Soul Is Green!

Tommy Tate - Revelations

Tommy Tate is yet another one of those immensely-talented artists who was never able to catapault into the big time despite having immense talent and fine recordings for OKeh, Stax (as the lead singer of the post-Ollie Hoskins Nightingales) and for Ko Ko. His tenure for the latter label in the '70s resulted in a handful of singles, all of which, along with other tracks, have fortunately been anthologized, first by P-Vine and, most recently, by Kent.

"Revelations" finds Tate tackling environmental woes with that raspy voice of his over a stepping Southern soul groove that sounds a bit more like 1972 than its 1976 release year. "He's burning fumes from gasoline; he knows too much, you can't tell him anything," Tate laments about mankind. "Tell me why he can't tell me how high is the sky?" Powerful stuff.