VA - Golden State Soul: San Franciscan Dancers & Smoochers (2000)

San Franciscan soul has traditionally had more of a bluesy flavour than that of its sophisticated cousins from Detroit, Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. The vast immigration of southern African-Americans to the dockyards of the Bay Area during World War II created an audience with an appetite for earthier, rawer sounds, from the R&B and funk of earlier decades to the rap and hip hop of today. That said, during the 1960s and early 1970s there were many classy uptown soul productions from the area, by versatile artists such as Sugar Pie DeSanto, Eddie Foster, Little Stanley, the Ballads, the Whispers, the Natural Four and others. And it would be safe to say that some of the best recordings in that genre, as featured on this disc, were made at Leo Kulka's Golden State Recorders.

A native of Czechoslovakia, Kulka opened up shop in San Francisco in 1965. For a lengthy period he had the only truly Hollywood-style studio in the area, a fact which appealed to local artists as well as arrangers and producers like Rene Hall and Wally Cox, who put the facilities and Kulka's engineering expertise to good use. Kulka also signed many acts himself, either leasing the sides to outside labels like MTA and Acta, or issuing them himself on Golden State and its associated imprint Golden Soul.