Back Beat Soul, or, the Compilation Blues

Eddie Simpson - Stay That Way (Don't Change)

A recent discussion on one of the Yahoo! soul music groups revisited the long-time lament that there has not been a good compilation of Peacock/Duke/Back Beat soul sides by MCA/Universal, who owns the catalogue. One commenter noted that in the past it was explained that the problem is in licensing, as the ownership status of a lot of the material is unclear (apparently the Houston company didn't keep its paperwork in order). That's highly unfortunate, because there was a lot of good soul and funk stuff released by Don Robey on acts like Al "TNT" Braggs, the Lamp Sisters, and many others which, although not extremely successful commercially (Bobby Bland, O.V. Wright, Joe Hinton and Roy Head excepted, of course), would be very worthy of reissue. Today's selection is one such tune.

I don't know anything about Eddie Simpson or this Back Beat 45 except that St. Louis multi-instrumentalist/producer/talent scout/'70s funkmeister Oliver Sain produced it. It's a pleasant piece of funky soul featuring a nice gospelly intro and a tasty groove once things get started. I picked it up from Kurt Wood at a record fair a couple of months ago and I've enjoyed it and the flip, "Stone Soul Sister," which I need to feature in the near future. Let's keep our fingers crossed that fine stuff like this gets comped in the near future!