Get Down With It The Soul Sides 1963-1967

Bobby Marchan is known as the lead singer for Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns on that New Orleans rock & roll band's most popular 1950s recordings, and also for the sole hit he had as a solo artist that crossed over into the pop charts, 1960's "There Is Something on Your Mind." It's not so well known that Marchan did quite a lot of recording after that for three sizable labels, starting with Volt and then Dial (which had its greatest success with Joe Tex) before going to Cameo. This 28-track anthology collects singles he did for all three companies between 1963 and 1967, as well as a few previously unreleased cuts and Volt rarities that sneaked out on 1990s compilations. Some of the cliches for describing the work of journeymen soul singers apply here: Marchan never established a terribly consistent or distinctive style, and didn't have the kind of material that memorable hits are made of, though his 1966 single "Shake Your Tambourine" did make number 14 on the R&B charts. As such collector-oriented anthologies go, however, this is much, much better than the average. Marchan (who wrote about half of the songs himself) had an interesting wide-ranging voice, most notable of course for its high, almost woman-like upper end, though he could sing well on lower parts of the register too. Especially on the Volt sides, but throughout these tracks to some degree, he explored the rawer and bluesier end of mid-'60s soul, his voice sometimes hinting (though never annoyingly so) at a screech the higher and more excited it got. While there aren't stone classics here, there's a good share of enjoyable variety, whether the expectedly churchy ballad "Meet Me in Church" (here presented in an alternative mix without backing vocal overdubs), the organ-based groover "Funny Style," the emotional slow falsetto-driven ride "I Gotta Sit Down and Cry," or fairly successful attempts at more updated brassy arrangements (like "Shake Your Tambourine"). The sort of extended spoken rap he became famed for on "There Is Something on Your Mind" isn't heard often ("What Can I Do, Pt. 2" being a notable exception), and the 1967 remake of the Huey Smith classic "Rockin' Pneumonia" unsurprisingly fails to measure up to the original. But overall this hits the mark often, and is recommended as one of the better options for soul collectors looking for compilations of obscure bodies of work above the norm. ~ Richie Unterberger|