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| Lou Rawls - Now Is The Time For Love/Close Company - EXP2CD06 |
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Price: £12.99
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1 Will You Kiss Me One More Time
2 Let Me Show You How
3 Ain't That Love, Baby
4 While The Rain Comes Down
5 Now Is The Time For Love
6 Watch Your Back
7 It's Too Late (To Say Goodbye)
8 Back To You
9 This Love
10 All Time Lover,
11 In The Middle Of The Night,
12 Close Company
13 Pretty Eyes
14 When We Were Young
15 Ready Or Not?
16 Forever I Do
17 The Lady In My Life
18 Say It Again
19 Sunshine (When Are You Coming My Way) |
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About this Album
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Profile
Lou Rawls had such a long career, his music appealed differently to changing generations. In the 1950s he recorded doo-wop, in the 60s it was jazz, blues and big band swing, then come the 70s it was silky soul as epitomised by Gamble & Huff’s “You’ll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine”) for Philadelphia International Records. “Now Is The Time and “Close Company”, neither previously available on CD, find Lou at the tail end of his soul years ahead of his return to jazzier roots and a record deal with Blue Note.
Lou landed at Epic while Philadelphia International were downscaling and placing their acts with other labels. Epic was essentially PIR’s parent label and took Lou along with the The O’Jays. A&R boss Larkin Arnold then utilised people from Lou’s recent Philly past and combined them with other big hitters of the day to comprise these albums. Thom Bell, Dexter Wansel and Bunny Sigler represented Philly, while Mtume & Lucas were having hits with Stephanie Mills and Phyllis Hyman; and Lester & Brown with Sharon Redd and Bobby Thurston.
The producers assembled a cast of musicians that reads like a virtual who’s who of the day’s finest with even Luther Vandross and The Jones Girls popping in to do backgrounds with Josie James, Beloyd Taylor, Tawatha, Phil Hurtt and Wanda from The Emotions. In fact I’ve probably got albums at home by the person who made the tea, but while these albums created a musical heaven for soul fans, big budget soul was becoming less fashionable and the label pushed Lou further down a pop route hereafter. This produced one more favourable tune for soul fans, “Stop Me From Starting This Feeling” from the 1986 album “Love All Your Blues Away” (1986), but actually from his all his Epic recordings it was his “Here Comes Garfield” recording (yes, a song about the cartoon cat) that got him the Grammy nomination. Still, I have always found both these albums magical, and his ‘wedding song’ was played and performed on many big days for couple in the States, and there’s also a video of him performing this.
Lou would later be back making jazz at Blue Note Records, but not before a brief reunion with Gamble & Huff, though we would not hear the size and scale of records like this again. But what a great musical legacy of 75 albums left to us by Louis Allen Rawls (1933-2006), and not bad for at artist who had actually already been pronounced dead after a serious car crash in the 50s before he’d recorded a single one of them. See Dexter Wansel’s note later in this booklet. |
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