Ace Records



	Rock and Roll Soul

Nathaniel Cramp is the co-founder of the London club night Rock'N'RollSoul, which takes place at The Albany in Great Portland Street on the first Saturday of every month. The club has also been on the road to Brighton and the Isle Of Man and plans for a compilation album are also underway. To pay the bills Nathaniel works as a freelance writer and sub-editor and has contributed to NME, Mojo, Q and various music websites.

www.rockandrollsoul.com


			FUNKADELIC / Get Off Your Ass And Jam from LET'S TAKE IT TO THE STAGE Tracks like this one inspired me to start Rock'N'RollSoul along with four friends back in December 2001. Basically we play any rock with soul and soul that rocks , and soul doesn't come much more rocking than George Clinton and co from their under-rated 1975 album 'Let's Take It To The Stage', the one that, from its title, sounds like it should be a live album but isn't. This is more of a two-and-a-half minute call to arms than a song, powered along by Eddie Hazel's seemingly never-ending guitar solo, Bootsy Collins' elastic bass and Barry 'Frosty' Smith's colossal drumming. I defy anyone to stay seated when this comes on.


			THE BAR-KAYS / Don't Stop Dancing To The Music (Part 2) from GOTTA GROOVE/BLACK ROCK I prefer this instrumental flipside as it's a great way to start off a DJ set , all pounding drums, stabbing horns and chicken-scratch guitar. This was one of the the first Bar-Kays releases after the tragic plane crash in Wisconsin on December 10 1967, which took the lives of four members of the band alongside Otis Redding. Surviving bassist James Alexander and trumpeter Ben Cauley rebuilt the band and released a string of classic but under-rated singles such as this one, before finally finding success with 'Son Of Shaft' and, after the demise of Stax, as a fully-fledged funk outfit signed to Mercury.


ARTIST THE BAR-KAYS	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDSXD 962	LABEL STAX

TITLE GOTTA GROOVE/BLACK ROCK


			EDDIE FLOYD / Big Bird from THE BEST OF EDDIE FLOYD This incredibly powerful, guitar-driven track was written by Eddie Floyd after hearing the news about the plane crash that killed Otis Redding and four members of The Bar-Kays. Floyd was on tour in Europe at the time and, with painful irony, as he was due to fly back across the Atlantic in order to attend Redding's funeral his plane was delayed by mechanical problems, hence the lyrics "Oh big ol' aeroplane, I'm trusting you so". This song reminds me of our first Rock'N'RollSoul Summer Special on the Isle Of Man in July 2003 , we were inspired to play it after a slightly hair-raising flight over!


ARTIST EDDIE FLOYD	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDSX 010	LABEL STAX

TITLE THE BEST OF EDDIE FLOYD


			BOBBY PATTERSON / Soul Is Our Music from TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS I like Bobby Patterson as much for his country soul sides such as 'She Don't Have To See You (To See Through You)' as upbeat tracks such as this one or 'TCB Or TYA'. This song is often dismissed as a lightweight re-tread of Arthur Conley's 'Sweet Soul Music', although I see it more as Bobby simply taking over the baton from Otis Redding's protégé, and the concluding lines , "Soul is our groove now, the way we hurt and the way we move" , are an almost perfect summation of the genre. Despite never becoming a household name like many of his peers, Patterson was very influential through his tireless work as a label boss, producer, songwriter and PR man.


ARTIST BOBBY PATTERSON	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDKEND 098	LABEL KENT

TITLE TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS


			THE SONICS / Strychnine from PSYCHO-SONIC Soul isn't the only music at Rock'N'RollSoul, as the name suggests we also play plenty of good old rock'n'roll, taking in pretty much anything and everything from Elvis Presley to Primal Scream, and you can't get much more primal than The Sonics. Whether singing R&B standards or their own classics such as 'Psycho', 'The Witch' or this one their mixture of over-amped guitar, bass, drums, sax and piano topped off with frontman Gerry Roslie's screaming voice never sounds less than amazing. I've chosen 'Strychnine' because it's a really nasty, twisted song and it was covered by The Cramps (no relations) on their debut album 'Songs The Lord Taught Us'.


ARTIST THE SONICS	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDWIKD 115	LABEL BIG BEAT

TITLE PSYCHO-SONIC


			LINK WRAY / Fat Back from THE ORIGINAL RUMBLE PLUS Continuing the Cramps theme. I actually discovered Link Wray by working my way from Big Star to the first Cramps album (because it was produced by Alex Chilton) which features an appropriation of this track for the song 'Sunglasses After Dark'. In its original, instrumental form as recorded by Frederick Lincoln Wray in 1963 it is the perfect example of why the man with the Danelectro Longhorn guitar inspired pretty much every guitarist of merit who has come along since. Who needs words? This is souped-up, snarling, savage rock'n'roll perfection.


			BOBBY FREEMAN / C'Mon And Swim from C'MON AND S-W-I-M I'm a massive Sly Stone fan, and this is one of the records that he was responsible for during his time as staff producer and A&R man for Autumn Records before becoming the funk soul brother of legend. San Franciscan R&B singer Bobby Freeman scored a hit with this rather silly dance craze, six years after he'd first troubled the charts with 'Do You Want To Dance'. The combination of rock and soul here are a big clue as to the producer's identity and, interestingly, 'I'll Never Fall In Love Again' (not the Bacharach and David song) from the accompanying album was later reworked by Sly & The Family Stone on their 'Dance To The Music' LP.


ARTIST BOBBY FREEMAN	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDCHD 769	LABEL ACE

TITLE C'MON AND S-W-I-M


			RUFUS THOMAS / (Do The) Push & Pull from DID YOU HEARD ME? If silly dance crazes are the order of the day then the Crown Prince of Dance, Mr Rufus Thomas, is definitely the man to call on. This slyly funky outing from 1971 is less silly than some and, for once, makes no mention of the animal kingdom. Michael Toles' country-inflected guitar even adds a nice, downhome feel. Thomas was already 54 years old when this song was released and had been involved in the Memphis music scene since the 1930s , more than enough to earn him his own private parking space on Beale Street and a cameo appearance in Jim Jarmusch's superb cinematic homage to the city, 'Mystery Train'.


ARTIST RUFUS THOMAS	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDSXD 135	LABEL STAX

TITLE THE FUNKIEST MAN


			CHARLIE RICH Don't Tear Me Down by on NORTHERN SOUL'S CLASSIEST RARITIES From the Silver Fox's brief tenure at Hi Records, which also produced another Northern classic in his version of Isaac Hayes and David Porter's 'Love Is After Me' as well as some beautiful Hank Williams covers. Charlie Rich was a musical genius, equally adept at soul, country, jazz and rock'n'roll ("I don't think I ever recorded anyone who was better," said Sam Phillips), not to mention almost single-handedly making grey hair look cool. It was the soulfulness of his voice, as demonstrated on this cut, that prevented his later, Billy Sherrill-produced songs such as 'Behind Closed Doors' and 'The Most Beautiful Girl' from becoming schmaltzy. I find it impossible to dislike anything he ever recorded.


ARTIST VARIOUS ARTISTS (NORTHERN SOULS CLASSIEST RARITIES)	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDKEND 192	LABEL KENT

TITLE NORTHERN SOUL'S CLASSIEST RARITIES


			ARTHUR CONLEY / Let Nothing Separate Us from DAVE GODIN'S DEEP SOUL TREASURES VOLUME 2 As is the tradition at Rock'N'RollSoul here's a nice, slow song to finish , and what a song! Arthur Conley is a cruelly under-rated singer, the huge trans-Atlantic success of 'Sweet Soul Music' all but dwarfing the merits of all his other work. His deep soul sides such as 'I'm A Lonely Stranger', 'Is That You Love' and his moving tribute to his guiding light, 'Otis Sleep On', are amazing and this ballad, with its unusual ascending and descending guitar line and big, pleading finish is as good as anything recorded by the mighty James Carr. Somewhat bizarrely Conley now lives and runs his own record company ArtCon Music Productions in the Netherlands under the name Lee Roberts.


ARTIST VARIOUS ARTISTS (DAVE GODINS DEEP SOUL TREASURES)	CATALOGUE NUMBER CDKEND 158	LABEL KENT

TITLE DAVE GODIN'S DEEP SOUL TREASURES VOL 2