|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
VAMPI 291LP
|
It is perhaps apropos that Queenie Marie Lyons's best known song is titled "See And Don't See." For all the acclaim that song has accrued, and all the times it has been compiled, reissued and bootlegged, Queenie herself has somehow remained unseen. How did a singer from Ashtabula, Ohio record one of the great female-led soul albums and then simply fall off the map, never to record or perform again? While on tour with James Brown for only a month or so, when the group reached Cincinnati in mid-'68 she entered the King Records studio there to record what would become Soul Fever. The songs were a combination of covers, some of which she'd been doing in her live shows, like "Fever" and "Try Me," and originals written by producer Henry Glover and pianist Don Pullen, who was the bandleader on the session. The album opener, "See And Don't See," was also recorded by the veteran R&B singer Maxine Brown, but Queenie's version blows hers away. Soul Fever is a supremely funky and soulful affair, with Queenie's powerful and captivating voice magnetically attractive, with an urgency that is impossible to ignore. "Your Thing Ain't No Good Without My Thing," "Your Key Don't Fit It Anymore," and "I Don't Want Nobody To Have It But You" are as funky and soulful as the best of Tina Turner and Aretha -- a statement not to be made lightly! The album was critically acclaimed -- the October 10, 1970, issue of Billboard listed it as their sole "four star" pick in the soul category -- but perhaps due to the tumult at Starday-King, whose stewardship had turned over several times in only a few years, it never seemed to be able to break through to a larger audience.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
VAMPI 096CD
|
2008 release. More than three decades after its original release, and for the very first time on CD, Marie Queenie Lyons 'cult classic Soul Fever. Marie Queenie Lyons is a mystery girl, a Southern enigma. Like a kind of black Bobbie Gentry, after just this one album Queenie vanished. Following its 1970 release, she disappeared off the soul map forever, like a Roman candle floating off into the warm Southern night. Because of the prodigious wealth of talent in black America at the time, great albums with miniscule marketing budgets were often overlooked. Soul Fever was just a drop in an ocean of fabulous, funky R&B recordings released that year. But over the decades, it's become a cult classic and established as one of the rarest and most prized Southern soul albums from that prolific era. Queenie certainly had the qualifications (in both sass and vocals) to be hired by James Brown as one of his "funky divas." But quite what happened to Queenie after the album's release has been lost in the mists of time. Soul Fever languished in obscurity for a couple of decades. But slowly, through the years, it's ascended to cult classic status. Now, after over three decades from its original release, it's finally been reissued.
|