Get Right: The Ru-Jac Records Story Volume Two: 1964-1966

構成数 : 1
合計収録時間 : 00:59:03
Liner Note Author: Kevin Coombe. Editor: Dorothy Stefanski. The second installment of Omnivore's four-volume The Ru-Jac Records Story concentrates on music recorded between 1964 and 1966, and as this opens with four sides recorded by Brenda Jones, a singer who had three on the previous Something Got a Hold on Me, Get Right immediately feels quite similar to its predecessor. As its 22 tracks unfurl, some crucial differences can be heard, in great part due to the inclusion of the great Southern soul singer Arthur Conley. He migrated up to Baltimore from his native Georgia and fell into the circles surrounding Ace Promotions, which was at the epicenter of Ru-Jac. Conley cut some demos of songs while he was hanging out at Ace and Ru-Jac -- two of these are here, the voice and piano "Whole Lotta Woman" and the full band "Hiding Out in Blue Shadows" -- while his friend Harold Holt sung some his compositions, including two that are included here ("Where You Lead Me," which is present in two versions, and "I'm a Stranger"). Arriving after the cheerful swinging soul-jazz of Butch Cornell's Trio, the Holt and Conley stretch of Get Right feels like a monumental shift in the trajectory of Ru-Jac, bringing the Baltimore label further south of the Mason-Dixon line. The rest of the compilation, consisting of sides from 1965 by Bobby Sax & His House Keepers, the Neltones, the Mask Man & the Cap-Tans, and Ru-Jac mainstay Winfield Parker, are more aligned to the grittier sounds of the south than the urbane north, which is where most of Something Got a Hold of Me resided. It sounds as if Ru-Jac found its voice during the era covered in this second volume. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine