Various Artists: Cold Cold Heart; Where Country Meets Soul Vol 3 (Kent/Border)

 |   |  <1 min read

Laura Lee: Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man
Various Artists: Cold Cold Heart; Where Country Meets Soul Vol 3 (Kent/Border)

The crossover between country and soul has long been acknowledged but this excellent series brings classics and obscurities together just to gently push the point home further.

Elsewhere has hailed the previous two volumes and this one continues the thread, but to even greater effect.

Here are some extraordinary black soul versions of songs you might only have heard as whitebread and anodyne radio pop: the Temptations' treatment of Little Green Apples, the Mirettes' with Stand By Your Man, Johnny Adams' on Hank Williams' Cold Cold Heart and Ralph "Soul" Jackson with Hank's Jambalaya (with the Muscle Shoals Swampers) and many others will make you think again about their provenance.

Ona Watson funks up David Allen Coe's Take This Job And Shove It, and the great OC Smith brings home Long Black Limousine. 

And there are other real heartachers here: Laura Lee on Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man brings real depth to the genre of cheatin' songs, then of course there's Bobby Bland (on Charlie Rich's Who Will the Next Fool Be?), Bettye Swann with the fragile Till I Get It Right . . .

Here are  24 songs with barely a dead note among them.

Even the godawful The Most Beautiful Girl in the World shapes up rather nicely as a string-soaked Vegas soul classic in the hands of the Isley Brothers.

As with all the previous volumes, this comes highly recommended. 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

The Lemon Twigs: Everything Harmony (Captured Tracks/digital outlets)

The Lemon Twigs: Everything Harmony (Captured Tracks/digital outlets)

To be frank, on the basis of two of their three previous albums we have heard, we've been seriously underwhelmed by the fashionable and hip Lemon Twigs, two gifted New York brothers who do have a... > Read more

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Pale Saints: The Comforts of Madness (4AD 30thAnniversary Edition)

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Pale Saints: The Comforts of Madness (4AD 30thAnniversary Edition)

Although not exclusively the “shoegaze” band they have been tagged as, Britain's alt.rockers Pale Saints could hopefully get some traction for this expanded, 30thanniversary reissue of... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Mika's Coconut Fish (Samoa)

Mika's Coconut Fish (Samoa)

Like many people visiting Coconuts Beach Club Hotel on Samoa's Upolu Island, I ran into Mika over drinks at his famous 3-Stool Bar in the resort. He was great company, had some very funny stories,... > Read more

Zionhill: Inside of You (Moko)

Zionhill: Inside of You (Moko)

Too many New Zealand reggae bands, once they have got the rhythm and melody down, rarely have much to say lyrically which doesn't default to soft notions about home and family, or a bunch of... > Read more