Garethx

Two versions of a song where the different approach of each produces a masterpiece in its own way: The Spinners and Otis Clay on "Love Don't Love Nobody".

Stanley Winston is indeed a great record in its own right. And primitive is indeed a good description of Johnny Wonder's 45.

A cover where the more obscure version knocks the more celebrated one into a cocked hat is Johnny Wonder's version of Stanley Winston's "No More Ghettoes In America". Same producer but Mr. Wonder's vocal takes the thing to the next level.

Speaking of the Mello Souls and bearing in mind the current vogue for 'funky-soul' or 'soully-funk' how about this long-standing deep funk oldie:

Crazy. I got one off musicstack no more than three months ago from a UK seller for under £30.

A few very good soul covers of "Crystal Blue Persuasion" as mentioned above. A pretty bulletproof song which leant itself well to such treatments. "Ain't No Sunshine" is similarly hard to mess up: the version I really love is Betty Wright's. Don't know how it fits into the topic but this knocked me sideways when I first saw it: Roland Kirk's "I Say A Little Prayer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uRnvMwD6jM

To add to the above ramblings about American I should mention a couple of things from "Dusty In Memphis" which are pertinent to this topic but kind of going the other way: "I Don't Want To Hear It Any More" (originally recorded by Jerry Butler) and "So Much Love" (Steve Alaimo / Ben E. King) are so perfectly played, sung and arranged on that album as to be pretty definitive.

American Studios productions from that time may just be my favourite recorded music ever. They blurred the traditional lines between 'soul', 'pop' and 'country' to produce something which was often truly magical. Dionne Warwick's "I'm Your Puppet" and Ronnie Milsap's "Do What You Gotta Do" are a couple of versions from that studio at the time which are priceless. Agree on Womack's "Everyone's Gone To The Moon": something which should be mawkish is somehow realised with true sincerity. Roy Hamilton's take on Conway Twitty's "It's Only Make Believe" is similarly spellbinding. Interesting to note the mentions of covers of "Suspicious Minds" above. The American Studios recorded original by Mark James on Scepter is still probably my favourite version of the song. Not Soul with a capital S by any means but still very soulful all the same. I was really pleased to hear an alternative version or mix on an Ace compilation which seemed to draw on elements of the arrangement used in the Elvis version: extra strings, horns and backing vocals as opposed to the more stripped-down 45. Had Scepter gone with that mix they may well have had a hit with the James version in its own right.

There's footage of Dee Dee doing "I Really Love You" on American Bandstand. Sadly the audio's not up to scratch on any of the clips I can find on youtube. Unbelievably there's also a great colour clip of The Ambassadors' version as well on another, later show which I can't identify.

Can anyone identify some of the acts?

Yes, falsetto is specifically a 'false' or 'head' voice which is the result of using the vocal chords in a different way to the manner in which the singer's normal range would be produced. I mentioned Carl Hall above and wonder whether he was a 'true' falsetto singer after all as his voice covered an abnormally large range pretty naturally (supposedly four octaves). In the gospel world he was known as a sopranist and his parts for The Rasberry Singers were written in a range normally reserved for female sopranos. Why not simply use a female singer for those parts? The grit and excitement which the best of these kinds of singers could summon (alongside the sweetness) in gospel was one of the highlights of the art form in the mid 20th Century. The BBC programme actually covered the technical side of it all pretty well. Where it really fell down was rushing through the history on both the pop or R&B side and making some glaring omissions. No mention of Eddie Kendricks on one hand or The Delfonics on the other. Without Kendricks I don't know that the falsetto lead would have been quite such a widespread sound in American R&B. Without The Delfonics there would arguably have been no crossover hit records for The Stylistics.

Two sublime selections.

Thanks for clearing that up Tony.

Indeed John. Rance Allen may be the standard bearer of this sound at its most powerful and creative.

Ralfi Pagan had an incredible voice. "Don't Stop Now" the flip of his RCA single as 'Ray Paige' is a Little Anthony tribute that's maybe better than the real thing!

All good choices Paul. John Edwards was also an artist capable of switching from a fully fledged roar to the sweetest and most flexible of falsettos.

The Icemen, Gloria Barnes and George Scott are on the same basic rhythm track. The Manhattans is a completely different, updated cut where the bass playing among other things makes the whole thing more melodic perhaps. A great record in its own right. The Icemen's version is a phenomenal example of the male duo sound and I wish it weren't on the other side of an expensive but so-so Northern record. Rarely mentioned in the same breath as the Icemen but Jimmy Stokes' solo record on Siana is a worthy Popcorn type effort.

To add to the tangled web here is another fantastic take on the "To Bring You Back" rhythm track: from the rare George Scott album on Maple. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dHdbA2wqNk Maybe my favourite of the lot, although every variant from The Icemen, Linda Jones, Mam'selles etc. is great. The 'Gloria Barnes' sounds a bit underpowered to be her but as it's basically a demo she may have been just vocally easing herself through the song. Just pure speculation on my part.

Ronnie Milsap is the original version.

It was a bit of a rank full toss and I expected someone (probably you Tony) to hit it out of the ground. There is probably a whole programme about falsetto singing specifically within black music which this particular programme necessarily skirted around because it was wider in scope. This kind of singing at its best could be explosive, highly sexually charged, even confrontational: think of the fire of a Ted Taylor or a Bobby Foster or Freddie Hughes or Bloodstone's Henry Williams. Or maybe potentially the greatest of them all, Carl Hall. Compared to those voices Tompkins was indeed calmer and may have been the correct vehicle to get the style into the living rooms of white America.

Leslie Jon on Pelegrin Sands? We changed the name of the "George Jackson" club night in London for a Christmas special to "Leslie Jon!" and instead of the normal diet of soul ballads played a night of all the crappy soft rock records we had mistakenly bought blind over the years in the hope they they would turn out to be 'Northern Soul'.

Completely off topic but here is a great publicity shot of Mr. Hill.

Anyone see this last night? Interesting up to a point but with several things that jarred for me. Too much time spent with the latest incarnation of the Four Freshmen, none of whom appear to sing in falsetto as far as I can see or hear. Too much of Brian May, who spent ten minutes talking about Freddie Mercury after conceding that Roger Taylor had the better falsetto voice. Eddie Holman was interviewed and declared his falsetto to be world class, something presenter Alan Yentob seemed to patronisingly and sneeringly almost allow him. Some good things though. Nice to see some time devoted to the current crop of Violinaires. The best thing about it was that it led me to this youtube clip of Eddie Holman doing "Hey There Lonely Girl" on some US Oldies special, a brief snippet of which was used in the programme. [media=] Some of the singing where he's jamming at the end actually bought an involuntary lump to my throat and a tear to my eye. That is truly world class, backing up Eddie's claim in the programme that "If I can think it, I can sing it" and makes Russell Tompkins of The Stylistics voice sound like the reedy novelty instrument that it probably is.

^ Yes Dylan, in retrospect 100 titles was probably too small a number but for me it wouldn't get too far beyond a couple of hundred. It's been a long time since I heard something I didn't know on, for example, Sirshambling which I felt compelled to buy if it was in the category of 'un-common' let alone 'rare'. I know a big factor in that is the result of having less disposable income these days, but I stick by my general point.