Soul Ladies: The Sweet Inspirations, Irma Thomas...

Just finished doing some liner notes for three projects for Warner Music in the UK and what exciting projects they are! Sometimes I can't believe how fortunate I have been to work in the vaults and find so many gems. Not sure when Warner Music will be issuing the series of anthologies I've been working on but hopefully sometime in 2008 and included among them will be a 2-CD set on The Sweet Inspirations, who I absolutely love.

I forgot just how great those Atlantic albums are, The Sweets with such soulful harmonies. All five of their LPs are available on CD at The Soul Music Store: our anthology will include some non-album singles and unreleased.

And then in the series, there's Irma Thomas. I first became aware of Irma through my longtime friend, the late Dave Godin (with whom I had co-owned Soul City back in 1966 with our third partner Robert Blackmore). He turned me on to the song "Wish Someone Would Care" and I loved it.

I found her first Imperial LP named after that hit and in 1965 - if memory serves me well - Irma came to the UK for the first time. Her fan club secretary Bob Nessling had a party for her and she was thrilled at meeting her then-small group of dedicated British fans including yours truly. I loved some of her other recordings - songs like "It's Starting To Get To Me Now" and "Some Things You Never Get Used To" - which can be found on the reissue of "Wish Someone Would Care"/"Take A Look" at The Soul Music Store.

Combing the vaults a few years ago looking for Aretha unreleased material (now on the recent Rarities CD and the Live Philly album, more fodder for future blogs), I finally discovered all the material had recorded during a brief two years signed to Atlantic's Cotillion label. Atlantic's Jerry Wexler still considers the only single that came out of Irma's tenure with the label, the beautiful "Full Time Woman" one of his favorite recordings of all time and while nothing on what would have been a Cotillion album comes close, the material Irma cut (including two sides in Philly with The Young Professionals featuring Phil Hurtt and Bunny Sigler) is certainly worthy of release.

I'll keep you posted as soon as I know when this and the other titles in the series are coming out in the U.K...and meanwhile, we do have some goodies from Warners UK such as the excellent expanded edition of The Voices Of East Harlem's "Right On Be Free" which includes five Donny Hathaway-produced cuts I found (with the help of tape librarian Mike Johnson) in them thar vaults!

Soulfully yours,

David