Love Has Won

“Love Makes a Woman” has been nominated for the 2019 Blues Music Award for Souls Blues Album of the Year! Also Thornetta Davis, a vocalist on the recording, has been nominated for Soul Blues Female Artist of the year. Love Makes a Woman is The Knickerbocker All-Stars 4th recording. When two phenomenal vocalists such as Darcel Wilson and Thornetta Davis get together for a session, it’s going to be special. Love Makes a Woman was inspired by the great female soul and R&B singers who popularized the genre. These carefully selected tunes barely scratch the surface of the sacred music of early Soul and R&B. This recording spans a wide range of emotional and musical content including an instrumental that allows the band to let loose.

Looking back from today to the very earliest records that we have of sung music, love has provided a more constant theme for composers and songwriters than any any other. From choruses in Greek tragedy to the oral traditions of folksongs from all over the world, from opera to musical theatre, from parlour music to cabaret, and from the recital stage all the way to the Top 40, love is everywhere and we can’t escape it.

This Nashville band featuring Mindy Dalton, Judi Griffith, Lana Napier, Pame Stephens, and Jean Williams has long been an enigma. There was even a rumour that they were a fictional band, and the material had been recorded quite recently by various American indie luminaries! This despite the original 1969 Athena Records album undoubtedly existing, and fetching astronomical figures.
In fact, The Feminine Complex were an all-girl garage band, a rarity in Nashville, to be sure. They were even heavily featured on various TV shows including the nationally-syndicated "Showcase '68" and the local "Nashville Now". The Feminine Complex made one of the few genuine girls-in-the-garage albums (all original songs too!) in a time when the 45 was king (queen?), and an extraordinary album it is too, as extraordinary indeed as the story of the band…