In the mid-'60s, veteran saxophonist
Al Sears
ran the
Arock
and
Sylvia
labels, which put out a couple dozen or so obscure New York
soul
records. Typically,
Kent
manages to make a CD out of its catalog, the 28 tracks split about half between 1962-1966 singles and previously unissued sides. In fact, much of the unreleased material was sung by unidentified demo singers, and although
has identified a few of these with confidence, three cuts are for the time being ascribed to "unknown." Often this kind of thing is something that only die-hard genre specialists can hear in one sitting, but though it'll be those collectors that comprise this disc's listenership, it's better than the average such archival anthology. You have to stare long and hard at the track listing for any of these names to ring bells, though some might recognize two of the "demo singers,"
Marie Knight
(who did the original of
"Come Tomorrow,"
covered by
Manfred Mann
for a
British Invasion
hit) and
Sam Hawkins
(who had a 1965 Top Ten
R&B
hit with
"Hold on Baby"
).
Sterling Magee
, represented by pretty straight
tunes, might be better known to latter-day listeners as half of the
blues
duo
Satan & Adam
, who had some indie success in the 1990s. The name of
Van McCoy
pops up too, as the singer and songwriter of
"Too Much,"
a 1964 single credited to
the DC Playboys
. Still, despite the relative anonymity of the other contributors, there's some good period
pop-soul
here, sometimes with a
gospel
feel.
The Corvairs
sound halfway between
the Drifters
Gene Pitney
on
"A Victim of Her Charms"
;
Tutti Hill
sounds a lot like
Mary Wells
on the original version of
"He's a Lover,"
which
Wells
herself covered in 1965; two of
Joan Moody
's tracks are pretty accurate
Supremes
imitations;
Gene Burks
sounds like an early
Stax
artist on
"Can't Stand Your Fooling Around"
; and
Garrett Saunders
'
"A Day or Two"
is an upfront imitation and rewrite of
Chuck Jackson
's
"Any Day Now,"
if an enjoyable one. The numerous demos are as a whole considerably inferior to the singles in both production and the quality of the songs, but it's interesting to hear a sparse piano-voice-dominated demo of
Knight
though the single from which
learned the song isn't here, as it came out on a different label.
The Larks
, who do the 1964 single
"For the Love of Money"
here, by the way, are a different
Larks
than the group who did the hit
"Cool Jerk,"
though
isn't a bad tune all the same. ~ Richie Unterberger