the of mirror eye

* Little Lois Barber: Specify (6.0 mb)
* Chuck Strong: I Got Married Too Soon (3.5 mb)
* Roscoe Robinson: Let Me be Myself (4.5 mb)
* Sam Dees: Train To Tampa (3.5 mb)
From The Birmingham Sound: The Soul Of Neal Hemphill Vol. 1 : The Rabbit Factory

Everytime I stumble across a new collection of old tyme soul, I always think to myself: “Why isn’t this being done today.” It seems like back in those days, everyone and their mother were releasing local soul singles/records of amazing quality. But nowadays, there’s only a couple of people that I’ve heard that even remotely approach come close to the old stuff. Why is that?

For those of you who, like me, are unfamiliar with the Birmingham soul scene of the ’60’s & ’70’s, The Rabbit Factory has done us all an incredible service and collected the cream of the crop in this, Vol. 1 of the soul of Neal Hemphill. Mr. Hemphill, was a plumber who had been an aspiring gospel singer. This love of music never left his heart and so he decided to open a recording studio in the basement of his plumbing supply building. He quickly became the patron saint of the soul scene there, allowing the musicians to have most of the control and rarely charging them for use of the studio (his plumbing business funded the studio).

He was also an innovator in the studio, creating a “Neal Hemphill” sound that relied on weird microphone placements, echo machines and overdubs. And the results are absolutely stunning, as this is a seriously amazing collection of songs.

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For more info, The Chicago Reader (look here) wrote a great article about the compiler and this compilation.

P.S. Aside from the Daptone Records artists, I haven’t heard too much modern day soul that I’ve liked. Any suggestions for modern day soul artists that might have a touch of the old school?