VA – One More Chance – Jai Alai ESP LP

If you have been following the subsidiary label of Bilbao’s Soul4Real Records, you will know they have delivered fourteen singles over the last three years and now comes their first compilation.

The album opens with the rarer 12” mix of Samuel Jonathan Johnson’s seventies disco funk offering, “You”. And if you thought you owned every track by Glenn Jones, Earth Wind & Fire and Gladys Knight & The Pips, all three will delight with previously unreleased recordings. It’s astonishing how the mid-pacer “Share My Love” was omitted from Glenn’s 1983 Everybody Loves A Winner. Indeed, who decided that Gladys’s “How Deep Is Your Love” should not make the final line-up of her 1985 set, Life? As EWF’s “Club Foot” was not included on the 1983 Electric Universe album, it does make you wonder how many other unreleased gems could be unearthed from the Sony Music vaults. And then there’s Aretha…nothing more needs to be said!

Side two opens with Phyllis Hyman’s joyous dancer “Forever With You”, recorded in 1991 (released posthumously in 1998 on her final CD of the same name) and where her hallmark vocals have never sounded better.

There are also some spectacular downtempo moments; “Never Stopped Loving You” from Tyrone Davis, “Right Time For Love” from Don Covay, and Garland Green’s “I Know What Love Is” are long forgotten knee-tremblers that have always been out there, but many may have been missed.

The album closes with the mighty Dells, clearly at their very best on the gorgeous Gamble & Huff penned and produced “Somebody’s Gotta Move”. Originally included in their 1992 set I Salute You, it was a CD-only release in the US and very hard to find on the Jamaican vinyl-only version.

STEVE HOBBS

tracklist

A01 Samuel Jonathan Johnson – You
A02 Earth, Wind & Fire – Club Foot
Originally Unissued Columbia Recording
A03 Glenn Jones – Share My Love
Originally Unissued Rca Recording
A04 Gladys Knight & The Pips – How Deep Is Your Love
Originally Unissued Columbia Recording
A05 Aretha Franklin – Here We Go Again
B01 Phyllis Hyman – Forever With You
Originally Unissued P.I.R. Recording
B02 Tyrone Davis – Never Stopped Loving You
B03 Don Covay – Right Time For Love
B04 Garland Green – I Know What Love Is
B05 The Dells – Somebody´S Gotta Move