3/8/2024 0 Comments Forgotten 70s soul singers![]() What We Said Then: "Musical history is strewn with the wreckage of white bands who tried to play viable rhythm & blues music.save for the Rascals, perhaps, no major white band in recent memory has so successfully handled R&B as do Duke Williams and the Extremes.The seven-man ensemble glides through a potpourri of R&B influences, the most impressive of which are 'My Baby Left Me' and 'Theme from the Planet Eros.' The former spotlights the relaxed gait at which the band travels - not really 'funky' in the classic sense of the word but more on the order of 'comfortably sassy.'" - Gordon Fletcher, RS 169 (September 12th, 1974) And their "Chinese Chicken" single became a sought-after breakbeat for hip-hop DJs. ![]() This second LP was the band's last, but they kept gigging around New Jersey for many years a young Richie Sambora played with Duke Williams before joining Bon Jovi. The core of this band was from Trenton, New Jersey: session men who cut their teeth working on various Gamble/Huff productions in Philadelphia and knew how to make any groove feel like an unstoppable party. Combining this with the extra richness of her songwriting gift, Valerie Simpson should soon compel a wide audience." - Stephen Holden, RS 118 (September 28th, 1972) Such artistic intelligence is not all that common among singers. ![]() She has a first-class voice and uses it with breathtaking skill, never resorting to stylistic affectation or emotional histrionics. What We Said Then: "Valerie Simpson shows that as a singer she is stylistically at home in almost every area of soul. Simpson's greatest success as a singer would come teamed up with her husband Nickolas Ashford, especially on the 1984 single "Solid As a Rock." (Ashford died from throat cancer in 2011.) On this second solo LP, she sang poignantly about the ghetto, human blight, and love across class barriers. Simpson was best-known as half of the Ashford & Simpson songwriting team (responsible for many Motown hits, including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and most of the rest of the late-Sixties work from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell). Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, ‘You’re So Beautiful’.Superior production (by Buddy Killen), wonderful, dense backing vocals (my weakness, here caterered to by Kelly himself and a woman named Juanita Rogers, multi-tracked), excellent material and one of the best young black singers around." - Vince Aletti, RS 141 (August 16th, 1973) What We Said Then: "Nobody's gonna believe me, but not only are there no bad cuts here, most of them fall among the best songs I've heard this year. His career was soon derailed by disco, but he wrote Karla Bonoff's biggest hit, "Personally." Kelly (not to be confused with the Australian singer of the same name), riding the success of his "Stealing in the Name of the Lord" single, made an album "crisp as a cracker, dipped in raw honey." The songs were short and sure, and even in falsetto, Kelly's voice was always powerful. A heretical opinion on the lush southern soul albums of 1973: we preferred Paul Kelly's Don't Burn Me to Al Green's Call Me.
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