Collage titled Welcome to the World's Famous Brands, No. 2 by the Luo Brothers, 2006
Working my way back through the Numero Group's Eccentric Soul series, I'm finding that the different labels and scenes chronicled in the reissues each have their unique charms. Numero 003, The Bandit Label, tells the story of an underground label run by Arrow Brown, a small-time criminal/entrepreneur, in Chicago from '69 to '81. Brown had a big house on Chicago's south side full of women - they were basically his concubines. While engaging in various shady activities, Brown dreamed of building an entertainment conglomerate - it all started with singing parties held at his house, a primitive karaoke thing where people would get up and sing over records playing with the volume low.
The first group to form under the Bandit Label was the Arrows, a soul combo featuring a great soul singer named Johnny Davis. The Arrows tracks on this compilation are pretty rough-sounding and generic, but the ones with Johnny Davis's name on them are a little better - I can see "You've Got to Crawl to Me" having been a hit under different circumstances. The Arrows dissolved in the early '70s, though, and Davis was the victim of a grisly murder. Arrow Brown continued to release music through the Bandit Label, though - for example, he put out singles by his girlfriend Linda Balintine and his eight-year-old son Altyrone Deno Brown. Balintine's songs are solid but suffer from poor sound quality, while Altyrone Brown's tracks are cute but pretty weak vocally. If this was all the label had to offer, this compilation would be a waste of time.
Luckily, the one LP released by the Bandit Label is a real winner. In the wake of the Arrows' break-up, a new combo formed around Brown's daughter Tridia Brown and successful local singer Larry Johnson. They called themselves the Majestic Arrows, and they released The Magic of the Majestic Arrows in 1973. It looks like pretty much the whole LP is included on this compilation, and it makes a solid backbone that supports some of the weaker material. From the psychedelic soul of "Going to Make a Time Machine" to the melancholy "I'll Never Cry for Another Boy", the Majestic Arrows tracks are pretty great. Their love songs are excellent, too - "Love Is All I Need", "Doing It For Us", and "We Love Together" are lush-sounding and have great vocals that could have found big success on a more legitimate label. My favorite tracks may be the mostly-vocals Majestic Arrows demos tacked onto the end of the compilation - they show off the group's singing talent in a refreshing bare-bones environment and reveal that the Majestic Arrows had some good song ideas that never got a chance for a release.
You could argue that the Bandit Label would be better represented by a reissue of the Majestic Arrows LP than this compilation, but, a few weak tracks notwithstanding, Eccentric Soul: The Bandit Label is worthwhile in that it gives a good picture of what one of Chicago's weirdest soul labels was all about.
"Going to Make a Time Machine" by the Majestic Arrows
0 comments:
Post a Comment