The key recordings of the greatest southern soul singer of all time.
Her debut album reissued at last, as a deluxe HIQLP. The CD comes in a Japanese-style, rigid-card sleeve.
Utterly unmissable.

Outstanding Goldwax soul, unreleased at the time.
A once-bitten-twice-shy wailer, backed with some rocking Northern.

‘Two tracks from early 70s Los Angeles, around the time of his eponymous first LP. Say You is a superb updating of the Monitors’ harmony hit from 1965, given the distinctively sensitive McNeir treatment. I’m Sorry is a self-penned slow-burner that builds a perfect dancefloor beat.’

Hip dance sides and Lowrider ballads from Darrow’s Chicago years.
From his career-opening smash The Pain Gets A Little Deeper, via Northern dancefloor classics like My Young Misery, Infatuation and Gotta Draw The Line, and ballads like Sitting There That Night and My Judgement Day, through to the new social consciousness of Now Is The Time For Love, recorded in 1971 for his step-dad Johnnie Haygood’s Genna label.

Funky mid-tempo sister soul, recorded at Dave Hamilton’s studio in Detroit. (Plus Little Ann’s tribute to the producer, on the flip.)

This time coupled with an unedited version of his crossover modern dancer It’s No Mistake.

‘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.’