Golden Oldies Part 2

This is the second part of a two part series in which we raid the 27Leggies vaults and repost some of our early mp3s in order to bring them to a wider audience.

It is also likely to be my last post for a couple of weeks. BA cabin crew permitting, tomorrow I am off to Cape Town for a gathering of Gogginses. While there I will also do my best to track down some more Tsonga Disco to delight you with.

To tide you over, here are five blasts from the past:

• Some groovy psychedelic sounds from Peru.

"Suavecito" - Traffic Sound (1971)

• Some "freakbeat" (as they seem to call it these days) from Lebanon, which became a much covered garage band standard in Turkey. Also one of my favourite singles of all time.

"For Your Information" - The Cedars (1967)

• A bit of old hippy nonsense.

"Cosmic Surfer" - Quintessence (1972)

• A dancefloor filler from the forgotten king of South African soul.

"Freak Out With Botsotso" - Mpharanyana (197?)

• And finally, a treat from the wizard of whistle himself, Roger Whittaker. Our campaign to get him inducted into the International Whistling Hall of Fame never got very far. Maybe we would be more successful if we tried again now that we have a wider and more international readershp. Let me know if you are for it and I will get something organised. Can we do it? In the words of Barack Obama, yes we can.

"Mistral" - Roger Whittaker (1969)

And to finish, here's a real treat for you. Mr Randolph Rose with "La La La Love Song" back in 1975. In German. With a great tie. And a miserable looking woman in a floral dress giving him a rose. How can you fail to love it?


And if you thought that was good, his rendition of "Sylvia's Mutter" isn't. It peaks very early when he trips over his mike cable. This was put on to YouTube by a lady called Jelena. She has left the box in which you are meant to describe the video blank, so all it says is "Click to add a description". I can see why words failed her.


I feel a Randolph Rose season coming on... but you'll have to wait until I'm back. Have fun in the meantime.

Golden Oldies Part 1

When I started this blog in early 2009 the readership was very much about quality not quantity (as opposed to quality and quantity as it is these days). I was lucky if I got more than a handful of visits a day, and most of them were from me checking whether anyone else had wandered by.

Looking back at some of those early posts the other day it occurred to me that there was a lot of good music there that deserved a wider audience. So today and tomorrow I am re-posting a few of those early underground sounds - five per day. Today's selections are:

• Some home-made new wave sounds from Dorset. I went to school with some of the band - including the guitarist Mike Topp, one of the nicest men in rock - and lead singer Simon Barber went on to have minor indie success with The Chesterfields.

"Who Let The Flowers Fall?" - The Act (1981)

• A bit of 1960s British blue-eyed soul.

"The Painter" - Elmer Gantry (1969?)

• Cash sings Costello.

"The Big Light" - Johnny Cash (1987)

• A lost Southern Soul classic (if you want to know more, details are available courtesy of the magnificent Sir Shambling).

"Sunday Afternoon In Memphis" - Steve Dixon (1972)

• And some Teutonic titans of groove.

"Swinging London" - Hazy Osterwald Jet Set (196?)

That's it for today - tomorrow we bring you a Lebanese garage band, some South African funk and three other delights.

To play us out, and apropos of nothing at all, here are Althea and Donna:

Follies

Today we feature Christofolly & the Afro Beat Cookers. Who you ask? Let me elaborate by quoting from the biography page on his website, which I have converted from French to English with the help on Babelfish.

"Born in the Seventies in Lome in Togo, it types since very small on percussions with his friends, thus, they animated birthdays and funeral in company of groups of ballet of the district and around. At 17 years departure of Togo for a long voyage to the meeting of Africa and of its culture which during 13 years will lead it the Benign one to Nigeria and Cameroun, while passing by Ghana, the Dimension d' Ivory, Mali or Burkina Fasso. C is at 30 years it arrives to France to continue its musical adventure".

"Autodidact, the career of Folly is neither secured musicians neither griots nor, its school is that of the street, the practice and listen. Cracked, Manu Dibango, Salif Keita, James Brown, Youssou Ndour as many legends from which it knew to learn lesson and inspiration and who meetings in meetings led to its current project, AfroBeat Cookers".

I hope that clarifies the position. Here are a couple of tracks from Mr Folly's 2009 album "Afro Beat Rolling".

"Tchekoroba" - Christofolly & The Afro Beat Cookers

"Please, Please, Please" - Christofolly & The Afro Beat Cookers

On the subject of follies, here are a couple of moments from "Rock Follies" with Rula, Julie and the other one.

Showband Sunday

Better late than never, this is to mark St. Patrick's Day.

From the late 1950s to the mid 1970s the Irish live music scene was dominated by the showbands who toured the dancehalls playing the hits of the day, the occasional traditional song and - to paraphrase Donny and Marie - a little bit of country and a little bit of rock and roll. Well, quite a lot of country actually.

At the peak of the showband phenomenon in the mid 1960s it is estimated there were as many as 600 of them touring the country. The total population of Ireland in 1970 was just under three million, so that is roughly one showband for every five thousand people. Every small town had a dancehall. I imagine they looked a bit like this but with more hair and wider collars:



There is a three CD compilation called "The Irish Showband Collection", released on Pulse in 1998 and currently available for next to nothing on Amazon. It features all the big names - Joe Dolan and the Drifters, Dickie Rock and the Miami, The Capitol Showband, The Royal Blues and so on.

To properly appreciate the showbands I suppose you really had to be there, and to be honest a lot of the recordings haven't worn well. But in amongst the dull ballads and pedestrian country tunes there are some real pop gems:

"I Get So Excited" - The Real McCoy (1968)

"Our Love Will Go On" - Butch Moore & The Capitol Showband (1965)

"Land Of Gingerbread" - Gregory & The Cadets (1967)

And there are some that are just bizarre, like this rendition of "Football Crazy" in which the renowned Irish commentator Michael O'Hehir pretends to commentate on a Gaelic football match between the stars of the showband scene.

"Showball Crazy" - The Hoedowners (1966)

Some of the showbands struggled on into the 1980s and beyond, but judging by this clip of the once mighty Miami Showband it would really have been a kindness if someone had stopped them. It is embarrassing for them and embarrassing for us. And you would never have seen Dickie Rock with a mullet and a keytar.

Carpets!

I have just got back from a whistle-stop 36 hour visit to Vilnius in Lithuania. I had hoped to go hunting for some Lithuanian music but a combination of work and the excellent hospitality of my hosts meant I did not get the chance. Is that a collective sign of relief I hear?

Instead here a couple of tunes about carpets I picked up in Brussels earlier in the year - one from a flea market, and the other from Musicanova, the shop that specialises in Congolese CDs.

From the flea market comes a tatty 1971 single by Marc Hamilton from Quebec. The A-side, "Comme J'Ai Toujours Envie D'Aimer", is a pretty boring pop song - and a big hit in France and elsewhere - but the B-side is much more interesting. Apologies about the poor sound quality.

"Tapis Magique" (Magic Carpet) - Marc Hamilton

The second carpet song comes from King Kester Emeneya's 2002 CD, "Nouvel Ordre".

"Tapis Rouge" (Red Carpet) - King Kester Emeneya

I could not find any clips of carpet-based tunes on YouTube, so here instead are some young people cutting a rug.



Which is by way of warming you up for tomorrow's special feature - Showband Sunday!!!

Ladies 3: Catherine Howe

We interrupt our normal programming to deal with a request. Normally I don't let such things get in the way of my editorial integrity, but on this occasion I couldn't refuse. So this blast from the past goes out to Mrs J, in memory of Auntie Nonie. But the rest of you should feel free to sing along as well.

"Paper Roses" - The Kaye Sisters

Back to the plan for today, which is to highlight the work of Catherine Howe, an underrated and for many years overlooked British singer-singwriter from the 1970s. Fortunately for all of us she has been rediscovered in the last few years with the result that most of her albums are now relatively easily tracked down.

Catherine was born in Yorkshire in 1950 and started her entertainment career as an actress, including a stint in Patrick Troughton era Doctor Who. She released her first album, "What A Beautiful Place", in 1971 and it is a classic of its kind. It was re-released on Numero in 2006. Here's the opening track:

"Up North" - Catherine Howe (1971)

"What A Beautiful Place" did not attract a lot of attention at the time and her record company then went bust, so one way or another it was three years before she got another opportunity to record. She released two albums on RCA, "Harry" (1974) and "Silent Mother Nature" (1976), which were re-released on a single CD by BGO in 2007. "Harry" was the bigger hit but personally I much prefer "Silent Mother Nature". Here's the final track:

"You Make Me" - Catherine Howe (1976)

There was one more album, "Dragonfly Days", released on Ariola in 1978 and not currently available as far as I know. Then that was it until 2006 when, partly encouraged by the renewed interest in her, Catherine released a CD called "Princelet Street", named after the street in Spitalifields in London where her great-grandmother was raised. This was of great interest to me, not only because it was her comeback but because Princelet Street is about five minutes walk from where I live. The view on the album cover is very familiar to me.

"Princelet Street" was available via Catherine's website but appears to have sold out for the moment. However it is still available as a download on iTunes along with all the other albums apart from "Dragonfly Days".

That was where I had planned to end this post. But while checking on Amazon to see which albums were still available I was surprised and delighted to discover that just last week she released a new EP with Vo Fletcher. It is called "Going Home" and features this Fleet Foxes's cover:

"White Winter Hymnal" - Catherine Howe and Vo Fletcher (2010)

Frustratingly it turns out they did a free gig to promote the EP literally around the corner from me a couple of weeks ago and I knew nothing about it. However they have recorded a full album which is due out in April, so hopefully they will be doing some more gigs then.

In the meantime, here is a recent clip of them doing "Lucy Snowe", a song first recorded on "Silent Mother Nature". That is Ric Sanders of Fairport Convention on the fiddle.

Ladies 2: Mariem Hassan

Back by popular demand, here is the fabulous Mariem Hassan, the diva of the dispossessed people of the Western Sahara.

Today's selections come from her new CD, "Shouka". There is a lot of great stuff on there, and "Alu Ummi" is pretty much guaranteed a place on my end of year "best of" list regardless of whatever else may come along in between times.

"Alu Ummi" - Mariem Hassan

"Ala Ahd Shaid" - Mariem Hassan

And speaking of divas:

Ladies 1: Ellen Foley

In Brick Lane the other day I managed to pick up for the princely sum of £2 a near mint vinyl copy of "Spirit Of St. Louis", the 1981 album by Ellen Foley.

Ellen Foley is probably still best known as Meat Loaf's sparring partner on "Paradise By The Dashboard Light". After that she got her debut album produced by Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson. By 1981 she had got hip to the modern scene and was canoodling with Mick Jones of The Clash. On this album he roped in the gang to help her out - and therein lies the main interest in the album, at least for me.

The Clash and their mates were very heavily involved. The album was produced by Jones (or "My Boyfriend" as he is referred to on the sleeve notes - yuck), and six of the twelve tracks are credited to Strummer/ Jones. Three of the others were written by Tymon Dogg - a mate of Joe Strummer's who later joined him in The Mescaleros - including "Beautiful Waste Of Time", by some distance the pick of the non Strummer/Jones numbers.

The musicians are only identified by their first names on the sleeve notes but I think we can work out who Joe, Mick, Paul and Topper are. And Tymon on violin. Mickey on keyboards, Norman on bass and Davey on sax must be Mickey Gallagher, Norman Watt-Roy and Davey Payne from The Blockheads (Gallagher knowing The Clash well havng played on "London Calling" and "Sandanista"). The only one I can't work out is "J.G.T on guitar" but, given the involvement of other Blockheads, it could conceivably be John Turnbull.

"Spirit of St. Louis" is by no means a lost classic but it is well worth a listen, especially if you are a Clash fan. Or, on these two Strummer/ Jones compositions, a T. Rex or Roy Orbison fan.

"M.P.H." - Ellen Foley

"In The Killing Hour" - Ellen Foley

Here is a clip of Ellen still at it in 2008 and claiming that "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" was written about her. Who knows, it may even be true.

A Pair Of Nicos

Today we bring you a tale of two Nicos - one a doctor, one a prince.

Dr Nico (real name: Nico Kasanda) was a Congolese guitarist who was one of the pioneers of the soukous sound. He started his career in the 1950s with Grand Kalle et L'Africain Jazz, but left in 1963 to form L'African Fiesta with legendary singer Tabu Ley Rochereau. Tabu Ley in turn left in 1965 but Dr Nico kept the band going until 1973. Apparently he developed a bit of an alcohol problem in later life which led to his premature death in a Belgian hospital in 1985 at the age of 46.

I picked up a compilation of his 1967-69 recordings while in Brussels early in the year. To be honest it doesn't really do much for me, but I do like this rendition of the Percy Sledge standard.

"When A Man Loves A Woman" - Dr. Nico & L'African Fiesta

Much more my sort of thing is Prince Nico Mbarga, leader of Rocafil Jazz, whose "Sweet Mother" is one of the biggest selling singles ever on the African continent, having sold over 13 million copies since its release in 1976. This track was on the "Sweet Mother" LP.

"Aki Special" - Prince Nico Mbarga & Rocafil Jazz

Prince Nico had a Nigerian mother and Cameroonian father and these influences were reflected in his music, which mixed highlife rhythms with soukous-style guitar playing. Like the good doctor, Prince Nico also sadly came to a premature end, being killed in a motorcycle accident in 1997 at the age of 47.

I'm not sure what it is with Nicos and dying in their forties, but this one only made it to 49:

Let Me Take You To Chunky Town

If you scroll down you'll see on the right a little box that shows where visitors to this blog come from. Normally it shows the countries, but by fiddling around with the settings it comes up with a list of exactly which town folks are from. Being a bit sad and needy I look at this regularly and pretend that in some way you are real and not just imaginary friends.

Anyway, I am delighted to be able to say that yesterday we had a visitor from the town of CHUNKY in Newton County, Mississippi. I think that is one of the most fantastic place names I have ever heard.

Instantly infatuated by the name I explored further. Judging by Wikipedia and the Mississippi Magazine Chunky sounds like a sparsely populated piece of Heaven on Earth. It has gone straight to the top of my list of places to visit when I next get to the States (with the possible exception of Goggins, Georgia).

I look forward to strolling through town and visiting one of the two stores or the post office, picking some pumpkins at Lazy Acres Plantation, enjoying some fried catfish at Boyette's Fish Camp, maybe even kayaking on the Chunky River, before popping into one of the two Chunky churches to give thanks for these blessings.

And it turns out Chunky is slap bang in the middle of a real hot bed of musical talent. If you head north for about 20 miles you come to Collinsville, birthplace of Mr Jimmy Ruffin:

"I'll Say Forever My Love" - Jimmy Ruffin

Whereas if you head east for about 15 miles you come to Meridian, birthplace of any number of notable singers and musicians. The most famous of all would be Jimmie Rodgers, but others include Chris Ethridge (Flying Burrito Brothers and many others), Pat Sansom (Wilco), country star Ty Herndon and these three fellows:

"Willoughby Brook Road" - Al Wilson

"Bandy The Rodeo Clown" - Moe Bandy

"January 23-30, 1978" - Steve Forbert (about a visit to his old home town).

To finish us off, here's the flamboyantly attired Webb Pierce with his rendition of Jimmie Rodgers's "In The Jailhouse Now":



Look out Chunky, here I come!

Ecos De Avandaro

Yesterday we tickled your tastebuds with some Australian psychedelia. Today we take a trip (geddit??) across the Pacific Ocean to Mexico for more of the same sort of thing.

Today's selections are from a fine double-CD compilation called "Ecos De Avandaro", which I picked up in Madrid last year (on the same visit I discovered the delights of the Spanish version of pork scratchings - it was one cultural awakening after another).

Avandaro was apparently the location of a major music festival - the Mexican Woodstock, if you like - which took place in 1971. The compilation itself was released on Sony BMG in 2007 but does not seem to be readily available online, or at least not through the usual English language outlets.

Here are a couple of songs featuring the sun:

"Bajo El Sol Y Frente A Dios" (Underneath The Sun And In Front Of God) - El Ritual (1971)

"Brillo Del Sol" (Brightness Of The Sun) - Los Dug Dug's (1974)

And here is another one - a rather surreal clip of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page doing Rolf Harris's "Sun Arise" (presumably as revenge for him massacring "Stairway To Heaven"):

Peculiar Hole In The Sky

Stoned in Sydney! Mellow in Melbourne! Baked in Brisbane! Those Aussies were all at it back in the 1960s.

"Peculiar Hole In The Sky" is an excellent compilation of Australian psych, released by Big Beat records in 2002 and still available on Amazon in the UK. Today's selections come from The Proclamations from Perth and the Dave Miller Set, based in Sydney although - whisper it quietly - Dave himself was a Kiwi.

"King Of The Mountain" - The Proclamation (1968)

"Mr Guy Fawkes" - The Dave Miller Set (1969)

Here is another Australian of a similar vintage who was clearly on something:

Big In Budapest

How better to lift the spirits on a miserable Monday than with some Hungarian folk-rock? Answers on a postcard please.

I recently picked up an album called "Folcore" in an Oxfam shop for a couple of quid. Released in 2008, it is by an outfit called Yava, about whom I know no more than is on the sleeve notes. There are five of them, including two singers with the first names Polett and Szabolc. One is a man and one a woman, but I have no idea which is which. As well as the meat and potatoes rock instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums they spice things up by adding some lyre, lute, flute, bagpipe, saz, kaval and "tinkler". I have no idea what those last two are either.

There are twelve tracks that run the gamut from folk to rock, with most of the somewhere in between. I am not all that keen on the rockier numbers, but the folkier stuff isn't bad. Here are a couple of examples.

"O Castilia" - Yava

"Rejtsetek El Engem" (Hide Me) - Yava

And here they are performing the opening track from the album, "Szerelem" (Love):



I'm sorry, but while on the folk-rock theme I could not resist adding this:



Linking back to yesterday's clip of Sparks, it appears Maddy Prior is attempting to model Russell and Ron Mael's hairstyles at the same time in this video (without the nifty moustache of course).

Sparks Might Fly

I fell in with a bad crowd last night. I went out for a quiet pint after a long afternoon spent marvelling at Nicklas Bendtner's inability to hit a barn door but ended up crawling home some time around 2.30 a.m. after an evening spent in the company of Van Morrison, Roy Orbison, Meat Loaf, the singer with the pony-tail from the Commitments and Mr F.

Apart from Mr F, all of these people were in fact one man: Iain Sparks, who didn't let the scruffy surroundings (The Misty Moon public house in Bethnal Green) and the paltry crowd prevent him from putting on a barn-storming performance. We certainly appreciated him greatly, as did the hairy individual behind us who kept handing him pages torn from a notebook on which he had rather sweetly scrawled "BAT OUT OF HELL PLEASE".

There were two real highlights of the show. The first was his Roy Orbison set. Roy is not the easiest man to do well - most attempts to do so end disastrously - but Iain really nailed him. Even the dodgy wig added to rather than detracted from the effect.

The second highlight was the two songs at the end of his Van Morrison/ Commitments set, which were very much in the Van/ blue-eyed soul style. I did not recognise them so asked Iain about them during his break. They were compositions of his own, which are available only a mini-album which he sells at gigs or via his website (where you also get CDs and DVDs of him as Van, Roy and others).

Having listened the CD today I'm pleased to say the two songs - "Play Me Some Music" and "Knockin'" - sound just as good when sober. The other tracks are in the same style (and if "Meet Me By The Moonlit River" isn't a lost Van song title I don't know what it is). They certainly deserve to be heard by a larger and more appreciative audience than was available in the Misty Moon last night.

So with Iain's kind permission, here is my favourite. If you like it - and why wouldn't you? - why not invest in a CD either via the website or by contacting him at sparky333@ntlworld.com.

"Knockin'" - Iain Sparks

You have probably already guessed who are coming next:



Is it just me or does Ron look rather chirpier than normal? He even moves his lips at one point.

Paris 1919 - London 2010

Every now and then in an idle moment I find myself drawing up a list of my top ten albums - I'm sure those of you old enough to remember albums do the same. The list is different every time I do it, but there are a few albums that pop up more than others. One of them is John Cale's 1973 classic "Paris 1919".

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I heard that Mr Cale was coming to the Royal Festival Hall with a band and orchestra to perform "Paris 1919" in its entirety. The concert was last night, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped. His voice was never the strongest so I was a bit uncertain beforehand whether it was holding up, but he sounded great and seemed to get stronger as the show went on. You would certainly never think he is going to be 68 next Tuesday.

The evening started with a brief set by Patrick Wolf, accompanied only by a lady violinist. I hadn't heard him before but he made a good impression and played the ukelele, which I know will endear him to at least one reader.

The main event consisted of two short sets. The first set was "Paris 1919", played almost in sequence. Purists will be disappointed to note that they moved "Macbeth" to the end. I suppose it makes for a more rousing finale but being an old fart who thinks sequencing matters I still think "Antarctica Starts Here" makes the perfect closer. The sound mix wasn't quite right in the opening "Child's Christmas In Wales", but once that was sorted out the rest of the set was fantastic. Apart from Mr Cale himself, particular credit goes to the guitarist, the cellists and - on "Graham Greene" - the trombone dude.

After a short break Mr Cale and the band returned and treated us to a version of "Amsterdam" that was very different from the original on "Vintage Violence" - as my companion Mr Jackson noted, it was strongly reminiscent of The Blue Nile, which can only be a good thing. We then got top notch renditions of "Femme Fatale", "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend". The orchestra rejoined them for Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and a superb "Hedda Gabler". Apart from a rocking encore of "Dirty Ass Rock 'n Roll" that was it.

It was not a long set - I doubt we got more than 70 minutes of music off him, and another half an hour would have been good. But if the evening skimped on quantity the quality more than made up for it.

Here are the original "Paris 1919" recordings of a couple of last night's highlights:

"The Endless Plain Of Fortune" - John Cale

"Antarctica Starts Here" - John Cale

And here is a clip from 1983 of Mr Cale doing one of the songs I was hoping he would do last night but didn't - "I Keep A Close Watch":



I mentioned that Mr Cale turns 68 next week. Last Thursday another great Welsh singer turned 62, so I think we should pay tribute to him as well. Belated happy birthday, Shaky!!!

Tuku Time

Zimbabwe is back in the news at the moment, with South African President Jacob Zuma arguing for the lifting of sanctions during his current visit to the UK. We are not going to use that as an excuse to trot out the usual jokes about hyper-inflation which you will have heard hundreds of times (or, in Zimbabwe, trillions of times). Instead let's focus on something more positive: the Zimbabwean music scene.

If you are in the least bit interested in Zimbabwean music I would heartily recommend the Zimaudio website. It is not clear whether it is still being run actively - the most recent story on the news page dates from 2007 - so I am not sure whether you can still buy music from the site (I haven't tried yet). But there is a lot of information about a huge range of Zimbabwean artists, most of whom I had never heard of previously, a lot of clips to listen to and some excellent free downloads.

Today we feature one of the big stars: Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi. He has been performing and recording for over thirty years, having started off with Thomas Mapfumo in the Wagon Wheels in the late 1970s before branching out on his own with the Black Spirits. Today's selections come from his 1999 album, "Paivepo".

"Kunze Kwadoka" - Oliver Mtukudzi

"Ngoma Nehosho" - Oliver Mtukudzi

According to the sleeve notes, "Kunze Kwadoka" features two "voices" - one a mother asking her daughter where they have been, and the second advising the child's partner to escort her home safely. The message is apparently that "young lovers, especially girls, should be responsible in their affairs". Can we think of any other songs with a similar message? How about this one:

Another Wright Woman

Earlier in the week we posted a couple of numbers from Betty Wright. She's not the only soulful Wright by any means - there's O.V., Charles and today's featured artist, Sandra.

Until she sadly passed away this January at the age of 61, Sandra Wright had been performing nearly all her life. She was born and raised in Memphis - and was a cousin of Memphis Slim -before moving up to Nashville in the mid 1970s and then to Vermont in the early 1990s, where she was based at the time of her death. At various times she performed with the likes of Joe Tex and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, before fronting The Sandra Wright Band for the last twenty years or so of her life. The full story - apart from the last few chapters - can be found in a Colin Dilmot article from "In The Basement" published about eight years ago.

Ms Wright didn't record a great deal over the years, but she is responsible for an absolutely classic album, "Wounded Woman". Recorded in 1974 it was due to be released on Stax the following year but got caught up in their financial troubles. While a couple of singles were issued, the album itself never saw the light of day until 1988 when Demon Records put it out. It is a real gem, and I rate it up there with Tommie Young's "Do You Feel The Same Way?" - another great lost album of the 1970s by another great lost female soul singer. Here are a couple of my personal favourites.

"The Sha-La Bandit" - Sandra Wright

"I'll See You Through" - Sandra Wright

The only clip of her I can find is one of her doing "Take Me To The River" in 2007. It comes in half way through, but it gives you an idea of what she could do.

The Wright Woman

Tonight is the night for Betty Wright, for no reason other than she is fantastic. These two are from her 1977 album, "This Time For Real":

"Brick Grits" - Betty Wright

"If You Abuse My Love (You'll Lose My Love)" - Betty Wright

And here she is with a great live rendition of "Clean Up Woman":