Verve to reissue "Soul Sisters"

[Roger Hiles]

The Jazzmatazz site reports Verve will reissue the impulse! release "Soul sisters" by the Gloria Coleman quartet on March 9.

This was talked up in John Corbett's "Vinyl Freak" column in the July downbeat. Maybe this is the start of a trend!

Here's the column:

Soul Sisters (Impulse!, 1963)

More than 60 years separate the first jazz recording in 1917 and the introduction of the CD in the early '80s. In this column, DB's Vinyl Freak, John Corbett, unearths some of the musical gems made during this time that have yet to be reissued on CD.

Ah, the silt of history covers all sorts of things. Many great forgotten records are forgotten because they were pressed up in small batches on tiny labels and hardly anybody ever had a chance to hear them in the first place. But being on a bigger label by no means assures great ones of being remembered--it's easy for special little recordings to get lost, passed over repeatedly in the megacorp milk-the-cash-cow mentality. Some of the niftiest music in the world still languishes in the jazz industry's main vaults.

Hard to believe, with its super heavy cover, that anyone could ever overlook Soul Sisters, but alas, every time I see a new batch of Impulse! CD reissues, I'm disappointed not to find this wonderful funky diamond among them. Recorded by Rudy van Gelder in `63, after the group had apparently been working for some time at a club in New York called Branker's, it's a minor masterpiece of soul-jazz. Not to mention the gravity-defying architectural wonder that is Pola Roberts' beehive!

Leader Gloria Coleman was a stellar B-3 player--there were not many women organists at that time, Shirley Scott and Trudy Pitts excepted--and she penned five of the six tunes on the LP, all of them blues-based swingers. On "Hey Sonny Redd" she tweaks the requisite one-note organ routine, adding little details to the drone; and throughout the record her driving pedal work means you have to force yourself to remember there's no bassist. Coleman's featured partner Roberts is a very hip drummer, understated but totally full of pep. She doesn't bowl things over like Joe Dukes, but she percolates underneath, stirring the soul with an easy ride, subtle snare bursts exploding like kernels in a Jiffy Pop popper.

Soul guitar kingpin Grant Green and saxophonist Leo Wright (thankfully fluteless on this date) round out the foursome. "Melba's Minor," dedicated to Melba Liston, has a saxophone-less A-section in which, as liner notician Stanley Dance put it, "... one can imagine Grant Green out on the steppes with his balalaika." That stretches the bounds of poetic license, methinks, but perhaps ... it is a strangely Russian, soundtrack-like theme, in any case. Coleman takes a great solo, with nice dissonances and some more single-note shenanigans. Written for then recently deceased saxist Ike Quebec, "Que Baby" is a very groovy up-tempo groove, a nice way to kick the LP off, while "Funky Bob" is a slow grind blues concocted by Green for producer Bob Thiele, with a chewy alto solo and ultra laid-back guitar. Compositionally, "My Ladie's Waltz" (dedicated to Coleman's daughter with husband, saxophonist George Coleman) is the record's apex, a really funky tune in 3/4.

Pssst ... hey GRP! Soul jazz is back, baby. This polite tap on the shoulder should remind the folks who control the Impulse! archives of their li'l treasure, and maybe Soul Sisters can find the ready audience for which it's been waiting for the last 38 years.

Down Beat , July, 2001, by John Corbett

Edited January 25, 2004 by Roger Hiles

[Hank]

Great news that this is finally making an appearance on CD. There was a thread regarding this and other concurrent releases: Here

(scroll down to Jan. 15)

Thanks for pulling out the vinyl freak column too!

Edited January 25, 2004 by Hank

[undergroundagent]

This is excellent news!!!

[Dan Gould]

And once again, an album I went to some expensive lengths to acquire gets reissued. I gotta learn to stop doing that.

Nevertheless, its a fine album with excellent Grant Green and Leo Wright work on it.

[JSngry]

Don't feel bad, Dan, I gave Dusty Groove (the bastards!) 20 bucks for Yusef's THE GOLDEN FLUTE Lp las month, and now, look out momma, here comes baby. C'est la freakin' vie, wie?

OTOH, look at it like this - the longer you have something before it gets reissued, the longer you have to enjoy it before everybody else gets it. Elitism at its finest!

[Brad]

I was unfamiliar with this until now but now it's on my buy list. From the column posted by Roger, I'm really looking forward to this.

[Eric]

Picked this up the other day.

It is only ~ 30 minutes, but it is priced right.

The music totally kicks my ass - great Grant Green, Leo Wright is nice and good playing by Coleman too.

Fun CD!!!

Eric

[danasgoodstuff]

I paid $20-25 for this a year or two back and now here it comes. Passed on a copy of the dbl. LP Houston Person live at the Club Mozambicque (what's it actually called?) for $50 at a record convention the other week, which pretty much guarantees it'll never come out... Whatever, Soul Sisters is nice, if not quite great, and it's nice to see it out again.

[mailman]

The Houston Person recording is titled "The Real Thing". I bought it when it first came out as a two LP set. It's nice and all but I really can't imagine paying $50 for it.