Rock ’n Soul

Smooth

What a great voice!

This album contains a selection of love songs. The album itself is nice to have on while you relax or do something else as it's rather calm and soft.

Sounds like Elvis, but better

Feels like a typical soul-album of the era. Nice album but not something that really sticks.

What a voice! What songs! What a performance! What harmonies! What a recording! Hot damn.

The plucky little guitar parts on the second half take away from it, giving it a dinky jazz-psuedo-bluegrass sound that distracts from the core strengths of the album. It's like they accidentally left on a track of the engineer noodling along on top of the recordings. Otherwise, this totally nails the arrangements/instrumentation. The bass is great, the clean little guitar stabs are perfect, even the strings aren't too cheesy and I loved the Spanish bolero style horns on Can't Love em All. But that voice, damn!

It's real nice. He's got a lovely voice. Smooooth.

3.5 rounded down.

Wikipedia says this had seven top-100 hits. I had never heard of the artist and was unfamiliar with the songs as well. But I thought it was perfectly pleasant. “if you need me” and “you’re good for me” were two favorites.

Great voice, classic soul singer doing some less-than-usual tunes. I especially like the second half of this LP with "Won't You Give Him (One More Chance)". Nicely recorded and put together collection of singles and filler, none of which are throwaways. A nice, positive record if you're into that kind of thing. Didn't blow me away but has a good energy. Influential.

It was fine.

This isn’t an album you judge by modern standards. This is the sort of album that in 1964, you bought, you sat down, and you just listened. The lyrics eventually came to you the more you listened. This is a vocal showcase, but it’s also a musical showcase – not about how many synths you can use, or how fast you can drum or strum, or how fast you can spit out a melody, but a musical showcase of the innate spiritual feeling it gives some people, regardless of genre.

For my own personal enjoyment, I think just sitting here, vibing, and letting that feeling overcome me is a better experience than either of the last two albums we’ve listened to. I think for me, it’s a strong 3.5 that personally rounds up to a 4, but you have to be in the right mindset and mood for it to be a 4. It’s certainly no less than a 3.

Solomon Burke is a cool dude and I like these tunes

Pretty groovy, but faded into the background. I listened several times and can’t remember anything about it.

RnB at it's finest, rock fusion, great album

Fin plade. Throwback til kærlighedslivet i '64 😅

Favourite songs: Cry to Me, Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye), You're Good For Me, If You Need Me, Beautiful Brown Eyes, He'll Have to Go

Least favourite songs: Someone to Love Me

4/5

Very old but very good. Flits between rock, folk, country and soul effortlessly - not easy to pull off!

Solomon ken ik van die enorm krachtige stem. Die komt op dit album niet in zijn volste recht naar voren. De man kan zingen. Natuurlijk. Maar zijn stemgebruik is hier wat bescheiden.

In zijn tijd zal het modern geklonken hebben. Nu klinken sommige nummer zo gedateerd, dat ik het kraken van de LP mis op Spotify.

Ik blijf steken op drie sterren.

It seems like until the Beatles came around (I'm not just attributing this to them) a focus on the voice was all that mattered, and it leads to a lot of songs from the era to sound impressive vocally, but missing something deeper. It is easy listening, certainly, but it's extremely surface level. I can't necessarily blame the album for that, but it doesn't change how I feel about it in the (currently) modern age. Another down the middle album with this one.

Just average early rock n roll. Nothing special. Would never listen again. 1.5/5