Customer Reviews

Anthology

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a good cross-section anthology of one of the greatest singers of our time! Tracks 5-through-10 of the first disc were from the very first Lou Rawls album I ever heard (and played to "death" on my phono), which Capitol released as "Lou Rawls Live." This is the beginnings, the earthier Lou, the jazz singer and fantastic storyteller (Check out "The Street Corner Hustler's Blues" and "Tobacco Road"). He will absolutely CAPTIVATE you with his style of selling lyrics and telling stories set to music. The intensity of emotion in these tracks is much higher than the later stuff, too! For these tracks alone, the price of the album is CHEAP!

Then track the evolution into pop and Lou's subsequent commercial success, all the while still the smooth, debonaire crooner, but underneath it all, a blues singer at heart. This is great stuff. When Lou Rawls sings, all the musicians in the room are nodding and saying, "Yeah!" A definite addition to your "must-have" basic jazz collection. (Enough has already been said about the later music, in the Grammy Awards write-ups and all over the Pop-Music press...it's also very good in its genre).

Whether you knew Lou Rawls before "You'll Never Find..." or not, you owe it to yourself to listen to the early, young Mr. Rawls, too...you'll also be saying, "Yeah! "

Wow, what can I say about the Lou Rawls Anthology. Part jazz, part blues, part soul and all cool. I really liked this whole collection and loved his interpretation of alot of standards that have been made famous by such people as Frank Sinatra himself. This is voice that is rarely duplicated or heard from today's crop of new singers.

The passage of time has made it easy to forget just how big of a star Lou Rawls was back in the 1960s and 1970s. These days, he's probably better known as the host and spokesman of the annual United Negro College Fund (UNCF) telethon, or the voice of Garfield the Cat. But this ANTHOLOGY puts the spotlight on the most important aspect of Lou Rawls' career and that's his mellow and smooth voice and his way with a popular song.
In the 1960s, he was signed to Capitol Records. In fact, he was the label's most important and consistent black male vocalist, next to Nat "King" Cole. This 33 song ANTHOLOGY traces Rawls' maturation as a blues, jazz, soul and pop stylist and brings together many of his biggest hits and musical career highlights from his association with Capitol Records.
One of the most interesting and historically significant tracks io this collection is "What Makes the Ending So Sad," an early composition created for Lou by his friend and former mentor Sam Cooke. the song finds rawls working out of a soul bag that pays more than a few nods to Cooke. The track went unreleased until it was dug out of the vaults for this collection. It's not known whether capitol or rawls suggested he begin reocrding modern blues and jazz tunes, but he was successful with songs like Tobacco Road" and "Stormy Monday Blues," which is included here from a live Lou Rawls album from 1966.
ANTHOLOGY includes about five tracks from LOU RAWLS LIVE, a landmark album, again from 1966, that really helped Rawls cross over to pop audiences and firmly cemented his reputation as a jazz and blues stylist par excellence with his devoted jazz and blues following. That same year, Rawls had his first major hit single with "Love IS A Hurtin Thing," a blues that sold well with pop fans and was a No. 1 record on the nation's soul charts. The follow-up single "You Can Bring Me All of Your Heartaches" is also here, as well as "Dead End Street," a funky soul romper arranged by H.B Barnum that earned rawls his first Grammy. The bass line on this tune is well worth the price of the entire CD. It's that soulful and funky.
Rawls also popularized, the monologue on records. these consisted of colorful stories that he told to set up a tune. Many of them are included on the ANTHOLOGY as they were first heard on soem of Rawls' albums more than 35 years ago.
This collection finds Rawls at his soulful best, his deep rich baritone used most effectively on a variety of tunes including blues and jazz and standards.
The only drawback with this set is that it's not comprehensive and only tells a portion of the Lou Rawls story. It does not include any of the hits he recorded in the 1970s for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia International Records, nor does it feature "A Natural Man" a hit recorded for MGM Records from the early Seventies. But it's still worthwhile and if you want a more complete picture of Lou Rawls' artistry, I suggest you buy it along with some of the other collections on the market like LOVE SONGS, ALL THINGS IN TIME, etc.

Lou Rawls had a 30 year career in show business. This disk spans only 20 of those years, and misses the last 10 when he was so productive and had most of his well known hits. I'm not knocking the tracks on this disk, nor the quality, but to me an "Anthology" is a disk which spans an entire career of a singer or group. If this is what you are looking for, you need to buy two disks. Go ahead and get this one, its perfectly fine for what it has, but get The Best Lou Rawls: You'll Never Find a Love Like Mine" which is due out on Amazon on June 6, 2006, and contains his more popular Capitol releases.

Let me say right now that this anthology covers Rawls' career from 1962 until 1970 when he recorded for Capitol Records; those looking for the later Gamble & Huff stuff or his best-known hit "You'll Never Find"; well, you'll never find them here. You will find all kinds of nuggets from the early days though; starting with a previously unreleased version of Sam Cooke's "What Makes The Ending So Sad" with the great Les McCann on piano, then progresses into a couple of cuts from his album "Stormy Monday", again with McCann. The CD, though, really reaches its stride with the six selections taken off 1966's "Lou Rawls Live!" That includes the great monologue "Street Corner Hustler's Blues"; one of a couple of the famous monologues he recorded; on that one he talks about the old days growing up around 47th and what was then South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive) on the South Side of Chicago. He snaps out his stories with street-smart prose and as sharp as any rapper, then segues into the appropriate tune, and the audience loves every minute of it.

Later selections on this 2-CD set include cuts taken from albums such as "Lou Rawls Soulin'", (which contained "Love Is A Hurtin' Thing"); "Lou Rawls Carryin' On!", "Too Much", "That's Lou", "Feelin' Good", "You're Good For Me" and a couple others. His distinctive big, soulful voice adds a different feel to even standards like "It Was A Very Good Year", "Stormy Monday" and "Willow Weep For Me". In short, he could sing pretty much anything and make it work. Jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, you name it, and it's all here. He's truly among the giants of all the soul singers, and this CD is highly recommended.

... as far as his Capitol years are concerned. And that's the key when it comes to some of the criticism elsewhere about it not being "complete." It's also worth noting that, despite the indication in the Product Details above that it comes from a label called "The Right Stuff." the copy in front of me, exact in every other detail, says "2000 Capitol Records, Inc."

It has excellent sound reproduction on the 33 tracks and in the insert are 8 full pages chronicling Lou's years with Capitol written by David Nathan, author of The Soulfull Divas and a contributing writer to Billboard. Another nice shot of Lou then precedes a re-listing of the tracks showing, where applicable, the albums in which each originally appeared (note that tracks 1 on Disc 1 and 8 on Disc 2 were previously unissued), but there are no details regarding his 12 Capitol hit singles, alhough all but two are included.

Where it loses 1 star in my book is the exclusion of his first hit single which came in June 1965 on Capitol 5424. His cover of the old Paul Whiteman 1922 hit, Three O'Clock In The Morning, was not a huge hit by any means, reaching just # 83 on the Billboard Pop Hot 100 and # 27 Adult Contemporary (AC) b/w Nothing Really Feels The Same, but it was a charter and it was his first, so leaving it out of an "anthology" is unforgiveable.

However, his initial R&B hit is here, The Shadow Of Your Smile on Capitol 5655 b/w Southside Blues, and culled from his 1966 LP Lou Rawls Live! And it was a minor # 33 on those charts in July and did not even crack the Hot 100. His big breakthrough came that fall when Love Is A Hurtin' Thing rose to # 1 R&B and # 13 Hot 100 b/w Memory Lane on Capitol 5709. That B-side is the only one included in this "anthology." He then closed out 1966 with the # 35 R&B/# 55 Hot 100 You Can Bring Me All Your Heartaches b/w A Woman Who's A Woman on Capitol 5790.

1967 started off slowly when Trouble Down Here Below could only manage an anaemic # 92 Hot 100 and was shut out of the R&B listings in February b/w The Life That I Lead on Capitol 5824, but it picked up in April when Dead End Street Monologue/Dead End Street peaked at # 3 R&B and # 29 Hot 100 on Capitol 5869 b/w Yes It Hurts - Doesn't It? Here they give you the monologue and song on two separate tracks on Disc 2. That summer, Show Business became a minor # 25 R&B/# 45 Hot 100 entry b/w When Love Goes Wrong on Capitol 5941.

Another missing from this "anthology" is his Christmas 1967 interpretation of The Little Drummer Boy, which made it to # 2 on the Billboard Christmas Charts b/w A Child With A Toy on Capitol 2026. He was then off any singles charts until September 1968 when Down Here On The Ground, from the film Cool Hand Luke, struggled to a # 69 Hot 100 b/w I'm Satisfied (The Duffy Theme) on Capitol 2252, and it would be another full year before he returned with Your Good Thing (Is About To End) which topped out at # 3 R&B, # 18 Hot 100 and # 35 AC late in the summer of 1969 b/w Season Of The Witch on Capitol 2550.

In November 1959, I Can't Make It Alone petered out at # 33 R&B and # 63 Hot 100 b/w a cover of the Eddy Arnold hit, Make The World Go Away, on Capitol 2668. In the early spring of 1970 his cover of the 1967 Brenda Holloway/1960 Blood, Sweat & Tears hit, You've Made Me So Very Happy, finished at # 31 AC, # 32 R&B and # 95 Hot 100 b/w Let's Burn Down The Cornfield on Capitol 2734. He then closed out his Capitol string of hit singles in August when his cover of the 1962 Sam Cooke smash, Bring It On Home (on which Lou had provided backing vocals), topped out at # 45 R&B/# 96 Hot 100 b/w Can You Dig It/Take Me For What I Am on Capitol 2856.

Lou would, of course, go on to post another 21 hit singles for several labels (MGM, Bell, Philadelphia Int'l, Epic, and Gamble & Hull to 1987, including what would turn out to be his best ever, in terms of chart success, with You'll Never Find ANother Love Like Mine, which hit # 1 R&B and AC and # 2 Hot 100 in summer 1976 for Phildelphia Int'l, his first there.

Not bad as label-limited anthologies go, but it could have been a 5-star Capitol release with the inclusion of those two missing hits and maybe another B0side or two.

I listen to Lou Rawls growing up. My father would play his music over and over until I would sing it in my sleep. As an adult I begun to appreciate his music. Lou Rawls is by far one of the best Blues and soul singers around I would recommend this CD to everyone who likes that kind of music.

Greg Lassiter
www.misguidedproduction.com

Lou Rawls is one of The baddest Singers Ever.his VOice has such a Rich Quality about it.this Multi-Set Highlights his Many Changes as a Artist.but one Main Consistent is his Voice.it just gets better with Time.Strong Musical Arrangements&Production go hand&Hand with this Talented Man.Tobacco Road alone will flip Your Wig.his VOice&Power are Top Flight.

Muy buena interpretacion de blues, lo compre y lo escucho todos los dias, me relaja y entiendo porque a los de esa epoca les pustaba tanto. si tienen plata, comprenlo.

this a geat album and i would recommend thisalbum to every one