VARIOUS: New Breed Blues With Black Popcorn (Kent)

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Over the past few years more and more clubbers and dancers are turning to authentic R&B for their rug cutters and to help them out Ace/Kent have served them up a number of great compilations of appropriate material; ‘New Breed Blues And Black Popcorn’ is the latest in the series.

The 24 tracker features mainly unknown artists though there are one or two known names. Biggest of those is probably Little Johnny Taylor whose inclusion is the B-side to his biggest hit, ‘Part Time Love’, ‘Somewhere Down The Line’. But as is often the way with archive compilations like this, it’s the unknowns who steal the show. There are a number of standouts here but collectors will relish ‘I’m Comin’ Home’ from Bobby John with Jimmy Thomas, Stacey Johnson and Vernon Guy. The main point of interest here (apart from the long-winded artist list) is the fact that the song is a little known Curtis Mayfield composition. Mayfield wrote it at the behest of Ike Turner who used it on his protégé, Bobby John and it comes out a hybrid mix of Mayfield’s Chicago sophistication and New Orleans (where it was recorded) quirkiness. Indeed that’s the beauty of the collection; it throws up all kinds of pleasing oddities… like Carl Edmondson and the Charmaines’ version of the blues standard ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ and Adolph Jacobs’ ‘Cannibal Stew’ That one (full of black humour and “yum-yum” effects) sounds like prime time Coasters; little wonder – it appears that Jacobs had been the Coasters long-serving guitarist.

R&B addicts have been well-served by Ace/Kent…. here’s another corker from them.

(BB) 3/5