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02.08.13 MusicWeek 51
NEW REISSUES / CATALOGUE ALBUMS
JOHN DENVER •The RCA Albums Collection (Legacy/RCA 886979104822) Fondly
remembered by many, American singer/songwriter John Denver’s back catalogue
has been poorly served over the years. All of these issues are addressed on The RCA Albums Collection, a sprawling 25-disc box set, featuring freshly mastered albums individually packaged in mini-LP replica sleeves alongside a 40-page booklet. Denver’s RCA tenure spanned 1969 to 1986, and saw him grow from a fanbase country/folk troubadour to an international superstar. Denver made some memorable recordings in that period, among them the lilting Annie’s Song, Rocky Mountain High, Fly Away, and Calypso. All of the above are set within the confines of their original albums, of which the best are 1974’s Back Home Again and the following year’s Windsong. Perhaps the most intriguing album in the box is John Denver Sings, a privately- pressed and hitherto extremely rare
1966 debut, which comes under the RCA umbrella for the first time here and includes among its 13 tracks a pretty version of Ian & Sylvia's Darcy Farrow, four Lennon/McCartney covers (In My Life, And I Love Her, Yesterday and Here There And Everywhere) and a song entitled Babe, I Hate To Go, which turns out to be an early version of Leaving On A Jet Plane, an original song that subsequently became a global smash for Peter, Paul & Mary and helped Denver to secure his RCA contract.
BETTYE CRUTCHER• Long As You Love Me(Stax CDSXD 141)
Many talented songwriters don’t have the chops to make it as singers themselves, so it
is a very pleasant surprise to find that Stax staffer Bettye Crutcher - who helped to write songs like Home Is Where The Heart is (Otis Clay), Who’s Making Love (Johnnie Taylor), I Wanna Play With You (Frederick Knight) and Blessed Is The Woman (Shirley Brown) - not
only made an obscure 1974 album for the label, but also that it’s a corker, with Crutcher proving to be a sonorous siren of song. Never previously issued on CD, Long As You Love Me originally comprised 10 songs written by Crutcher, the majority with Mack Rice who also pitched in on production, but includes six previously unissued recordings here with perhaps the best-known being Sugar Daddy. Several of the tracks have a vague familiarity, possibly because they have been sampled by latterday acts. Crisply remastered, and accompanied by a fully-annotated eight-page booklet, it’s hard to find anything negative to say about this worthy reissue.
VARIOUS •Northern Girls (Righteous PSALM 2371)
Nicely summed up by the legend Soulful Divas, Angsty Teens and Wronged Women Dancing To Their
Own Rhythm that runs under the title on the front cover, this is a jam-packed and edifying collection
of stompers - some obscure, some not - from the margins of Northern Soul. Opening cut I’m On My Way by Barbara Dane, is actually a devotional, gospel-tinged track but with enough broad instrumentation and impetus to qualify as a club groove. Better-known tracks like Keep Your Hands Off My Baby (Little Eva), Tell Him (The Exciters) and I Sold My Heart To The Junkman (Patti Labelle & The Bluebells) punctuate a collection that also includes the throaty Blanche Thomas put-down You Ain’t Such A Much, Theola Kilgore’s Sound Of My Man, which turns out to be an answer song to Sam Cooke's classic Working On The Chain Gang, and a clearly hurt Baby Washington determining that next time she’ll just Let Love Go By.
GLORIA GAYNOR •Gloria
Gaynor's Park Avenue Sound (Big Break CDBBR 0131)/Love Tracks (CDBBR 0140)
Both originally released in 1978, and now extensively refurbished, with new mastering and a plethora of bonus tracks, the original chart fortunes of Park Avenue Sound
and Love Tracks could scarcely have been more diverse. Park Avenue Sound was released first and failed to make the Top 200 in America, while Love Tracks reached number four. Park Avenue Sound was a perfectly fine album of largely uptempo, hustling disco tracks, which included a cover of You’re All I Need To Get By, and some pleasant, if unremarkable, originals produced by Tan and Joel Diamond. Gaynor was in fine voice but the album was indistinguishable from many others of the ilk and lacked a hit single. Love Tracks found her on great form vocally but this time on a collection of tight, largely customised songs, among them the iconic smash I Will Survive. Originally the flipside of Gaynor’s cover of the Clout hit Substitute, I Will Survive naturally looms large on this reissue, with the original album mix, the 12-inch disco version, the 12-inch Spanish language version and a previously unissued - and nicely understated - Tom Moulton mix occupying more than 30 of the 79-minute programme.
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