Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today. As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Paul Young, No Parlez: 40th Anniversary Edition (Edsel) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada) Edsel revisits Paul Young's 1983 debut LP in a 2CD deluxe gatefold edition. The first disc features the original LP while the second disc has 14 bonus cuts including 7- and 12-inch single versions and remixes. Barbara
Omnivore Recordings is celebrating legends of soul with a pair of two new releases. In just three albums recorded between 1971 and 1973, The Stylistics - a.k.a. lead singer Russell Thompkins, Jr., Airrion Love, Herb Murrell, James Dunn, and James Smith - positioned themselves at the vanguard of Philadelphia soul, introducing future pop and R&B standards such as "You Are Everything," "People Make the World Go Round" and "You Make Me Feel Brand New" with multi-hyphenate Thom Bell (serving
Cherry Red's long-running RPM imprint announced earlier this year that 2020 would be its final year of operations - but that hasn't kept RPM from going out with a bang. One of the final titles to arrive from the imprint, Right Back Where We Started From, is a joyous 3-CD celebration of Female Pop and Soul in Seventies Britain. The title is drawn from Maxine Nightingale's irresistibly bouncy 1975 single, a top ten entry in the United Kingdom and a top five in the States. Not every track on
Since its inception in 2013, Cherry Red’s Croydon Municipal label has reliably shed light on some of the least illuminated corners of the pre-Beatles pop world. Two recent releases - Such a Much: R&B Girls of the ‘50s and ‘60s and TV is the Thing: Fifties and Sixties Television Themes – continue in this tradition. Like many of Croydon’s releases, Such a Much features a blend of names both familiar (LaVern Baker, Little Esther, Etta James, Ruth Brown) and less familiar (Paula Grimes,
Though we've come to expect delightful and deeply soulful compilations from Ace's Kent label, one of Kent's latest is a particular trip: a trip, in fact, to the Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender. The 6Ts Rhythm and Soul Society has been throwing these bashes on a yearly basis since 1993, offering up plenty of dancing and some of the best names in soul music, among them Doris Troy, Barbara Lewis, Tommy Hunt, Bettye LaVette and Maxine Brown. Kent's The Cleethorpes Northern Soul Weekender,
It may have been sheer coincidence that Ace dropped I'll Do Anything: The Doris Troy Anthology 1960-1996 and Jackie DeShannon's Come and Get Me: The Complete Liberty and Imperial Singles Volume 2 on the same day. But different though these two singers may be, their similarities are striking. Both were pioneering female songwriters, with Troy penning her biggest hit, "Just One Look," and DeShannon offering up the likes of "When You Walk in the Room" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart." Both had
Interest in Doris Troy was piqued late last year, when her one LP for Apple Records was included in EMI's series of Apple reissues. Now, U.K. label Kent is offering fans another step in discovering the "Just One Look" singer on CD: I'll Do Anything: The Doris Troy Anthology 1960-1996. This heavily-packed single-disc anthology includes an equal amount of hits and rarities, from Troy's early years as a little-known soul singer on many small labels, to her beloved time on Atlantic in the