Guaranteed to put a beam on your bean and a glide in your stride, the DVD here compiles moments from a local 1982 TV show, broadcast live from a club called The CopHerBox. It’s pleasurable enough just watching people get down so naturally, in a real-life club… but you also get ventriloquists, contortionists, body-builders, impersonators, ‘the full-figured ladies fashion show’, comedy sketches, android group-dancing to techno, rubber chickens… and bands like Universal Togetherness miming to their latest records. There’s also a mini-documentary, complete with Phil Cohran section; and twenty-three full musical performances. (Finally the Dingwalls posse gets a glimpse of Luba Raushiek in action.)
The CD and vinyls are culled from a trove of self-released 45s and small-time twelves; a die-cut cathode-ray jacket and six in-package stills are your tickets and souvenirs.
Great fun.

‘The twentieth volume of our flagship series has all the boxes checked: gun-toting record producers, child stars, rip-offs, ‘The World’s Greatest Bail Bondsman’, soaring falsettos, and a dwindling rust-belt cityscape offering mere glimpses of hope before the record industry escaped for the coasts. Helmed by the O’Jays Bobby Massey, Saru was a creative vortex pulling into Cleveland the best talent in Cuyahoga County — the Out of Sights, the Elements, Pandella Kelly, David Peoples, Sir Stanley, the Ponderosa Twins + 1, Ba-Roz, Bobby Dukes and — of course — The O’Jays.’

‘Pied Piper Productions was a group of Detroit arrangers, writers, artists and musicians who unwittingly drew up the blueprints of Northern Soul, during their brief time together in 1965-1967. Mainstays Jack Ashford, Mike Terry, Joe Hunter and Herbie Williams were original members of Motown studio crew the Funk Brothers. This compilation features some of the biggest Northern Soul discoveries of recent times —like Nancy Wilcox and September Jones — alongside established favourites and other rarities.’

Utterly magnificent, sublimely soulful survey of the Gospel Roots label, subsidiary of the mighty TK Records at the height of the Miami Sound.
A&R was co-ordinated by Gospel legends Ira Tucker — from the Dixie Hummingbirds — and Ralph Bass, veteran producer with Savoy, King and Chess. The label was run by Timmy Thomas, who had recently smashed with Why Can’t We Live Together, for another TK spin-off, Glades. Operations were overseen by Henry Stone himself, unlikely King of Disco, who had recorded a young Ray Charles, and pushed forward James Brown. They drew in artists from all over the US, from St. Louis, Columbus, Memphis, Brooklyn, Cabrini Green in Chicago: unknowns like Camille Doughty, reluctant to jeopardise her job at GM (‘Generous Motors’) in Detroit, and huge-sellers like the revered Brooklyn All Stars, who started out on Peacock in 1958.
Choral belters, deep ballads, harmony quartets, epic city-blues, gritty funk, powerhouse female soul… Killer-diller Philly like a scorching version of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ Wake Up Everybody; and Jean Austin’s raw Spirit Free, co-written by Ronnie Dyson, produced by Jesse James at Future Gold. Chicago Sound like The Fantastic Family Aires — named after the family’s furniture store on North Cicero, but reminiscent of the Staple Singers at their best — through to the full-blown glory of The Fountain Of Life Joy Choir, led by Marvin Yancy from The Independents, and featuring Natalie Cole… Singers like Versie Mae Gibson, from the Jordans, by rights up there with Irma, Etta and Ree… Bangers 100%-guaranteed to find their way into Theo Parrish sets; and mortal delirium for the prissiest of soul and gospel purists.
Beautifully presented… the LPs with a 12”-square, full-colour, sixteen-page album of photos and original artwork, the CD with a forty-page booklet — and truly outstanding notes, including insightful new interviews across the board; mastered at Abbey Road.
Dread and civitas, grit and transcendence.

Representing every Chess artist recording at Muscle Shoals, 1967-69. The likes of Etta James, Irma Thomas, Laura Lee, Bobby Moore and Mitty Collier, in the era of the studio’s second great rhythm section, the Swampers. Plenty of unfamiliar glories, and throwing in three instrumentals by Charles Chalmers and crew.