Archive for the ‘Phil-LA Of Soul’ Category

The People’s Choice

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Listen: I Likes To Do It / The People’s Choice PeoplesChoiceLikesToDoIt.mp3

Listen: Big Ladies Man / The People’s Choice PeoplesChoiceBigLadies.mp3

You may remember ‘Do It Anyway You Wanna’ form ’75. It got The People’s Choice to #11 on the Billboard Top 100, the closest vocalist Frank Brunson got to a Top 10 with his band of rotating members.

This was the record that started it for he and them in ’71, when the lineup included some infamous Philadelphia names from the local soul scene: David Thompson, Darnell Jordan, Johnnie Hightower, Stanley Thomas, Valerie Brown and Marc Reed.

Despite it too, shockingly, reaching Billboard’s Top 100 (#38), ‘I Likes To Do It’ has become a hard to get, Philly soul template, right down to the song title. Very nice recent garage sale find amongst a stack of John Denver, Olivia Newton-John and Bee Gees disco era singles. How did it get there, once again reinforcing the garage sale rule: don’t judge a stack of unsleeved singles by the top record.

Fantastic Johnny C

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

fantastic-johnny-c

Listen: Boogaloo Down Broadway / The Fantastic Johnny C 06 Boogaloo Down Broadway.mp3

This was as potent as any Wilson Pickett track at the time (’67), energetic and no way did I switch the dial when it came on. You just never hear this one these days – I don’t at least. I was playing my jukebox over the weekend with some friends around. It came on. No one had heard it in ages. Had to pause the box, pull out the record and play it like five times in a row it sounded that good.