Soul music, and i mean the real McCoy from yesteryear, the
Motown sound and the Stax rhythm, is a lost artform which
rarely gets challenged by all the convoluted modern day ver-
sions such as doo-wop and hip hop. Occasionally a singer will
come along and remind us of old times by belting out a good
vocal, but lets face it, there will never be another like Aretha
Franklin or Marvin Gaye and many of their peers from the
late 60`s and early 70`s who welded great powerful singing
with innovative rhythm and blues. Stax, the more obscure
record label of the two, was the more rhythm and blues in-
fluenced who tended to give lesser known artists with more
of a blues pedigree a go. Motown was the more showpony of
the two labels, unless you were razzle dazzle and knew some-
body in high places generally you were discarded by Motown
the minute you put a foot wrong either in the artistic or com-
mercial stakes. Having said that, Motown did have a fantastic
record of finding really great gospel influenced singers, even
if many of the Motown artists tended to be a bit too predicta-
ble and lacking the spontaneity of many of the Stax soul mu-
sicians, who were actively promoted to be themselves more
and improvise in the studio. I mentioned Marvin Gaye and
Aretha Franklin, Aretha i think was an amazing talent, she
is my second favourite female vocalist, second only to Eva
Cassidy, and there was and never will be another Marvin,
even if he was off with fairies on crack cocaine half his life
and a very unpredictable musician who never quite could
string together a cohesive album from start to finish. One
of my favourite soul albums comes from somebody who is
very much a chip off the Gaye block, but arguably better
because he was probaly more sophisticated and had bet-
ter songs to sing, is the often forgotten Bobby Womack.
Womack was one of the darlings of soul music in the ear-
ly 70`s, he was with record labels United Artsists, CBS
and Arista, all very mainstream and commercial, when
he recorded some of his best known and most definitive
music, at least according to many critics. But then trage-
dy struck in the late 70`s, his brother Harry died as well
as his new born son from cot death. What may have been
the end of many a musical career after enduring tragedy
on this scale, Womack, just like Eric Clapton in the early
90`s turned personal trauma into something creative &
he went about recording three what turned out to be ve-
ry obscure records for tiny record record Beverley Glen.
The three records, `The Poet`, `Poet II` and `Someday
We`ll All Be Free` from 1985, which unofficially become
known as `Poet III`, become collectively known as the
Poet Trilogy. There is some really great soul music on
all three albums, and the good thing is that Music Club
record label about 10 years ago released a best of the
Poet Trilogy compilation, taking the cream of the crop
off all three. Womack to me was blessed with the swag-
ger of Marvin Gaye and the vocal accentuation of Lion-
el Richie, and argubaly that makes him better than the
two of them. The record deal with Beverley Glen end-
ed in acrimony due to a dispute between Womack and
its owner Otis Smith, so subsequently there was never
going to be a fourth album added to the three brilliant
ones he had recorded, but it still doesn`t take the gloss
off what is really the last great definitive output of soul
music like soul should sound, without any pop, hip hop,
can music and industrial noise to wreck it. I am not the
worlds greatest fan of soul music, blues and rock is my
favourite disiplines, but Womack really had something
special back then. If Lionel Richie gets a bit boring and
Marvin Gaye seems a bit `all over the show`, then i`d
highly recommend you get your hands on the compila-
tion i am tallking about. Soul doesn`t get much better.
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