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Tommie Young - 1973 - Do You Still Feel The Same Way
21:55
Another lost gem of 70's soul.
If you found Soul Children great, this one will blow your mind!
Excellent
work from this oft-overlooked southern soul singer! Tommie's got deep
deep style that'll knock you flat if you dig southern soul or hard soul
-- especially the small label, indie-type variety! Bobby Patterson
wrote most of the tracks on this debut album, and the set was recorded
in Shreveport with a deep burning Louisiana sound that was the best of
that city's scene at the time.
256@ with original covers and 5 bonus tracks, so get it!
original album tracks
SIDE-A 1.Do You Still Feel The Same Way 2.Do We Have A Future 3.You Came Just In Time 4.She Don't Have To See You 5.You Can Only Do Wrong So Long 6.You Can't Have Your Cake
SIDE-B 1.You Brought It All On Yourself 2.That's All A Part Of Loving Him 4.Hit And Run Lover 5.Everybody's Got A Little Davil In Their Soul
This is absolute manna from Southern soul heaven.
On the strength of the one, long-unavailable 1973 LP that forms the
core of this compilation, Tommie Young can stake a claim as perhaps the
finest neo-Aretha Franklin stylist among the slew of early-'70s soul
sisters. But she was a meteor flare, almost immediately retreating back
to the gospel scene that nurtured her, save for singing lead on the
soundtrack to A Woman Called Moses, Cicely Tyson's 1978 film about
Harriet Tubman. Granted, Young didn't have the protean power of
Franklin (like anyone did?), so her vocal tone is lighter; but the
sensational, effortless, melodic leaps on the commanding title track
does nothing to dispel the Franklin impression. "Do We Have a Future?"
is punchier and might be rushed for a singer lacking Young's immaculate
phrasing; she's simply a natural-born singer with the same appealing
forthrightness as Irma Thomas. The liner notes say producer Bobby
Patterson cut backing tracks to O.V. Wright's "That's How Strong My
Love Is" and Percy Sledge's "Take Time to Know Her" (gender-switched
here) for her first session and Young just walked in and nailed 'em in
one take — and it ain't hard to believe at all. "You Came Just in Time"
finds Young fighting through backing vocal clutter, but the ballads
"She Don't Have to See You (to See Through You)" and "You Brought It
All on Yourself" thankfully free her voice back to unadorned basics,
with great command of dynamics and phrasing on the latter. Brilliant
phrasing also marks the very strong "You Can Only Do Wrong So Long" and
she shines again on the more down-home funky "You Can't Have Your Cake"
with some Ann Peebles vocal sass in her delivery. In addition,
"Everybody's Got a Little Devil in Their Soul" is just absolutely
marvelous, a funk groove with a second-line, jump-up snap in the drums
and nice horns — no real melodic changes, but who needs 'em with a
wondrous singer testifying in neo-Aretha mode over a killer groove? But
it does make you wonder if Young was short-changed by material and
production that favored a lighter, neo-Motown soul-pop sound ("That's
All a Part of Loving Him" is pretty representative) when she had the
voice for tougher, harder-hitting songs like this. The string and horn
embellishments that were tasteful early on start to get overbearing on
the non-LP extra tracks like "Get out of My Life." It sounds as if they
heard the disco boom coming and pumped it all up; but Young is too much
of a singer to need any of the forced drama in the arrangement to "I'm
Not Going to Cry Any More." The forced histrionics do get pretty dire
on "One-Sided Love Affair," but the final five tracks shouldn't throw
anyone off Do You Still Feel the Same Way? Tommie Young was singing
straight-up soul from a woman's perspective as well as or better than Peebles, Thomas, Laura Lee, Candi Staton, or any other '70s soul woman at that level one step down from Queen Aretha.