Derek Martin – Soul Power

By , July 12, 2012 12:18 pm

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Derek Martin
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Listen/Download Derek Martin – Soul Power

Greetings all.

The end of another week is here, and so is your weekly helping of soulful goodness in the form of the Funky16Corners Radio Show. We take to the airwaves of the interwebs this – and every – Friday night at 9PM on Viva Radio. If you can’t be there at the time of broadcast you can always fall by the blog and grab the show (or any of the previous 100 episodes) in MP3 form.

I’ll start by assuming that as fans of soul, most of you will already be aware of the undeniable awesomeness of Derek Martin’s ‘Daddy Rolling Stone’, one of the ur documents of the mod soul sound and a dynamite record on its own merits.

Derek Martin was himself a fantastic example of the kind of journeyman soul artist that made the 60s great.

He got his start in the R&B era, recording with the Sheiks and the Pearls (both groups also featured Dave Clowney, aka Dave ‘Baby Cortez’), then the Top Notes and Jimmy Ricks and the Raves (with whom he first recorded ‘Daddy Rolling Stone’ for Atco in 1962).

He recorded his own version of Otis Blackwell’s ‘Daddy Rolling Stone’ for Crackerjack in 1963, and then spent the rest of the 60s and the early 70s bouncing from label to label, recording for Festival, Roulette, Tuba, Volt, Buttercup, Vibration and All Platinum.

Today’s selection, ‘Soul Power’ was recorded and first released for the Detroit label Tuba in 1967, and later issued on Volt.

The tune, written and produced by Teddy Randazzo, is a funky number that quotes the Parliaments ‘Testify’ in the lead-up to the chorus.

Like pretty much everything else he did (with the exception of 1965’s ‘You Better Go’ which grazed the R&B Top 20) the excellent ‘Soul Power’ did not make a dent on the charts.

I’d be very interested in seeing someone put together a multi-label retrospective of Martin’s 60s and 70s singles. What I’ve heard shows not only a lot of talent, but also somewhat adventurous tastes.

Though it’s discography was relatively brief – less than 20 singles in its catalog – Tuba was a very interesting label, releasing soul, funk (Richard’s People’s mighty ‘Yo Yo’) and garage pop (the Cartoons and Friday Night and Saturday), gospel (Clara Ward) and soul jazz (Johnny Lytle).

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all on Monday.

Keep the faith

Larry

 

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