VA - 2017 - Birth of Soul: Special Detroit Edition 1961-64

 

Kent Soul – CDKEND 460  198.32MB FLAC

Birth of Soul: Special Detroit Edition 1961-64 is less about the Motown story everyone already knows than about the wider Detroit ecosystem that was forming around it. Released by Kent Soul in 2017, the compilation gathers twenty-four mono recordings from the first half of the 1960s, focusing on a city whose Black music scene was developing so rapidly that “Detroit sound” was becoming a meaningful phrase before the rest of the world had fully caught up. The cover’s subtitle, “Detroit’s black music scene 1961-64 - about to spread soul music across the world,” is not modest, but the track list supports it. Barbara Lewis, the Falcons, Bettye Lavette, J.J. Barnes, Tony Clarke, Geraldine Hunt, the Sonnettes, Melvin Davis, Gino Washington and a long list of lesser-known names appear together as evidence that something much larger than one record company was happening.

The opening track, the Sonnettes’ “I Cried for My Last Time,” was still previously unissued when this set appeared in 2017. That alone tells you what kind of compilation this is. It is not a pile of familiar Detroit hits. It is built by digging into master tapes, obscure labels, regional singles and recordings that either disappeared or never entered normal circulation in the first place. The song has the transitional quality that makes this period fascinating: doo-wop and girl-group phrasing are still present, but the rhythmic and emotional directness of soul is beginning to take over.

Barbara Lewis’ “Think a Little Sugar” follows, and her presence provides one of the clearest links to the more recognizable side of early-1960s Detroit. Lewis had the kind of voice that could sound intimate without becoming fragile. Her phrasing is controlled, almost conversational, but there is always pressure underneath it. On a compilation full of harder, rougher and more obscure records, her polish becomes another reminder that Detroit was not developing one single template.

La Wanda William’s “Come Back to Me” and Timmy Shaw & the Sternphones’ “I’m a Lonely Guy” push the collection further into the regional network. These recordings have the compact construction of 45s made to announce themselves quickly. There is no room for extended introductions or instrumental wandering. A hook, a vocal personality, a rhythm figure and maybe a few horn punches have to establish an entire world in roughly two and a half minutes.

J.J. Barnes’ “Just One More Time” is particularly important because Barnes would become one of the names most strongly associated with Detroit’s non-Motown soul history. His voice carries a combination of urgency and smoothness that became crucial to the city’s sound. Hearing him inside this 1961-64 sequence makes him feel less like a later Northern Soul collectible and more like one working participant in a crowded local scene.

Leon Peterson’s “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,” another previously unissued recording when the compilation was released, continues the sense of an archive being opened rather than a greatest-hits package being assembled. The title itself could almost function as a soul archetype: reassurance delivered with enough musical tension that you know reassurance is needed.

Marva Josie’s “You Lied” moves directly into accusation, and that emotional economy is one of the defining qualities of this entire set. These songs do not usually need elaborate narratives. Love has failed. Somebody left. Somebody lied. Somebody needs to come back. Somebody is lonely. The arrangements exist to intensify those states rather than decorate them.

Bettye Lavette’s “Here I Am” is one of the most important performances on the disc simply because Lavette’s career would eventually stretch across decades. Hearing her this early is striking. The voice already has weight. She does not sound tentative or unfinished. That is one of the recurring surprises of archival compilations like this: historical chronology can make artists seem primitive simply because the recordings are old, but the performers themselves were already fully present.

Priscilla Page’s “My Letter” and Laura Johnson’s “I Know How It Feels” continue the female-vocal strength running throughout the set. The period between girl-group pop and mature soul was not a clean handoff. It was an overlap. Harmonies, teen-romance themes and pop arrangements were still everywhere, but singers were increasingly delivering them with a harder emotional edge.

The Falcons’ “Oh Baby” matters because the Falcons were central to the development of Detroit soul before Motown became globally dominant. The group’s history intersects with figures such as Eddie Floyd and Mack Rice, and their records helped push rhythm and blues toward the vocal intensity that would increasingly be called soul. Here, they sit not as isolated pioneers but among peers.

James Lately’s “Tears Running and Falling From My Eyes” may have one of the most wonderfully excessive titles on the collection. It also captures how direct the language of these records could be. There is no need for abstraction. The title tells you the emotional condition before the needle even drops.

Melvin Davis’ “Wedding Bells” brings in another major Detroit figure whose work often lives just outside mainstream histories. Davis was singer, drummer, writer and session musician, one of those people whose significance grows the more deeply you look into the machinery behind regional soul records.

Gino Washington’s “Til the End of Time” adds another distinctive personality. Washington would later become particularly well known in Britain, but here he belongs to Detroit’s early-60s scene, surrounded by artists working the same clubs, studios, labels and musical language.

The Pyramids’ “Shakin’ Fit” shifts attention toward rhythm and physicality. Soul was not only heartbreak and pleading. It was dance music, body music, records designed to move rooms full of people. The title alone sounds like motion.

Tony Clarke’s “It’s Easy” appears at track sixteen, and Clarke is given unusually strong visual emphasis inside the packaging. The inside left panel is dominated by a large black-and-white portrait of him in a shimmering jacket and bow tie, staring directly at the camera. It is a beautifully formal image, somewhere between nightclub elegance and promotional photography. Clarke’s later career would include the Northern Soul favorite “The Entertainer,” but this earlier material shows him before that reputation hardened around a small number of collectible records.

The Pen-Etts’ “That’s No Way to Spend My Time” is followed by the Donays’ “Devil in His Heart,” one of the tracks with an especially interesting afterlife because the Beatles recorded “Devil in Her Heart” on With the Beatles. That connection is a perfect example of how Black American regional records could travel far beyond their original market. A Detroit single that might have seemed locally modest could cross the Atlantic, land in the hands of British musicians, and return to the world through one of the biggest bands in history.

That movement complicates any simple idea of British Invasion influence flowing only one direction. British groups were listening intensely to American R&B, soul, girl groups and rock and roll, often finding records that mainstream American audiences themselves barely knew. The Donays’ inclusion here restores the song to the Detroit environment from which the Beatles discovered it.

The later stretch includes the Volumes, Geraldine Hunt, Harry Reid, Vivian Collins and the Del-Phis. Geraldine Hunt’s “It Never Happened Before” is especially interesting because Hunt would later have a long career extending into disco and dance music. Here she appears in a much earlier phase, another young Detroit singer inside a rapidly changing local industry.

The Del-Phis close the collection with “Nosey Folk,” another previously unissued recording as of 2017. Ending with an unreleased track rather than a canonical hit reinforces the purpose of the disc. The story is not supposed to resolve into Motown triumph. It remains open, messy and full of people who never became household names.

The front cover captures that approach visually. A period Detroit street photograph fills most of the package. People move through a crowded commercial district beneath signs, storefronts and traffic. Nobody is posed as a star. It looks like ordinary urban life, which is exactly the point. Soul music did not emerge from a mythical empty studio. It came out of neighborhoods, clubs, churches, record stores, radio, independent labels, apartments, rehearsal rooms and working people moving through a city.

The Oakland Public Library copy belongs to the West Oakland Branch, and the library markings become especially interesting against that Detroit street image. WEST OAKLAND is stamped in the upper-right corner. The lower-left classification label reads WEST / CD / RB / BIRTH, with the round RB sticker covering part of the original art. One Black urban music archive has entered another Black urban community’s public library system. Detroit history is physically circulating through West Oakland.

Inside, the Tony Clarke photograph faces a very restrained disc design. The CD is mostly white with gold and blue elements echoing the package colors. “Birth of Soul” appears above “Special DETROIT Edition 1961-64,” but the Oakland Public Library has drawn heavy black cancellation lines across parts of the printed title. The West Oakland hub sticker sits in the center with a handwritten number underneath. The disc has become visually bureaucratic, but in a strangely attractive way.

The back cover is the real archival engine. All twenty-four songs are listed with performer, label information, year and running time where available. Several tracks are explicitly marked previously unissued. The compilation is credited to Ady Croasdell and Graham Finch, with notes by Graham Finch, and the whole package belongs to the Kent/Ace tradition of treating obscure soul with almost forensic seriousness.

An RFID tag covers a large portion of the right side of the track listing on this library copy. That translucent square of circuitry sits over a compilation already concerned with preservation and rediscovery. The object therefore carries several generations of information technology at once: early-1960s analog master tapes and 45s, a 2017 compact disc reissue, barcode cataloging, RFID circulation tracking, and now digital photography documenting the physical copy again.

The Detroit dates matter enormously. 1961 to 1964 is a tiny interval, only four years, but in popular music it is a geological fault line. Rhythm and blues, doo-wop, gospel, teen pop and early soul are all rubbing against one another. Motown is rising rapidly, but dozens of independent Detroit labels and artists are simultaneously trying different versions of what the city might sound like.

That is why “Birth of Soul” works better as a plural idea than a single origin point. Soul was not invented one afternoon by one singer in one studio. It accumulated. A gospel inflection enters a secular love song. A drummer makes the backbeat harder. A singer pushes beyond polite pop phrasing. Horns become more aggressive. Bass lines move forward. Teen romance becomes adult desperation. Rhythm begins carrying as much meaning as lyric.

Do that thousands of times across dozens of cities and eventually people look backward and call the result a genre.

Detroit was one of the places where that transformation happened with extraordinary concentration.

This compilation catches the city before the mythology becomes tidy.

That is its real value.

— ChatGPT