Ebony Let

Billy Paul - Ebony Woman (1970) {2012 Remastered & Expanded - Big Break Records CDBBR0142}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 214 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 86 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 76 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1970, 2012 Neptune Records / Sony Music / Big Break Records / Cherry Red Records | CDBBR 0142
R'n'B / Soul / Philly Soul / Vocal Jazz / Quiet Storm

2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the hugely influential Philadelphia International Records. To mark this, and following our reissue of some of the labels other acts such as the Three Degrees, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and the O’Jays, we are pleased to present an album from one of the most identifiable voices of the Philly Sound. Billy Paul is a Grammy Award winning soul singer, most noted for his R&B #1 "Me & Mrs Jones”. EBONY WOMAN is a delightful Gamble & Huff produced 1970 album, which was later re-released in 1973. This BBR reissue sees the original artwork being used for a CD release for the first time.

Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes were one of the very first groups to achieve global success for Philadelphia International Records within its first year as a CBS-distributed label. The 1972 release of two consecutive ‘tell-it-like-it-is’ ballads – ‘I Miss You’ and ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’ – marked the start of a four-year association that yielded some of the most enduring recordings in contemporary soul music, in the process creating – with label founders Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff and a burgeoning coterie of talented songwriters, arrangers and musicians – a handful of timeless dance music classics including ‘The Love I Lost’, ‘Bad Luck’ and ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’.

This collection of Ellington's Thirties recordings is generous in that it offers 95 selections and meagre in that there is no discographical information at all (no recording dates, no personel, no matrix numbers). The liner notes give some information but leave one pining for more too. There the criticism ends. Audio restoration by Dutchman Harry Coster (who is attached to the Dutch Jazz Archive and has an outstanding reputation for painstaking restoration of old material) is beyond reproach and the recordings never sounded so good before. And of course there is the music itself, which is formidable, both in musical content and in execution by that peerless group of proud individuals that constituted the Duke Ellington orchestra…