"Chicago Soul" (Chess Records, Soul Jazz 2004)

Amazing packaging (small book format) but above all excellent selection: 20 titles, all picked by Chess, to illustrate an urban soul but not really sophisticated, the blues being of course never very far, also often tinted by a colorful psychedelic…

...Very good or even excellent in these tracks that change us from the usual Chess titles stamped pure blues. It starts with Howlin' Wolf who revisits his “Evil” (we will find Muddy Waters a little further for his modernized version of “I Just Want To Make Love To You”) and it does not stop for 20 tracks and almost an hour for a nice, coherent panorama of a kind of soul that is little compiled. Excellent, really.

trax:
1. Evil - Howlin' Wolf 2. Another Sugar Daddy - Bo Diddley 3. Tell Mama - Etta James 4. Stereo Freeze - The Stereos 5. Burning Spear - Soulful Strings 6. Party Time - Ramsey Lewis 7. Please Newsboy - Eve Barnum 8. Soul Vibrations - Dorothy Ashby 9. More And More - Little Milton 10. Baltimore Oriole - Lorez Alexandria 11. Why Am I Treated So Bad? - Majestic Choir/The Soul Stirrers 12. The Way I Feel - Phil Upchurch 13. She Suits Me To A Tee - Buddy Guy 14. Memory Band - Rotary Connection 15. You Got It - Etta James 16. I Just Want To Make Love To You - Muddy Waters 17. Mama's Got A Good Thing Going - Laura Lee 18. The Wailer - Sonny Cox 19. In My Body's House - Gene Chandler 20. Leave It In The Hands Of Love - Fontella Bass
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