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LP
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NA 5285LP
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"The lost album by Rodney Stepp's Rapture Ensemble. Unreleased sweet soul and disco funk from mid-'70s Indianapolis, featuring members of Amnesty, Midnight Star, and The Spinners. Featuring liner notes written by Naptown historian Kyle Long. A photo in Rodney Stepp's scrapbook sums this period in his life in music. It's 1974, The Spinners were headliners at the 'Zaire 74' music festival, a sideshow to Muhammad Ali's fabled 'Rumble in the Jungle' fight with George Foreman. Among the faded snapshots, there's a picture of Stepp backstage posing arm in arm with Ali; another image shows The Greatest seated at Stepp's Fender Rhodes alongside vocalist Etta James. It was all a dream for this Naptown wunderkind, who had previously recorded for Herb Miller's LAMP Records as the Diplomatics and had issued the sweet soul killer 'Young Girl' as Jazzie Cazzie and the Eight Sounds on a rare Knaptown 45. But as exciting as his rise out of that local status was, as exciting as it was to headline festivals and arenas and appear on late night talk shows, Stepp grew restless with the mechanical routine of being a sideman. He grew tired of playing the same charts night after night. He was hungry for a creative outlet that mimicked his earliest days in recorded music. So, in 1978, Stepp left The Spinners and returned to Indianapolis, where he established an all-star group of musicians?including members of Jazzie Cazzie and the fabled Amnesty -- and he named the band Rapture. They inspired countless others. They recorded an album's worth of material. Now-Again's Egon first got tapes from Stepp in 2002 and dutifully transferred them, but the time was not right for a foray into this wealth of material. Now, this is the first time it Rapture's music is seeing the light of day, a triumphant, late career moment for Stepp and a cause for celebration of those intrigued by deep, sweet soul and disco funk."
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