Gino Soccio - Closer (1981) [1994, Reissue]
R&B, Dance-Pop, Electronic, Disco | EAC Rip | FLAC, Tracks+CUE+LOG+Scans (JPEG) | 45:54 | 290,19 Mb
Label: Unidisc (Canada) | Cat.# SPLK-7236 | Released: 1994-12-13 (1981)
For his 3rd album "Closer", Gino Soccio hired Erma Shaw, a singer he’d met at Muscle Shoals. Shaw had been discovered as a teenager by Stax cofounder Estelle Axton and was a session vocalist at Willie Mitchell’s Royal Recording Studios in Memphis. For Soccio, she was the perfect voice to bring out his American influences: “I wanted to go ultra, ultra R&B, and she was Black as Black. She was Willie Mitchell’s girlfriend, she was from the South.” With Shaw on vocals, Soccio cut the LP Closer and the lead single “Try It Out,” which spent ten weeks at the top of the disco chart in 1981. It also crossed over to Black audiences, climbing as far as number twenty-two on the R&B chart - an achievement Soccio said is a crowning moment in his career. “I was proud of that,” he says. “I’d been criticized for being too Black: ‘It’s too Black, it’ll never work.’ Well, you can never be too Black.”