Various Artists – Soul Harmony: Sweet Soul Vocals 1961-1984 (2025)

This year’s “in” black music style is the slow, sweet groove of soul harmony ballads. Interest has grown over the last decade and now the rarer of these records regularly reach four figure prices. This interest in Soul Harmony has led to Ace forming its own singles label of that name for the purpose of issuing tracks on vinyl for DJs and collectors of this genre.

Though not that expensive, several tracks on here command hefty prices due to demand. The Question Marks on Money, the Puffs on Dore, John Wesley and the 4 Tees’ Melic offering will make a hole in most pockets. We aren’t picking the songs on price though, rather on musical excellence. Hence the recordings by the Mad Lads, Moments, Diplomats and Lee Williams & The Cymbals are relatively common gems which just sound great in this context.

Where the CD makes itself unmissable is the first digital inclusion of prime examples of the harmony sound by the little-known 87Th Off Broadway, the Exclusive, Natural Resources and the Soul Interiors. All of those numbers were discovered in the tape vaults of licensors that we work with; that these excellent sides were unreleased is bemusing.

We have expanded the time span usually associated with these sounds to accommodate great earlier and later examples of the craft. The west coast offerings of the Imperialites, Question Marks, Music City Soul Brothers and Ray & Bob hark back to the doo wop era but are clearly great soul records. The musical style went through the 70s and even in 1980 Dave Hamilton and his young writing partner Dexter Dixon were still searching for that romantic love song sound.