essential chess/stax/soul

good single-artist albums:
Aretha, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
Otis, Otis Blue and Dictionary of Soul
nearly anything by Al Green on Hi; hits comps and boxes are nice too but the albums are extremely good; start w/Call Me and The Belle Album and I'm Still in Love with You
Sam Cooke, Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964
The Very Best of Sam & Dave (Rhino)--Rhino's single-disc "very best of" comps are stellar ways in; I also like the Joe Tex and Rufus Thomas discs
the Gamble & Huff Philly International box is a bit much but still a major sentimental favorite of mine
The Spinners, A One of a Kind Love Affair: Anthology, two discs, all good-to-great; first disc is PRIMO, the first half of it is one of my favorite sequences of music ever, hearing them evolve from doo-wop chancers to Motown second-stringers to aborted stylists to the Philly soul machine is utterly thrilling, and Philippe Wynne is one of the great eccentric soul singers, awesome somewhat pinched voice and unbelievable ad libber (this comp has some cutting-room-floor stuff that's fantastic), tragic end. Wynne was one of the inspirations for Mingus's dad in J. Lethem's Fortress of Solitude, incidentally.
The Birth of Soul Vol. 1-3 (Ace)

if yr digging the psych-soul on the Soul Jazz comp, go for some early Funkadelic. Maggot Brain and the Music for Your Mother comp are excellent places to start.

in the late '90s a good 2cd aladdin records comp came out, which is worth searching out, and around the same time i remember a great little milton collection (also 2cds, iirc) being released.

If you are interested in (mainly) later Stax stuff, HMV have got a lot of it on special offer at the moment.

http://www2.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/specialOffers.do?ctx=98;9;-1;-1&code=03ACE

Kent do some nice Chess Soul compilations catering to the Northern Soul market.

RIP Andrew Love, saxophonist with the Memphis Horns.

Oh no, RIP.

RIP. An unbelievable body of work (Memphis Horns' credits at Allmusic run four pages).

Quite a career. Here's his hometown obit:

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/apr/13/memphis-horns-saxophonist-andrew-love-dies/?CID=happeningnow

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/may/01/stax-music-great-charles-skip-pitts-dies/

Mr. Pitts' use of the wah-wah effect pedal on "Shaft" resonated for several generations. His work would be sampled by numerous hip-hop and rap acts over the years including Dr. Dre and the Beastie Boys, among others.

Around 2007 Pitts played at some Ponderosa Stomp gigs in New Orleans and in NYC

someone posted this on a Yahoo soul group email:

will be doing our annual “Soulsville” radio feature – six hours of nothing but Stax artists, this Saturday, April 27, noon-6 p.m. EDT from the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. Can listen online at www.wrtcfm.com. Lots of interviews and CD giveaways.

Phil Chess 1921-2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/arts/music/phil-chess-dead.html

RIP.

So the Chess brothers were good guys for putting out records and getting them widely distributed (of artists who otherwise might not have that access); but bad guys because they didn't always pay the artists enough....

Over the years, the Chess brothers were accused more than once of taking financial advantage of their artists, and there were lawsuits, usually settled confidentially. Some Chess artists said their compensation was more often like an allowance than like a salary.

But there were many instances of apparently genuine friendship: Chuck Berry sometimes stayed overnight at Phil’s house, sharing a room with his son, Terry, and musicians attended the Chess sons’ bar mitzvahs.

The Chess brothers may have been motivated more by financial considerations than by artistic ones. But virtually no one disputes that they helped document some of America’s most important vernacular music.