Hill, along with his direct, catchy lyricism ("If you wanna hear him holler / All you gotta do is ask him for a dollar"), ushered in a new sound for the label: down-home blues. Curiously, it was around this time that Malaco began finding its voice with the help of the late Southern blues veteran Z.Z. The last three tracks on disc two highlight the label's brief detour into the disco era, which was due mainly to the club success of Anita Ward's bouncy "Ring My Bell." Disc three starts with the label's bout with disco, in which the company scored with some numbers (e.g., Freedom's funky-as-hell "Get Up and Dance") but tanked with others (e.g., Fern Kinney's uneven electronic remake of "Groove Me"). Big Stuff." Although those two mainstream hits weren't technically Southern R&B, Malaco was still working with the deep-rooted sounds of Dorothy Moore, Eddie Floyd (no relation to King) and McKinley Mitchell. Another winner would come the following year with Knight's sassy chart-topper "Mr.
#Anita ward ring my bell malaco tv#
King Floyd's "Groove Me," a 1970 masterpiece that lives on in practically every TV commercial, had a funkiness to it that made the song Malaco's first gold-selling hit. It's there on tracks such as Cozy Corley's confident "Warm Loving Man," Eddie Houston's jubilant "I Can't Go Wrong" and the piano twirl and girl-group sass of Jackie Dorsey's "Sweetheart Baby." Caucasian artists also contributed to the Southern sound, as heard here in songs performed by the Loudon Wainwright-ish Paul Davis, Stefan Anderson and George Soule.īut true success for Malaco would come in the form of two artists, King Floyd and Jean Knight. Beginning with Haran Griffin's randy "Looking for My Pig," the three-to-four-minute songs that appear on these discs ooze with what can only be called down-and-dirty Southern soul. The first couple of discs in this six-CD, 112-song collection center on Malaco's beginnings as a label influenced by the do-it-yourself inner workings of such popular R&B labels as Stax, Chess and Atlantic. In a commemorative boxed set, The Last Soul Company, you see year-by-year Malaco's rough-and-tumble ascension into black-music consciousness. From its humble beginnings as a label slinging out old-school R&B, then Philadelphia Sound-style soul, then party funk, then divine gospel, to its final incarnation as the home of rustic blues, Malaco has turned out a lot more in its three decades than some would expect.
It has also been a label looking for a distinctive identity. I have the home videos to prove it.įor 30 years Malaco has been the most underrated of independent soul labels. I know this phenomenon takes place in my family's house. As long as it has a good beat and you can stagger to it, it's on. Hill, Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Blue Bland, even Down Home Blues, that collection of barroom blues songs they used to sell on TV, all at one time or another occupy space on black people's turntables when December 25 rolls around. After the entire family gets through opening up presents and finishing off holiday foodstuffs, they all adjourn to the living room, get plastered on newly bought Scotch and shuffle their feet to a soul-stirring blues album from Malaco Records.
On Christmas Day, there is a tradition that goes on in most African-American households that is generally lost on all other cultures.