Southern Soul Cellar - Various CD33X

Somewhat different departure from Dome being a 2CD compilation by artists who define the term Southern Soul, compiled by radio presenter Peter Young, and licensed from the awesome Malaco catalogue and released on 24 June 2002.

Starting with the 4 track heavyweights on this compilation.

Firstly, Dorothy Moore, the big hit and still wonderful 'Misty Blue', the more commercial 'I believe you', the growing and beautiful 'You can't blame love' but the ever so special 'Girl Overboard', sort of slow but grooving and oozing with Soul.

Johnny Taylor including one I have been playing out for some time now, quality personified, 'Lets get back on track', which also saw the light of day on a recent Solar Compilation. The bluesy 'Too Late to try to do right'. 'I found a love' is Johnnie Taylor meets Wilson Picket, and finally meeting the Blues on 'Last two dollars'

Shirley Brown, I don't have favourite artists because I prefer particular tracks, but if I did Shirley Brown would be up there amongst them. One of the tracks is the duet with Bobby Womack Ain't nothing like the loving we got, which, with both of them being instantly recognisable, should be a stone cold cert, but in reality is a bog standard duet. 'Sticking by my man' however is better and more typical of Shirley's deep soul and protective lyrics. 'You ain't woman enough to take my man', the wonderful 'Woman to woman' follow up monologue, amusing but good and soulful also. 'Joy and Pain' also fairly typical but again it does hit the spot.

 Down to the 3 trackers, we have:-

Bobby Bland and his version of Ain't no sunshine, which works for me because it's such a good song and he has such a good voice, even when the style down to the 'ad-libs' are much the same as the original. 'Memphis Monday Morning' a dirge like ballad. 'I just tripped on a piece of your broken heart' is typical Bobby Bland, and this is the style of Bobby Bland that I love.

Latimore in a sense personifies 70's Southern Soul, here with the lilting, commercial 'Sunshine Lady' with groovy beat and sax breaks, 'You're sweetness is my weakness' is a pure heartfelt ballad. 'Lay another log on the fire', typical guitar work and vocal but 'personification' doesn't necessarily mean that it hits with me every time!

2 tracks by:-

Denise LaSalle, who I love, but I'm not sure that I would have picked either of these, the straight Southern Blues 'You're husband is cheatin on us' and the sultry 'When we're making love'

ZZ Hill 'Cheatin in the next room', that unmistakeble husky but tuneful tone and familiar style 'home' lyric. Lovely stuff and one of the highlights of the album. 'Someone else is steppin in' is harder and bluesier but still very much in style.

Tyrone Davis 'He'll never love you', a great, great track, mellow, midtempo, easy grooving, soulful. What more do you want. 'Call Tyrone' is not up to Tyrone's best standards.

Leaving:-

Lou Rawls 'You've got to move' is straight downhome blues, but with the twist of gospel harmonies.

ZZ's Friends 'Down Home Blues' is exactly that, probably fun but I don't really see the context of it here.

Mosley & Johnson ' Call Me' Northern Southern Soul I suppose in the ever popular duet style of say Eddie and Ernie, Sam & Bill and so on. Good stuff.

Mighty Sam 'Mr & Mrs Untrue', for lovers of pure deep soul, which I am, these are the ones that really grab you, building and building, then taking the beat away leaving the power of the vocal and the song, and building again.

Luther Ingram 'If loving you is wrong'. It's hard to recognise the songs that get you there and then and have an everlasting effect, the groundbreaking ones. For example 'All in my mind' by Maxine Brown is a record that for me is groundbreaking, but I can't possibly have recognised it as such at the time of release because I was a kid. It must've hit me later. But this Luther track is one that is and it did right then when it came out, and made me at that time dig very deep into this kind of material. Much music is superficial but when a track like this gets you know about it and you love it for life, and all the other stuff you unearth because of it.

GC Cameron 'Night like this in Georgia' with opening monologue typical of the time into deep and seriously downbeat ballad.

Denise Lasalle & Latimore 'Right Place wrong time', a competent but fairly routine ballad.

Little Milton 'Cheatin is a risky business' - 'Cheatin' being the commonest word on the Malaco discography! And Little Milton has recorded so much stuff but on the whole I like more than I don't and this falls on the right side of the line.

Fiestas 'I'm gonna hate myself', excellent group soul with husky baritone and falsetto lead interplays with haunting backing vocals, nice.

George Soule 'Talking 'bout love', probably best known for his funky get involved but this is excellent indeed and one of the oldest cuts on the album.

One small gripe and that is i would have liked to have seen more detail in the sleeve notes bout the cuts and the artists on the album. I'm not sure which is supposed to predominate, the fact that it is compiled by Peter Young, or that it is a showcase of 30 odd years of Malaco. Seemingly it is the former (due to the title) and the fact that Malaco do not get a mention on the front.

All in all a superb album. Of course, out of 34 I'm not going to like them all, but there are many outstanding cuts on here, a few well known but some not, a few (good) surprises, but in it's totality a well rounded delve into Southern Soul, and that's what we all need from time to time to lift our spirits down!