Music Week's round-up of the latest album reissues and catalogue releases, including REO Speedwagon, John Luongo and Jack Ashford
REO SPEEDWAGON
The Early Years (1971-1977 HNE Recordings HNEBOX 110)
Beloved AOR behemoths best known for their massive global smashes Keep On Loving You (1980) and Can’t Fight The Feeling (1984), Illinois band REO Speedwagon initially had a much tougher time becoming established, and this expansive clamshell-clad collection plots their early history, including expanded versions of their first six albums – R.E.O. Speedwagon (1971), R.E.O. Two (1972), Ridin’ The Storm Out (1973), Lost In A Dream (1974), This Time We Mean It (1975), R.E.O. (1976) – and similarly supplemented double concert set Live: You Get What You Play For (1977). Although not as immediately recognisable, commercial or accessible as their later material, it is nevertheless an excellent collection, showing that they were musically tight and melodically-inclined, from the start, although they initially had a harder rock edge. Their eponymous debut failed to chart even in America but includes some first rate material, including the bluesy, piano-propelled 157 Riverside Avenue and Sophisticated Lady which, despite its title, is a fast-paced hard rocker that was an early fan favourite, and bubbled under the US Hot 100. Similar delights are waiting to be unearthed from the other studio albums here, but the real surprise is Live: You Get What You Play For which finds the band in blistering form, performing concert recordings of many of their early favourites and an electrifying version of Chuck Berry’s Little Queenie.
VARIOUS
Can You Feel The Force – The John Luongo Disco Mixes (Groove Line GLRCDXD 0005)
Sourced from the original masters and remastered to a very high standard, this double disc delight revisits 21 of disco deity John Luongo’s pioneering mixes from 1978 to 1982. An unassuming DJ from Boston, Massachusetts, Luongo’s best work tweaked the percussion enough to make the songs more danceable, without dispensing with the original elements that made the songs popular in the first place. The classic Luongo mixes are all here – Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground) by The Jacksons, Vertigo/Relight My Fire by Dan Hartman, Gone Gone Gone by Johnny Mathis and the Real Thing title track among them. Perhaps less well known but holding their own in such esteemed company are Santana’s soulful remake of The Four Tops hit One Chain (Don’t Make No Prison), Melba Moore’s sinewy and slow-building version of the Bee Gees’ You Stepped Into My Life and a storming remix of Sly & The Family Stone’s 1960s smash Dance To The Music. Also of note are a suitably tribal and funky take on British duo The Quick’s US monster hit Zulu, an epic, hustling version of Touch Me In The Morning from Marlena Shaw and jazz bassist Stanley Clarke’s loose-limbed groove Just A Feeling. Lengthy liner notes include recollections and observations from Luongo, as well as reminiscences from many of the acts involved.
VARIOUS
Jack Ashford – Just Productions – Volume 2 (Kent CDKEND 478)
A superb 2016 compilation gathered together 24 gems that Jack Ashford produced after his time at Motown, and was so well received that Kent has come up with another two dozen equally fine recordings made by his Just Productions company between 1967 and 1977, 10 of which are previously unissued masters. Independent soul at its finest, it includes writer Sandra Richardson’s own interpretation of After You Give It All, best known in a version by Softouch, although Richardson’s own delivery of its bittersweet lyrics have made it a latterday Northern Soul classic since it first emerged in 2015, 41 years after it was recorded. The Perfections’ version of Smokey Robinson’s Since I Lost My Baby is sublime, Billy Sha-Rae’s I Found The One is a compelling gruff-voiced soul gem, and Ashford himself proves to have a pleasing vocal style well-suited to the stomping This Ain’t Just Another Dance Song.
