Kent Soul – CDTOP 462 239.22MB FLAC
More From the Other Side of the Trax is a 2017 Kent Soul compilation devoted to the flip sides, obscurities and less-traveled corners of the Stax-Volt catalog between 1960 and 1968. The subtitle says exactly what the disc is doing: Stax-Volt 45rpm Rarities 1960-1968. Twenty-four tracks, all mono, all drawn from a period when the distinction between “A-side” and “B-side” could be more commercial than artistic. Tony Rounce, who compiled the set and wrote the notes, makes that argument directly: something had to be placed on the reverse side of a single, and with Stax those reverse sides were frequently as strong as the records being promoted. The collection is therefore less a greatest-hits album than a recovery operation. It takes material that lived in the shadow of better-known releases and moves it to the front.
The opening run makes the case quickly. Barbara & the Browns’ “I Don’t Want Trouble” has the compact urgency of early Southern soul, with the vocal carrying more emotional pressure than the arrangement needs to announce. William Bell’s “What’cha Gonna Do” follows with the kind of direct melodic writing that became one of Bell’s strengths: restrained, conversational, and emotionally clear without becoming plain. Rufus Thomas’ “Fine and Mellow” brings his lighter rhythmic personality into the sequence, while the Mar-Keys’ “Grab This Thing Pt 2” shifts the focus toward instrumental groove. Within four tracks the compilation already feels less like a box of leftovers than a cross-section of a musical ecosystem.
That ecosystem is the real subject. Stax is often remembered through a relatively small group of canonical names and songs, but the label’s character came from a much larger network of singers, rhythm players, horn sections, arrangers, writers and studio personalities continually feeding one another. This collection catches that network at work. The Premiers’ “You Make a Strong Girl Weak” sits beside Carla Thomas’ “The Puppet,” Rufus Thomas’ “All Night Worker,” and Eddie Floyd’s “Good Love, Bad Love.” The differences between artists are obvious, but the records share enough rhythmic and tonal DNA that they feel related without sounding interchangeable.
Carla Thomas appears repeatedly and becomes one of the compilation’s anchors. “The Puppet” has the polished emotional directness associated with her early work, while “It’s Starting to Grow” is more expansive and “I Want You Back” brings another variation on romantic urgency. The closing track, “Don’t Let the Love Light Leave,” gives her one of the disc’s strongest final statements. Carla’s voice can sound poised even when the lyric is pleading, and that tension is one of the things that makes her recordings age so well. She does not oversell the feeling.
Rufus Thomas provides a different kind of continuity. “Fine and Mellow,” “All Night Worker,” “Talkin’ ’Bout True Love” and “Greasy Spoon” reveal how much humor, rhythm and personality he could put into compact singles. Rufus often sounds as though the performance is happening in a room full of people rather than inside a sealed studio. There is an element of entertainment in the old sense of the word: the singer is not only delivering a composition but controlling atmosphere.
The family connection becomes literal on “Deep Down Inside” by Carla & Rufus and “Never Let You Go” by Rufus & Carla Thomas. Hearing father and daughter within the same compilation reinforces how intertwined the Stax story could be. This was not simply a label assembling unrelated acts. Memphis musicians, singers, writers and families continually overlapped.
William Bell’s four appearances are equally important. “What’cha Gonna Do,” “Don’t Make Something Out of Nothing,” “One Plus One” and “I’m Waiting on You” show a writer and singer with an almost architectural sense of economy. Bell rarely needs to force a song. The arrangements create space and he occupies it calmly, which can make his emotional situations feel even more convincing.
The Mar-Keys supply another thread through “Grab This Thing Pt 2,” “The Dribble” and “The Shovel.” These instrumentals are reminders that the instrumental language behind Stax was not merely accompaniment. Rhythm itself could be the record. Horn riffs, organ, bass and drums become hooks without anyone needing to explain what the song is “about.” “The Dribble” and “The Shovel” even have titles that feel like motions or gestures, which suits music built so completely around physical movement.
Other tracks open side doors into the catalog. Barbara Stephens’ “I Don’t Worry” has the slightly tougher, less polished character that makes many early Stax sides so appealing. The Four Shells’ “Reputation” expands the vocal-group dimension. Sir Mack Rice’s instrumental “Mini-Skirt Minnie” is especially useful because Rice is better known as a songwriter and singer associated with songs such as “Mustang Sally,” yet here the focus is groove rather than personality. The Triumphs’ “Raw Dough,” one of the earliest Volt sides represented, sounds appropriately rougher around the edges.
The chronological spread matters. The earliest recordings come from 1960 and 1961, when Satellite, Stax and Volt were still developing the sound that would later become instantly recognizable. By 1966, 1967 and 1968, the recordings have more weight, polish and confidence. Listening straight through therefore produces a subtle historical movement even though the tracks are not sequenced as a strict timeline. You can hear a musical language solidifying.
That title, More From the Other Side of the Trax, works on several levels. “Other side” literally means the B-side of a 45, but it also suggests the overlooked side of a familiar history. These are the songs that were physically present on records people already owned but were more likely to be ignored when the promoted side became a hit. A 45 is an object that demands turning over. This compilation is built around the cultural consequences of what happened after the turn.
The artwork makes that concept extremely literal. The front is designed around a large red-and-black 45 label with VOLT at the top and “45rpm RARITIES 1960-1968” printed beneath. Behind it, STAX and VOLT repeat across the page like wallpaper. The typography and distressed paper coloration make the package feel less like a modern compilation and more like something assembled from old filing cabinets, label sheets and record-company ephemera. Kent Soul’s logo sits quietly in the lower-right corner while the names William Bell, Carla Thomas, the Mar-Keys, Rufus Thomas and Eddie Floyd are called out along the bottom.
The Oakland Public Library copy adds another layer of classification over a package already devoted to catalog history. The front carries a large MAIN LIBRARY sticker, while the lower-left label reads MAIN / CD / RB / MORE. A circular “RB” marker partly overlaps it. That abbreviation quietly changes the meaning of the object again. Stax’s intricate world of soul, R&B, funk, instrumental groove and early label history gets compressed into a library shelving category.
Inside, the left panel contains a black-and-white photograph of three members of the Mar-Keys identified as Lee Arnold, Wayne Jackson and Andrew Love during the Stax-Volt European tour in March 1967. The image is especially useful because it shifts the package away from abstract label history and back toward working musicians. Horns in hand, suits on, microphone between them, they look like people in the middle of the actual labor that created the sound now being archived.
The disc itself returns to the red-and-yellow visual language of old labels. MORE FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRAX arcs across the surface while STAX-VOLT 45rpm RARITIES 1960-1968 sits underneath. The Oakland Public Library hub sticker covers the center and has a handwritten accession number added below MAIN LIBRARY. The commercial archive and municipal archive literally occupy the same circular object.
The back cover is unusually informative. Instead of treating the track list as tiny legal furniture, the package makes it the dominant visual element. Each song is identified with artist, original label number, year and running time. Barbara & the Browns are tied to Stax 125, William Bell to Stax 132, Rufus Thomas to Stax 140, and so on. That information restores the songs to their original 45 identities rather than presenting them as anonymous digital tracks collected decades later.
The banner across the top states: “Two dozen rare B-sides from Stax Records’ ‘blue’ period, many reissued for the first time.” That sentence is essentially the project statement. These songs were not necessarily obscure because nobody liked them. Many were obscure because their historical position was structurally secondary. They occupied the reverse side.
This is where a compilation like this becomes more than convenience. Anyone can construct a playlist of famous Stax songs. Kent’s work involves research, original release information, tape sourcing, mastering, sequencing and contextual writing. Nick Robbins mastered the collection at Sound Mastering, while Tony Rounce handled the compilation and notes. The result is curation functioning as historical repair.
The Oakland Public Library barcode across the upper-right adds another system of retrieval. Original Stax catalog numbers tell us where the songs lived in the 1960s. Kent’s CDTOP 462 identifies the 2017 compilation. Oakland Public Library number 3 2141 04220 2261 identifies this particular circulating copy. The same recordings keep accumulating addresses.
That is probably the most interesting thing about this object. These tracks began as physical flipsides whose secondary position helped make them scarce. Decades later, somebody compiled those overlooked sides into a single disc specifically so they could be found again. Then that disc entered a public library, where anyone with access could take it home.
The “other side” keeps changing.
First it meant turn the record over.
Then it meant look past the hits.
Now it means pull the library copy off the shelf and listen to the part of the story that almost disappeared.
— ChatGPT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi.