Listen: You’ve Got The Love To Make Me Over / Just Brothers
JustBrothersGotTheLove.mp3

These two Detroit brothers are best known for their ’65 B side, ‘Sliced Tomatoes’, which became a big hit amongst the Northern Soul posse a few years later. As a result, a re-release in ’72 on Groove Merchant found it again on the B side, this time to ‘You’ve Got The Love To Make Me Over’. Sadly overlooked, the single rivaled the best ones of the day by The Chi-Lites, The Dramatics, you name it, and still does.

Go ahead, play ‘You’ve Got The Love To Make Me Over’ twice and tell me honestly, can you stand to live another day without a copy?

Listen: Everybody Plays The Fool / The Main Ingredient MainIngEverybody.mp3

I think there were some redeeming moments out of many seemingly formula soul acts, I guess you’d call them, in the early 70′s. They appeared pretty faceless to me then: The Chi-lites, The Dramatics, New Birth. I was very put off by the decade’s version of 60′s Motown fashion, by then having evolved into leisure suits of questionable pastel colors. On further investigation, there were some great singles in there.

I overlooked the image straight away when it came to The Main Ingredient. I mean the sleeves to their albums were almost psychedelic, some designs resembling Hypnosis. I doubt it was intentional, but those albums helped plant the acid jazz seed that years later dj’s like Giles Peterson and and labels such as Talkin’ Loud would coin.

‘Everybody Plays The Fool’ got and, still deservingly, gets heard. I never switch it off.

Listen: Yes I’m Ready / Barbara Mason BarbaraMasonReady.mp3

Listen: Shackin’ Up / Barbara Mason BarbaraMasonShackin.mp3

Basically, a Philly girl who came up through Gospel. ‘Yes I’m Ready’ reached #5 in ’65, with an intro the had me believing it was the soundtrack to being drunk. Her delivery drew me right in with that imaginery alcohol slur. Like Barbara Lewis from around the same time, she was one of the soul voices that sat nicely between all the English Invasion songs on Top 40 radio.

You wouldn’t know she was a church girl from some of her 70′s output, like the great ‘Shackin’ Up’. Not unlike Millie Jackson, and produced by Don Davis (Eddie Floyd, Bobby Womack, Albert King, The Dramatics, Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton), it just sums up liberated female voices during the mid 70′s and deserved a way higher Billboard chart placing than #91.