With You I’m Born Again: SoulMusic Label Revives Motown Duets with Syreeta and Billy Preston, Thelma Houston and Jerry Butler

With two of its latest releases, Cherry Red’s SoulMusic Records imprint has revisited three classic Motown duets albums on two CDs.

Longtime collectors of SoulMusic Records’ releases know that the label frequently jumps back and forth with an artist’s catalogue rather than releasing titles in chronological order.  Such is the case with its latest reissue from Syreeta, born Syreeta Wright.  In recent months, SoulMusic has revisited Motown queen Syreeta’s third and fourth solo albums, 1977’s One to One and 1980’s Syreeta.  In between those LPs, however, Syreeta busied herself with duet projects.  Following Rich Love, Poor Love with The Spinners’ G.C. Cameron, Motown paired Syreeta with keyboard great Billy Preston for the soundtrack of the otherwise-undistinguished film Fast Break.  The decision to team Syreeta and Preston paid off when their duet version of David Shire and Carol Connors’ “With You I’m Born Again” went all the way to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1979.  Though Preston appeared on a couple of tracks on Syreeta and a duet single was released of Preston’s “It Will Come in Time,” a full duets album was inevitable.  That LP, 1981’s functionally-titled Billy Preston and Syreeta, has just arrived from SoulMusic, expanded with seven additional cuts.

Billy Preston and Syreeta, like Syreeta, was the work of multiple producers.  Ollie E. Brown, Michael Masser, and the “Born Again” team of Shire and Connors all contributed to the album’s production.  Masser co-wrote all four of his tracks, two with Randy Goodrum and two with Gerry Goffin.  (The album’s closing song “What We Did for Love” is not a duet cover of the Marvin Hamlisch/Ed Kleban composition from A Chorus Line but rather a Masser/Goodrum original.)  Brown penned the album’s opening cuts “Someone Special” and “Searchin’,” and Connors and Shire reunited for the jazzy and playful “It’s So Easy.”  Despite the strong pedigree, Billy Preston and Syreeta was lost in the shuffle of Motown’s distribution shake-up, and the album might have been released too late to capitalize on the success of “Born Again.”  SoulMusic makes a case for the album’s artistic merits, however, and adds seven bonus tracks including four singles from Fast Break (the vocal and instrumental versions of “Born Again,” and 7- and 12-inch singles of Shire and Connors’ disco theme “Go for It”), the interim single release “It Will Come in Time,” and the single versions of Preston’s two duets on Syreeta, “One More Time for Love” and “Please Stay.”  The former was written by Jerry Peters, who produced some of Syreeta, and the latter was another Connors/Shire creation.  SoulMusic’s reissue has been remastered by Alan Wilson, and includes liner notes from Sharon Davis drawing on a new interview with Carol Connors.

After the jump: we’ll take a peek at a two-for-one set from Thelma Houston and Jerry Butler, plus we have full track listings and order links for both releases!

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, It’s Yours: SoulMusic Reissues Motown Gem “Syreeta”

Though Syreeta Wright never received the same level of acclaim as many of her Motown contemporaries, her stamp on the company is indelible.  The late artist (1946-2004) wasn’t just a distinctive vocalist, but also a songwriter with credits like The Spinners’ “It’s a Shame” and Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)” and “If You Really Love Me.”  SoulMusic Records has just followed up its recent reissue of Syreeta’s 1977 One on One with her very next Motown solo album, 1980’s Syreeta.  In between, however, Syreeta recorded two duet projects, one of which proved to be crucial.  First came Rich Love, Poor Love, an album with G.C. Cameron of The Spinners.  Then was the big one: “With You I’m Born Again,” a single with the great Billy Preston.  The mainstream success that had long eluded Syreeta had finally arrived.  The David Shire/Carol Connors movie tune (from the soundtrack of Fast Break) went all the way to the Top 5 on the U.S. and U.K. Pop charts.  Building on the success of that late 1979 single, Motown gave its star the go-ahead for another solo LP; perhaps indicative of her new beginning, it was another self-titled album.

Production duties were primarily split between Jerry Peters (writer of The Friends of Distinction’s “Going in Circles”) and Richard Perry (Ringo Starr, Barbra Streisand, The Pointer Sisters).  Peters took the reins of three songs and Perry handled four; of the remaining tracks, Motown mainstay Hal Davis produced two, and composer David Shire co-produced one with Billy Preston.  The result, however musically diverse, was aimed squarely at the pop marketplace.

There’s more after the jump, including the track listing and order link!

Little Bit O’Soul: Thelma Houston, Syreeta, Nancy Wilson, Brecker Brothers, George Duke Reissued

Soul music was alive and well in 2012, and some of the finest reissues arrived courtesy of Cherry Red’s SoulMusic Records label.  With the label already looking forward to 2013 releases from artists including Ronnie Laws, Patti Austin, Stephanie Mills, George Duke, Gwen Guthrie and Freda Payne (more on those soon), the time is right to revisit some of the year-end titles that might have fallen under the radar!

In addition to celebrating the post-Motown recordings of Mary Wells at 20^th Century Fox and The Miracles at Columbia Records, two other Motown-centric releases were highlights of the SoulMusic rollout.  The short-lived MoWest label hasn’t always gotten a lot of love, with Light in the Attic’s 2011 compilation Our Lives Are Shaped By What We Love: Motown’s MoWest Story 1971-1973 an exception. In fact, Berry Gordy’s West Coast operation yielded more unissued albums than issued ones!  Yet one that did make the cut for release was Thelma Houston’s self-titled LP, the second MoWest album following the eponymous debut of New Jersey rock group Lodi.   Houston’s 1972 album makes its CD debut from SoulMusic in an expanded edition with nine bonus tracks appended to the ten original songs.  Though commercially unsuccessful, Thelma Houston was a prestige effort for MoWest, with productions and songs from many Motown staff favorites.  On the songwriting side, Patti Dahlstrom and the team of Nick Zesses and Dino Fekaris made contributions, while the album’s tracks were produced by Mel Larson and Jerry Marcellino, Al Cleveland and Eddie Langford, and Joe Porter.  Arrangements came from heavyweights like Gene Page, Michael Omartian and Artie Butler.  The eclectic album also featured a song penned by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (“Black California”) and covers from Kris Kristofferson (“Me and Bobby McGee”) and even Anthony Newley (“There’s No Such Thing as Love”).  The bonus tracks include all four songs added to the U.K. release of Thelma Houston plus single sides.  These feature contributions from Pam Sawyer, writing with both Gloria Jones and Michael Masser, and more from the Larson/Marcellino team.  The result is a stunningly soulful, funky trek back to the days when Detroit went Hollywood.

Syreeta Wright was a MoWest labelmate of Thelma Houston for her own self-titled album Syreeta in 1972.  By 1974, Syreeta was on Motown’s Tamla label, where she recorded her third LP, 1977’s One to One, newly reissued by SoulMusic.  Though her marriage to Stevie Wonder lasted a mere year and a half, they made a dream team in the studio even after their personal union crumbled.  Wright teamed with Wonder on both Music of My Mind and Talking Book, and he returned the favor producing her first two studio albums, including the MoWest effort.  With Wonder otherwise occupied, Syreeta produced One on One herself, with her second husband, bassist Curtis Robertson Jr., and Leon Ware, who had just come off some groundbreaking work with Marvin Gaye, as co-producers.  Stevie Wonder’s one-off single production, “Harmour Love,” was added to the album at Motown’s behest.  Musicians including Greg Phillinganes, Gary Bartz and Michael Sembello all played on One to One.  But despite its all-around high quality, One to One didn’t fare well on the charts.  Syreeta later teamed with artists including The Spinners’ G.C. Cameron and Billy Preston, with whom she had a major chart success in 1980 with “With You I’m Born Again.”  She passed away in 2004, aged just 57, as a result of complications from cancer.  SoulMusic’s reissue is the album’s first CD release outside of Japan, and though there are no bonus tracks, it features a comprehensive new essay from A. Scott Galloway.

After the jump: info on new titles from the Brecker Brothers, George Duke and Nancy Wilson, plus order links and full track listings with discography for all releases!

Motown Goes Funky

A neat duo of reissues is on the way later this month from Funkytown Grooves – two R&B women on Motown Records in the 1980s.

The label is prepping expanded reissues of Stacy Lattisaw’s Take Me All the Way (which spawned the Top 5 R&B and Dance hit “Nail It to the Wall”) and Set My Love in Motion, a 1981 LP by Syreeta Wright (the late ex-wife of Stevie Wonder). Each release will be accompanied by two 12″ single tracks each.

Pre-order links are here and here; track lists are after the jump.