic Chicago ballad was first recorded by the incomparable Gene Chandler but here Banks puts his own, tougher spin on it.
As the song gives it name to the whole album, you’d assume that the rest of the music is in the same “deep” vein and by and large it is. So if you fancy some mournful, reflective moments try Wilson Pickett’s ‘I’ve Come A Long Way’ (a Bobby Womack song, by the way), Barbara Lynn’s ‘Until Then I’ll Suffer’, Bettye Swann’s ‘It’s Time To Say Goodbye’, Dee Dee Warwick’s ‘What Manner Of Man’ or Judy Clay’s almost funerary reading of the Theola Kilgore classic ‘The Love Of My Man’.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom; the collection delivers some lighter music moments like the Dynells’ ever-lovely ‘Call On Me’ and the Drifters’ version of the O’Jays’ ‘I Dig Your Act’ – a real collectors’ items that was thought to have been lost.
The other featured artists are Willie Tee, Barbare Lewis, Sam and Dave, Doris Troy, the Isley Brothers and someone called Aretha Franklin! Not a lightweight amongst them! Soul quality guaranteed!
Previous Soul4Real albums have all sold out – this one is bound to go the same way. Don’t want to miss out? Learn more about pre-orders @ www.soul4real.es
(BB) 4/5
