LET'S GET IT ON! It's the ~~~ 1970s SOUL ALBUMS POLL ~~~ NOMINATIONS AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD

Marcos: The constantly updated RYM list is the longlist to vote from. No need to nominate the nominations :)

The voting period will be one week only (October 7-14), rollout soon after that.

cool thnaks!

The only GSH I've heard yet is a few songs off Pieces of a Man, but I felt the opening track >>>> the rest. Do you have any particular favorites from those albums?

the Bottle
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Lady Day and John Coltrane
Home is Where the Hatred Is
Did You Hear What They Said?

My favourite is the Midnight Band one - First Minute of A New Day. It doesn't look like it's listed as it goes. Can we add it please?

I'll do that tomorrow morning, off to bed now.

From South Africa to South Carolina is my favorite of the GSH-Brian Jackson albums

The only GSH I've heard yet is a few songs off Pieces of a Man, but I felt the opening track >>>> the rest. Do you have any particular favorites from those albums?

― ArchCarrier

You need this in your life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpNUqNe0U5g

Also Outic recommendations are pretty much his best songs.

I made a thread about my favorite soul from this period btw: lush post-1970 soul music from motown / tamala / atlantic is the best shit ever

I don't think there's any controversy regarding Tim Maia as a soul artist is there? If you don't know his Racional series you should take a listen it's pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPEbJ2nk16g

James Brown - There It Is

7/10

I made a thread about my favorite soul from this period btw

Am I the only one to consider The Delfonics debut sort of epochal? It is schmaltzy at places but that only undercuts how beautiful the stuff that works is. It's like hearing something new and amazing come out of the most unlikely places. Thom Bell made sterile, over the top soul heavenly for the first time imo. The Stylistics albums are better but they are fully formed. I find the tension in La La Means I Love You fascinating. Hope I can get into the self titled more by the time voting starts. It never grabbed me as much.

*underlines not undercuts obviously

~~~ Nominations updated ~~~

Rose Banks - Rose

James Brown - There It Is

YES!!! What a great record.

My favorite Brown.

Update: The Delfonics self titled is pretty af

xps pretty much all GSH albums from the 70s are excellent imo

Like the Delfonics but love the Stylistics. "People Make the World Go Round" is absolutely amazing.

I totally agree. It just keeps going, so great.

At the moment I'm completely (or should I say 'stone'?) in love with 'Peek-a-Boo'. From reading the lyrics of the chorus ("Peek-a-boo / Guess who's watching you?") you'd expect some Rockwell-type of cokey paranoia, but the sweetness of the Stylistics makes it even more creepier.

Oh, and rushomancy: the word about 'Mystic Syster' is spreading. From the Eddy Grant thread:

Mystic Syster: holy shit!
― hardcore dilettante, Tuesday, September 27, 2016 6:37 AM (nine hours ago)

I'm only listening to the namesake album for the first time, but this track is just gorgeous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HhV3Slqtvw

Best thing about 'Peek-a-boo' is the way they put the emphasis on 'boo-hoo' instead of on 'pea-heak', which is what you (or I at least) would expect.

Last night, I was just reading about Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in John A. Jackson's A House on Fire: The Rise and Fall of Philadelphia Soul. I liked this quote about how Gamble & Huff picked the right material for the groups the produced:

The surprise success of the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes album stemmed from the stirring combination of the voices of the group, the arrangements of Bobby Martin and Thom Bell, and the production of Gamble and Huff. It was also due in part to Gamble and Huff’s uncanny knack of recognizing what type of music a certain artist, and a particular set of circumstances, warranted. In this instance, it meant eliciting an entire album of ballads from a group that thrived on the varied repertoire of song styles offered in their stage act. “Imagine that!” marveled Bernard Wilson thirty years later. “We wouldn’t have done it like that.” We Blue Notes, he said, “didn’t know we were a ballad group” and would have put several “fast tunes” on the album. Most surprising, Wilson claimed that if the group had chosen the album’s songs, “If You Don’t Know Me by Now” would not have survived the final cut. “Shows you how much we knew!” chuckled the singer.

That book comes highly recommended BTW.

After reading about the sad fate of Billy Paul I want to give a shout-out to the opening track of Going East:
https://youtu.be/lFIfzOy0v7Q
(unfortunately the rest of the album didn't grab me the way this one did).

I also really like his cover of 'Your Song':
https://youtu.be/DbgYUj3jQoI

"Oh, and rushomancy: the word about 'Mystic Syster' is spreading."

glad to hear it, though not surprised- once you hear the record it basically sells itself. :)

Soul and Funk is impossible to choose... I'm going through the 'deeper' cuts in my collection and everything sounds good... I don't think I'll ever complete a top 100... Top 500 mayhaps and that's without counting all the treasures in the genres which I don't know about.

I understand why there's so many house and techno tracks... it's usually a one man job and you don't need studio time to make and release music whenever you want, but how in the hell are there so many soul and funk singles in the 60s and 70s!? Distribution wasn't that easy back then and you definitely need a studio to record soul and funk. There's still lost albums and singles from the decade coming out today and they sound expensive! Thousands of garage rock gems being found doesn't surprise me, they might as well be demos that noone heard but when I hear a lost soul track from the 70's it rarely sounds cheap or homemade. I dont get it

Those Thom Bell groups are really special. Part of it is due to William Hart, Russell Thompkins and Bobby Smith being the best ad libbers in the game.

Album cover of the day:
http://i.imgur.com/tzpcquJ.jpg

And a few good full albums I found on YouTube the last couple of days:

Marlena Shaw ‎- Who Is This Bitch, Anyway

Atlas - Atlas (also an awesome cover!)

Marie Queenie Lyons - Soul Fever

Yvonne Fair - The Bitch Is Black

Roy C. - Sex And Soul

2nd Resurrection by the Stairsteps is pitched somewhere between Riot (murky and distant) and Talking Book (silly and pretty) but it might actually be better than both. Criminally underdiscussed.

I'll be voting for 2nd Resurrection. It's a masterpiece.

noms:

Free Life - s/t (1978)
Heatwave - Too Hot to Handle (1976)
Pleasure - Get to the Feeling (1978)
Pleasure - Future Now (1979)
Wood, Brass & Steel - s/t (1976)

5/10

I see I made a mistake in the date in my first post. The voting thread will open on Monday morning, October 10. So you have the whole weekend to sneak in any last-minute nominations.

Kool & the Gang - Wild and Peaceful (1973)
Kool & the Gang - Spirit of the Boogie (1975)
WAR - Galaxy (1977)

8/10

Bee Gees - Main Course (1975)

9/10

Someone please campaign for an oddball hidden classic along the lines of 2nd Resurrection or Dr. Buzzard while there's still time. If there are any of course.

Some of my favourite oddball hidden classics.

Milton Wright – Spaced
Greg Perry - Smokin'
Lou Ragland – He Says 'Understand Each Other”
Brick - Brick
The Voices of East Harlem – The Voices of East Harlem
Ace Spectrum – Inner Spectrum
Bloodstone – Bloodstone
Leroy Hutson – Love Oh Love
Rasputin's Stash - Rasputin's Stash

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

Sure. Also, I'm not sure if it counts as an oddball hidden classic as it is kind of well known, but if you don't know it I'd check out Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta. I already mentioned it earlier on this thread. It's likely to be my number one.

Couldn't see these on the nominations list:

The Jimmy Castor Bunch - It's Just Begun
The Jimmy Castor Bunch featuring The Everything Man - E-Man Groovin'
Beautiful Bend - Make That Feeling Come Again!
USA-European Connection - Come Into My Heart
Caress - Caress
First Choice - So Let Us Entertain You
Pleasure - Accept No Substitutes
Pleasure - Joyous
Fern Kinney - Groove Me
Donna Summer - Bad Girls

xxp I always lump Syreeta in with Minnie Riperton as a sort of spiritual soul that's just not for me. But I will relisten to that album before voting for sure. Digging Lou Ragland and Ace Spectrum from that list. Inner Spectrum is moving up the ranks of my hyperfalsetto favorites.

~~~ Nominations updated ~~~

I've given up on trying to listen to everything, because there's just SO MUCH good music here. I'm happy to have found some great albums already because of this thread, and voting hasn't even started!

Speaking of voting: I'm thinking of ballots with a minimum of 25 and a maximum of 100 albums.
Would it be OK if the top 25 of every ballot was weighted (say, #1 gets 30 points #2 gets 29... all the way to 6 points for #25) and everything below that unweighted, so that all the other votes on a ballot get 5 points?

I'm not sure what the consequences would be for the final results, but it would make counting definitely easier for me. Any thoughts?

Fine with that. Ranking after 25 in genre polls usually is sort of random. I like voting only for core favorites so the initial plan was to go just top 10 but I can see now that core favorites in this case really is 25 at minimum.