Manufactured by Rhino Custom Products, a Division of Rhino Entertainment Company
Compilation produced by Gordon Anderson and Alec Palao
24 Page booklet with notes by Alec Paleo
ReviewThis nifty little collection is the first of an intended four Double-CD series that chronicles the releases on Warner Brothers' Mid-60s Loma label and covers the period from the label's first release in September 1964 ("I Never Want To Dream Again" by Billy Storm) up to the final release of 1965 ("Just Can't Get Enough Of You" by The Apollas),
Loma has subsequently become known as Warner Brothers "60Ts Soul" label, though as Alec Paleo points out in his booklet notes, it was never specifically meant to be an outlet for "Soul". It was just that the label manager when Loma was set up was Bob Krasnow ... he was heavily involved with R&B and was able to pick up masters reasonably cheaply to release on the label.
Musically the material seldom strays too far from standard 1964/5 R&B/Soul and your typical 21st Century Mid-60s-Soul Fan should find a lot of goodies in here ... tracks like "Somebody Somewhere" by Ike & Tina Turner and The Apollas "Lock Me In Your Heart" should be familiar to most "Northern Soul" followers and a few other tracks on here have "that sound". About half the tracks here have previously been issued on CD, most notably on the 1995 "Best Of Loma Records" collection 9362-45711-2 but there is still plenty of interesting stuff that is new to CD, and it is great to have everything in one place and in chronological order.
Highlights for me include "The Big Jerk" by Clyde & The Blue Jays (a "Monkey-Time" soundalike), Baby Lloyd's James Brown produced "Something On Your Mind", "Baby I'm Yours" by The Olympics (not The Shirelles song but a very dramatic ballad in the style of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling") and Kell Osborne's "You Can't Outsmart A Woman" (which sounds to me very inspired by Otis Redding's version of "Respect")
The least "Soulful" offerings are probably Billy Storm's version of "Goldfinger" (where he tries to out-Bassey Ms Bassey), some of the "throwaway" instrumental "B" sides (obviously Loma were following the lead of Phil Spector), and two mainstream "pop" tracks by The Young Lions ("We Better Get Along" sounds to me like a hybrid of The Jelly Beans "You Don't Mean Me No Good" and "I Should Have Known Better" by The Beatles!!).
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