Bobby Purify's "Better to Have It"

- the Solomon Burke album on Fat Possum (DON'T GIVE UP ON ME) is the very model of what a contemporary southern soul album should me. Doesn't try to be too modern, but then it doesn't try to sound old either; it's just Sol knocking himself out on some good songs. The followup album (MAKE DO WITH WHAT YOU GOT) is good too, but the phony rock touches are gonna sound mighty dated in 5-10 years. DON'T GIVE UP, on the other hand, is timeless.
- I thought the Jon Tiven-produced Wilson Pickett album from a few years back (IT'S HARDER NOW) wasn't bad, but then Sol upped the ante with DON'T GIVE UP, and I now think that Wilson should have made an album like what Solomon did.
- Never heard the Howard Tate, although everybody I've talked to sez it's kinda mediocre.
- Mavis Staples' HAVE A LITTLE FAITH sucked!! Too slick.
- Supposedly Betty LaVette has a new one on the way and heads will roll! (In a good way...)

They're already kind of old now, but I always thought people should've talked about Syl Johnson's two Delmark records more.

I kinda agree with you on Syl's Delmark elpees...not too fond of the one where he's standing in front of Buckingham Fountain on the cover, but the other one, BACK IN THE GAME, is a neglected classic. Old-school soul singers usually do not fare well on blues labels because they try to make them, too, ah, "bluesy." (I'm thinking of those Mavis Staples and Rufus Thomas albums that Alligator released.) But Delmark let Syl be Syl, and the result was every bit as tuff as the classic earlier things.