Come Into Their World: Dance Classics From The Emotions, Foxy Arrive On BBR

We have plenty of news coming your way from Big Break Records as the Cherry Red soul specialists have closed out 2013 and already announced plans for 2014 in a big way.  Before we dive into recent releases from Joe Bataan, The Salsoul Orchestra, Chris Jasper and Herbie Mann, we wouldn’t want you to miss two recent disco-flavored releases from The Emotions and Foxy!

The BBR label welcomes The Emotions, appropriately enough, with the R&B girl group’s 1979 album entitled Come Into Our World.  Jeanette, Wanda and Sheila Hutchinson first combined their voices in song as The Heavenly Sunbeams (also sometimes known as The Hutchinson Sunbeams), but by the late sixties, they expanded their purview from gospel to secular music and signed to the legendary Stax label’s Volt imprint as The Emotions.  The group released three albums at Stax, but by the end of 1975, the historic label had declared bankruptcy.  Undeterred, however, The Emotions turned to an old friend from their hometown of Chicago: onetime Ramsey Lewis Trio drummer and then-Earth Wind & Fire leader Maurice White.

White’s sure commercial instincts and impeccable musicianship proved to be a perfect match for The Emotions.  White and Charles Stepney helmed The Emotions’ 1976 Columbia Records debut Flowers, which earned a Top 5 R&B peak and yielded two hit singles, “Flowers” and “I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love.”  The girls had even more reason to Rejoice, however, when the album of that name was released in 1977.  White co-wrote and produced “Best of My Love,” the lead-off track of the Rejoice album, and it established The Emotions as red-hot artists for the disco era.   The Grammy-winning song went No.1 Pop and R&B, and the album topped the R&B chart as well as going Top 10 on the Billboard 200.

Another gold album followed for The Emotions, Maurice White and Columbia Records with 1978’s Sunbeam.  It didn’t match the success of Rejoice, but all three parties were riding high when the Hutchinson sisters joined Earth Wind & Fire for “Boogie Wonderland,” a No. 6 Pop/No. 2 R&B hit in 1979. (The line-up was a bit fluid in those heady days.  Jeanette, who had been spelled in the group during the Stax era by friend Theresa Davis, departed in 1977 while pregnant, and was replaced by youngest Hutchinson sister Pamela.  Jeanette soon returned to the fold, but it’s the Pamela-Wanda-Sheila line-up still performing today.)

The stage was set for 1979’s Come Into Our World.  Maurice White again produced what would turn out to be the most dancefloor-oriented album of The Emotions’ career to that point.  Sheila, Jeanette and Wanda were joined by Pamela and their brother Joey, plus a “Who’s Who” of musicians including Toto’s David Paich on keyboards, Average White Band’s Steve Ferrone on drums, Keni Burke and EW&F’s Verdine White on bass, and the ubiquitous Paulinho da Costa on percussion.  David Foster and Allee Willis (co-writer of “Boogie Wonderland”) co-wrote “What’s the Name of Your Love” with Maurice, and the trio was rewarded with a No. 30 R&B hit.  Foster and White joined Sheila to pen “On and On,” and David Paich joined White, Willis and Foster for “The Movie,” on which White appears in a vocal spot.  Other songs came from writers including Ross Vannelli (Gino Vannelli’s “I Just Wanna Stop”) and R&B vet Marlo Henderson.  Come Into Our World reached a No. 35 R&B/No. 96 Pop peak; it turned out to be the group’s penultimate release with Columbia and Maurice White’s ARC imprint.

Big Break’s expanded edition, remastered by Nick Robbins, adds three bonus tracks: the single versions of “Where Is Your Love” and “I Should Be Dancing,” and single B-side “My Baby Dance.”  Steven E. Flemming, Jr. has scribed the new liner notes recounting this crucial period in the group’s history.

After the jump: we get Foxy!

BBR Round-Up: “It’s Happening” With Bebu Silvetti, Foxy, Vernon Burch

The masterminds at Big Break Records certainly like to keep fans of great soul music on their toes!  In addition to the delicious soul-jazz hybrid Reality from Monk Montgomery, the label has recently unveiled another quartet of adventurous soul, dance and R&B reissues.

Two of BBR’s latest hail from deep in the Salsoul Records vaults.  1977’s Spring Rain, credited to The Sensuous Sound of Silvetti, was the brainchild of Argentine pianist, composer, arranger and conductor Bebu Silvetti (1944-2003).  Silvetti was active in the Latin music scene through the early years of the 21st century, even picking up a Latin Grammy in 2003, the year of his untimely death at the age of 59. The multi-hyphenate artist wrote the entirety of his second Salsoul album Spring Rain, collaborating on just one track with Sylvia Riera Ibáñez.  Production was handled by another Latin music legend, Rafael Trabucchelli.  Though created by Silvetti and licensed by the Cayre Brothers for release on Salsoul like Silvetti’s 1976 label debut World Without Words, Spring Rain was remixed for American listeners by Tom Moulton at Philadelphia’s Sigma Sound Studios. 

Though the music is stylistically dissimilar, it’s not hard to connect the dots from Spring Rain to Salsoul’s lush, made-in-Philly records.  With Silvetti’s own piano out front (as it is on the entire album), the sophisticated title track went Top 40 Pop/Top 5 Disco upon its U.S. release.  It envelops the listener with cooing, wordless female vocals, elegant and sweeping strings, funky guitar licks and a ready-for-dancing beat.  Light and cool as the breeze that might accompaniment the title’s seasonal rainstorm, Spring Rain flirts with the Latin-percussion “Salsoul sound” (“Primitive Man”), sweet samba (“A Smile at Dawn”), keyboard-driven pop-jazz fusion (“Two Cups of Coffee”), emotional yet smoky balladry (“Fortune Teller”), and bright disco (“Voyage of No Return,” “Contigo”), all in refreshing, melodic and frequently cinematic arrangements.

This effervescent collection has been remastered by reissue producer Wayne A. Dickson and annotated by Matt Bauer.  One bonus track has been added, the single edit of “Spring Rain.”  (Its B-side, “Travel Check” from Silvetti’s previous Salsoul album, is absent.  Perhaps a reissue of World Without Words will arrive next?)

From another diverse corner of the diverse Salsoul label, BBR has also delivered Sons of the Gods from the quintet Ripple.  The 1978 release was the multi-racial funk band’s sole release for Salsoul and only its second album following 1973’s eponymous debut on GRC Records.  Simon Kenneth Carter (vocals/bass), Walter Carter (lead vocals/percussion), Brian Sherrer (vocals/drums/timbales), Victor Burks (vocals/keyboards) and Barry Lee (lead guitar) teamed with producer Floyd Smith for Ripple’s to the studio; this line-up appears to be modified from the ’73 line-up, with vibraphonist/keyboardist Curtis Reynolds, saxophonist William Hull and lead singer Keith Samuels all absent from the credits on Sons of the Gods.  (Simon Kenneth Carter, Walter Carter and Brian Sherrer played on the debut album produced by “Big” Dee Irwin.)

Like Spring Rain, Sons of the Gods isn’t your typical Salsoul platter; it actually begins with a slow and soulful cover of The Masqueraders’ “Call Me the Traveling Man.”  It’s not the only pure ballad here, either.  Burks’ slow-burning “Facts of Life” – complete with spoken interlude – is equally impassioned.  Throughout, Ripple demonstrates their versatility in a variety of idioms on both vocal and instrumental tracks.  The funk and disco flourishes of the raucous “Today” brought the party, while “Victorious” is a jazzy jam with bold horns, prominent electric keyboard and percussion traveling from one stereo channel to the other.  An upbeat seventies-style update of Wade Flemons’ 1958 oldie “Here I Stand” might have been a surprise, but it was mere prelude for the song that followed it on the album’s second side. 

“The Beat Goes On and On,” penned by Smith and the group, is the album’s most overt nod to disco, and it has all of the irresistible qualities of the genre’s best.  A non-stop, rhythmic and brassy call to the dancefloor with a soaring string arrangement, “The Beat” didn’t crack the pop charts, but respectably placed at No. 91 R&B/No. 13 Disco.  Its release on 45 preceded the album by a couple of months; Sons of the Gods took its title and sci-fi cover imagery from its 9+-minute cover of Charles Earland’s funky song of the same name.  Earthier business was also at hand, though.  Burks penned Sons’ closing track, the very topical and ironically up-tempo “Do What You Wanna Do,” reflecting frankly on inner-city life: “She’s got three kids but she claims only two…” or “There goes my brother, he’s standing in the breadline/Smokin’ weed is his favorite pastime…”

The eclectic, electric Sons of the Gods is also annotated by Bauer and remastered by Dickson.  Bauer accurately asserts in his liner notes that Ripple’s history “seems shrouded in mystery,” and his assertion in the notes that Keith Samuels and Curtis Reynolds are heard on the album is oddly contradicted by its credits.  But the music speaks for itself.  One bonus track, the single version of “The Beat Goes On and On,” has been added.  After the jump: a look at reissues from Vernon Burch and Foxy, plus full track listings and order links for all four titles!