Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records are tipping off 2017 with a slam dunk release! On February 3, we will be bringing Thom Bell's soulful, all-star soundtrack to The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - featuring The Spinners, The Four Tops, Loretta Lynn, Phyllis Hyman and more - to CD for the very first time in a newly expanded, remastered edition! The 1979 cult favorite film The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh featured an all-star team from the worlds of basketball and Hollywood - Julius "Dr. J"
Yesterday we told you about Second Disc Records' and Real Gone Music's July 1 release of Eddy Arnold's Chet Atkins and Lee Hazlewood albums from 1970 and now we've got the news of the rest of Real Gone's line-up for right before Independence Day. First up is a compilation featuring notes by our very own Joe Marchese: 40 Classic Soul Sides from The Delfonics. When Stan Watson introduced a group (including brothers William and Wilbert Hart and Randy Cain) he was managing to a young Thom Bell
The O'Jays quietly began their association with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff on 1970's Neptune album In Philadelphia, announcing the Ohio group's shift to the City of Brotherly Love and its burgeoning soul scene. But there was nothing quiet about the opening track of Back Stabbers, the trio's first album for Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia International Records. "When the World's at Peace," by Gamble, Bunny Sigler and Phil Hurtt, imagined a time "when it's safe to walk the streets/when we learn
When The Spinners left Motown Records after nearly a decade, the vocal group had never scored a Top 10 Pop hit. They'd come this close in 1970 with the irresistible, Stevie Wonder-penned "It's a Shame" (No. 14) - one of many fine tracks recorded for Berry Gordy's empire that, for one reason or another, never crossed The Spinners over to major stardom. That all changed when Thom Bell - the multi-hyphenate musician, producer, songwriter, arranger and conductor - declared that he wished to
In just three albums recorded between 1971 and 1973, The Stylistics 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 as producer, arranger, conductor, and composer!) and lyricist Linda Creed. Though Bell parted ways with the group to turn his attentions to The Spinners, ending their hit streak, The
We need to go back to the songs we used to sing... - Nickolas Ashford and Valarie Simpson, “We Need to Go Back” What’s remarkable about the 19 outtakes on Dionne Warwick’s We Need to Go Back: The Unissued Warner Bros. Masters (Real Gone Music RGM-0170) is that they’re every bit as good as – and in many cases, superior to - the music actually released during Warwick’s stormy five-year stay at the label. Every one of the soulful stylist’s Warner albums is represented with outtakes save 1972’s
Dionne Warwick’s 1972-1977 tenure at Warner Bros. Records has long been a subject of much confusion. Why couldn’t the Burbank giant yield any hit records with the superstar artist after signing her to a record-breaking deal? Sure, the “triangle marriage” of Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David was breaking up, but Warner paired her with some of the most famed names in soul music: Holland-Dozier-Holland, Jerry Ragovoy, and Thom Bell among them. Bell scored a hit for Warwick with “Then Came
When Dionne Warwick signed on the dotted line with Warner Bros. Records, the possibilities must have seemed endless. The singer had embraced change, after all. A new decade was in its infancy. She had traded a feisty New York independent (Scepter) for a Burbank giant. She had even added an "e" to her surname on the advice of an astrologer. And although the exact amount wasn't disclosed, Warwick had reportedly signed the biggest deal ever for a female vocalist. What didn't change, at least
When Dick Jensen was signed to ABC’s Probe Records label in 1969, only one album title seemed appropriate: White Hot Soul. The Hawaiian-born entertainer’s stage moves earned him comparisons to James Brown and Jackie Wilson, while his voice recalled the booming sonorities of Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck. Tucked away on Side Two of that Don Costa-produced LP, Jensen included The Soul Survivors’ “Expressway to Your Heart” as part of a medley. That 1967 Top 5 hit, of course, was written by