I grew up listening to Soul Music (mostly in the 1960s) so this 3-CD set provided a lot of memories. But, it also provided a few surprises. I was familiar with James & Bobby Purify’s “I’m Your Puppet” (a Top 10 hit in 1966), but I’d never heard Dionne Warwick’s version before I listened to these CDs. It was very good.
For irony, there’s Ike and Tina Turner’s “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” (it didn’t for them). And, for a classic One Hit Wonder, there’s Fontella Bass’s “Rescue Me.” The only head-scratcher is “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las which I don’t consider a Soul song.
James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave, Dionne Warwick, Wilson Pickett, The Shirelles, Otis Redding, Martha Reeves, and many others from that 1960s era provide some sweet soul music on this 3-CD set. Are any of your favorites here? GRADE: B+
TRACK LIST:
| 1 | –Percy Sledge | When A Man Loves A Woman | 2:53 |
| 2 | –Aretha Franklin | I Say A Little Prayer | 3:30 |
| 3 | –Martha Reeves & The Vandellas | Dancing In The Street | 2:36 |
| 4 | –Jackie Wilson | Reet Petite | 2:43 |
| 5 | –Sam Cooke | Only Sixteen | 1:54 |
| 6 | –Billy Stewart | Summertime | 2:41 |
| 7 | –Ben E King* | Spanish Harlem | 2:56 |
| 8 | –Otis Redding | Satisfaction | 2:42 |
| 9 | –Wilson Pickett | If You Need Me | 2:31 |
| 10 | –Big Dee Irwin + Little Eva | Swinging On A Star | 2:23 |
| 11 | –Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes* | If You Don’t Know Me By Now | 3:30 |
| 12 | –Ike & Tina Turner | Somebody Somewhere Needs You | 2:33 |
| 13 | –Dionne Warwick | I’m Your Puppet | 2:59 |
| 14 | –The Staple Singers | Let’s Do It Again | 3:28 |
TRACK LIST:
| 1 | –Ben E. King | Stand By Me | |
| 2 | –Aretha Franklin | You Make Me Feel (Like A Natural Woman) | |
| 3 | –Lee Dorsey | Holy Cow | |
| 4 | –Sam & Dave | Soul Man | |
| 5 | –Jackie Wilson | Higher & Higher | |
| 6 | –Percy Sledge | My Special Prayer | |
| 7 | –Martha Reeves | Heatwave | |
| 8 | –The Tams | Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me | |
| 9 | –Soul Survivors | Expressway To Your Heart | |
| 10 | –Sam Cooke | You Send Me | |
| 11 | –Ike & Tina Turner | It’s Gonna Work Out Fine | |
| 12 | –Dionne Warwick | Who Gets The Guy | |
| 13 | –Wilson Pickett | Down To My Last Heartbreak | |
| 14 | –Otis Redding | I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) |
TRACK LIST:
| 1 | –Fontella Bass | Rescue Me | |
| 2 | –Aretha Franklin | Chain Of Fools | |
| 3 | –The Shangri-Las | Leader Of The Pack | |
| 4 | –Otis Redding | Shake | |
| 5 | –Jackie Wilson | Doggin’ Around | |
| 6 | –Sam Cooke | Everybody Likes To Cha Cha Cha | |
| 7 | –Percy Sledge | Take Time To Know Her | |
| 8 | –Harold Melvin And The Blue Notes | Wake Up Everybody | |
| 9 | –James Brown | You Can’t Keep A Good Man Down | |
| 10 | –Sam & Dave | Sweet Soul Music | |
| 11 | –Ramsey Lewis | The “In” Crowd | |
| 12 | –Archie Bell & The Drells | Tighten Up | |
| 13 | –The Shirelles | Foolish Little Girl | |
| 14 | –Dionne Warwick | Only Love Can Break A Heart |
I like most of the stuff here. Although I could do without Swinging On a Star and Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha (no that don’t). You are right about Leader of the Pack . I also question Expressway to Your Heart by the Soul Survivors. I would have picked a better song by the Shirelles. I never liked Summertime by Nilly Stewart or Otis Redding’s version of Satisfaction. But overall a good selection.
Steve, you’re right about the dubious choices like that song by The Shirelles (they had bigger hits) and “Expressway to Your Heart.” But other than a few clunkers, I think this set is pretty good.
I also always associated Only Love Can Break a Heart with Gene Pitney.
Steve, I love Gene Pitney’s version of “Only Love Can Break a Heart” but Dionne Warwick does a nice job. Warwick was a favorite of Burt Bacharach and Hal David (who wrote “Only Love Can Break a Heart”). I have a whole CD of Dionne Warwick singing Bacharach/David songs. Classics!
I agree. Dusty Springfield also did several Bacharach/David songs, like “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” (also Warwick, though Dusty had the bigger hit), “Wishin’ and Hopin'” (Warwick recorded it first but Springfield had the hit) and “The Look of Love.”
I love Gene Pitney and listen to his Greatest Hits frequently.
Jeff, Gene Pitney sang a number of Bacharach/David songs, too. I remember being surprised to learn that Bacharach and David wrote “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
I like a good number of the songs here—especially Billy Stewart’s “Summertime” (my favorite version of that much-recorded song) and Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.” For NL Ike many similar collections, where it appears the record company was just cleaning out the vaults and throwing songs onto the collection with no rhyme or reason, these songs actually do seem to make sense—a good representation of (non-Motown) soul & R&B music.
For NL like=Unlike.
/My fingers really are slipping this morning!
Deb, our wind chills are hovering around ZERO this morning so all of our fingers are frozen!
Deb, you’re right about the hodge-podge selection process on these CDs. But, there are enough good songs on these discs to make them listenable.
Some of these songs I remember from the wild times when I was a student in the 60s. I was a big fan of the girl groups and the Phil Spector “Wall of Sound” – that was a kind of compensation for the folk rock that we also listened to.
As I’ve written before we were lucky to be able to tune to American Forces Network and the English program of Radio Luxemburg (only after the sun went down – on AM in horrible quality) while AFN had a very good sound on FM.
Later, when I had a job in the 70s, I bought as much as I could find of this stuff – like Spector’s collection:
Back to Mono
So I couldn’t say which one of these was my favourite.
And then of course I had the chance in the 80s to see Tina Turner live …
You should have heard and seen the audience when suddenly David Bowie appeared on stage for “Tonight” – such fond memories.
Wolf, I also had a copy of BACK TO MONO in my record collection! Loved THE WALL OF SOUND. Phil Spector died last week after behaving badly during the last years of his Life.
I generally like the ones I’m familiar with, which is a bit over half, but my musical taste has always tended more toward rock than soul. I’d say this compilation does a much better job with soul than any of the ones featured here that covered the rock of that era. Most of them have been pretty dreadful.
Michael, the helther-skelter music aspects of many of these compilation CDs produce a lot of duds as “filler.” But, sometimes I run across a set like SWEET SOUL MUSIC that’s fun to listen to.
I’m writing this before reading any of the comments. Naturally, this is MY music (as my mother in law used to say).
OK, starting from the bottom: “Sweet Soul Music” was by Arthur Conley, a protege of Otis Redding. Never heard the Sam & Dave version. Conley died of cancer at 57.
I’ve always been a big fan of The Shirelles. We’ve seen them (and Shirley Alston Reeves) many times in concert.
“Hi, I’m Archie Bell and the Drells, of Houston, Texas,
And we don’t only sing, we dance as good as we walk.”
Classic.
“Chain of Fools” is a favorite Aretha. Ditto “Natural Woman.” I agree on the Shangri-Las. I just listened to Sam Cooke’s Greatest Hits (which starts with gospel and ends with “A Change is Gonna Come”) and had “Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha” going through my head for two days!
Yes, “Rescue Me” was a one hit wonder song, but they are still playing it 55 years later! I’ve mentioned before (at least to Deb), that a few years after we moved here, we went to a free 4th of July concert down the road at the Fort Hamilton Army Base because Fontella Bass was the headliner! Sadly, she didn’t sing “Rescue Me.”
More great songs in the second one: Heat Wave, Higher & Higher, Soul Man, You Send Me, and the great I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, one of my all-time favorite Otis Redding songs. Great live version in MONTEREY POP. Stand By Me is ubiquitous. There is a very good version of “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” by Linda Ronstadt & James Taylor (surprisingly) too.
First CD favorites: Summertime (I know this is a favorite of Deb’s too), When a Man Loves a Woman (almost as ubiquitous as Stand By Me). I never liked that version of Swinging on a Star.
Overall, good one!
Jeff, I’m a big fan of “Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass. I wish she had hit the charts with more hits. The same goes for Archie Bell and the Drells. Sam Cooke was brilliant and his career was cut short tragically.
Fontella Bass did a number of good recordings, though…you just won’t hear them on nearly any radio.
Good to see Archie Bell & the Drells (“we don’t only sing, but we dance just as good as we walk”), Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the Tams, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Lee Dorsey. One of my car-pool friends many years ago once referred to “beach music,” and when I asked if she meant the Beach Boys, she said no, for her growing up in the South, “beach music” meant the Tams and other groups (black and white) associated with venues in Myrtle Beach. I may be the only person who favors “Take Time to Know Her” over “When a Man Loves a Woman.” For a good wide-ranging if decade-limited Soul series, it would be hard to beat Rhino’s “Didn’t It blow Your Mind” CD set.
Fred, I’ve eyed Rhino’s DIDN’T BLOW YOUR MIND 20-CD set but it’s a bit pricey. Even the 5-CD reduced set, CAN YOU DIG IT? – The 70’s SOUL EXPERIENCE, is going for $280 on AMAZON.
This is my music too. I listened to these songs endlessly as a teenager. And I remember the lyrics so well. If only they had put Shakespeare’s sonnets to music, I would have them in my head too.
Patti, like you I listened to these songs endlessly on my transistor radio. They’re engraved in my brain.
You must have had a transistor radio when you were young! I got mine, and took it to the beach (Newport, Huntington, Laguna) about the time of the British Invasion.
Rick, I got a transistor radio for my Birthday in 1959. It was playing constantly for the next few years until it stopped working and I bought a bigger better model.
In David Halberstam’s book, THE FIFTIES, he maintains that the transistor radio led to the “youth culture” of the 1960s and what essentially became segregation of the generations after that. Before transistors, there was one big radio in the house and everyone listened to the same music (or radio plays, news, soap operas, etc.), but with the portability and small size of the transistor, teens were about to take their music everywhere, and radio stations and record companies obliged. As I often say about the pop charts from the 1950s and 1960s, we’ll never see that mix of different styles, genres, and artists on one chart ever again.
Deb, excellent analysis! I agree that the Sixties features an incredible mix of musical styles. And, Halberstam’s right about the “family” radio being replaced by portable transistor radios. Of course, the TV took the place of the family radio.
I only had a transistor radio with headphones and the horrible AM programs, operetta and German folk music, no FM, no Rock or Soul …
So what did I do?
I built a small transistorised AM transmitter (illegal of course, but really low power, so no one farther away could tune to it ) and coupled it with my tape recorder or the FM radio in my room.
And then with my headphones on I went out into the garden to help my parents …
Bbw Leader of the pack was my favourite besides will you still love me tomorrow.
A bit OT:
Later I read up on the 60s music scene, learned about Phil Spector, the Brill Building, Carol King (one of my favourites) etc.
What I found really interesting was the teamwork of many young Blacks and Jews in NYC eg.
Wolf, you are truly a clever guy! I tried to build my own radio as a kid…and failed miserably. Fortunately, transistor radios arrived to save the day!
Re Rick’s beach comment, it was a well known phenomenon that if you went to the beach at Coney Island or Rockaway or other New York beaches in the mid-60s, you could walk from blanket to blanket from where you were sitting to the ocean (trying to avoid the hot sand as much as possible) and would hear the same song on every radio as you passed by. I preferred WMCA (“The Good Guys”) but WABC had the 50,000 watt transmitter and was the powerhouse station.
Jeff, we could receive WABC in Buffalo on a clear night!
Back in the day I listened to rock and folk music, shunning soul,and Motown. But back in the day I was pretty young and stupid and I now appreciate what I so blithely ignored in the past.
Some great songs and some great artists here, although LEADER OF THE PACK, really? I could also do without TIGHTEN UP and EXPRESSWAY TO YOUR HEART. For the most part, a decent and eclectic selection.
Jerry, I agree with you with some of the unfortunate choices on these CDs. But, all in all, there’s enough good songs to outweigh the clunkers.
Jerry, I was lucky in at least two ways…I never learned to ignore any music, nor dismiss it out of hand (though inane music of various sorts and badly-recorded or -conceive elevator music has tended to get on my nerves…certainly nearly all jingles)…and I had the run of my parents record collection and playback equipment, and even a hand-me-down 1970 Panasonic AM/FM/turntable set to go along with a similarly displaced 1967 black and white portable tv in my bedroom starting in ’75, when my father, a mildly invested music gadget guy, upgraded slightly in about ’77. Neither lasted Too long after that, but I put them to use, Would mostly watch the Hughes Rudd era CBS MORNING NEWS while getting ready for school, and late night b&w movies on weekends particularly. along with SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and WEEKEND and MONTY PYTHON when I was sleepy enough to quit the downstairs big tv after a certain hour.
And I spun the dials to find a few good radio shows, and played my parents’ records, when they had, way too readily, given themselves over to Muzak with rare exceptions. Why my mother the early rocker and my father the jazz and classical fan after exposure to them in the Air Force barracks could settle for difficult listening, I’m not sure, but my enthusiasm for some of their older music and reaching out for more and newer eventually got them using their ears again, in a slow curve. (Both of them had sorta kinda rebelled against country and bluegrass, from either end of the Appalachians as they were, but I didn’t…of course, I didn’t have it forced down my throat, and I was Not a fan of most of AOR/album-oriented rock of the Styx and Journey ilk that were to a limited extent, while finding scattered bits there to enjoy…Foreigner as usually the least worst of the faceless AOR bands, or Boston at times, etc…and, as you folks probably remember, even early ’70s pop radio/top 40 wasn’t nearly as rigid as it would become, and played the Top 40 more or less in toto, which would be rock-dominated but sometimes the rock bands were War and Steely Dan and the Chi-Lites and Chi Coltrane, and so on…with even an occasional folk song.
Interesting 3 CD set, listenable enough though quite a few I’d skip past.
Rick, these compilation CDs always have a few duds mixed in with classic songs.
I need to listen to more music, but it’s all downstairs and I’ve gotten down just once, yesterday, since my return home.
Rick, maybe you need a transistor radio…
I love — I mean really LOVE — ONLY SIXTEEN.” If I were President, they’d play that instead of HAIL TO THE CHIEF.
(That’s my platform; I hope I can count on your vote.)
But how can you call it Soul Music?
Dan, obviously “Soul” is an elastic concept for pop songs.
Less elastic than this, but the labeling gets a bit sloppy when it’s a bargain-basement compilation. “Leader of the Pack” presumably came cheap and would catch the eye of girl-group fans. And a lot of people who would pick a compilation with the Vandellas and the Shirelles are going to be a bit fond of other sorts of choruses from the same era–the Shangri-Las’ tough girl image probably made them cross over more than some of the others.
Todd, I sure you’re correct about the change of events that led to “Leader of the Pack” being included in this compilation. Money talks.