Friday, September 02, 2011

Vinyl Adventures #4

It arrived...at last. Exactly one month after winning the auction on eBay and much sweating on whether it was ever going to arrive, hanging around the front door waiting for the postman, it dropped through the letterbox this morning...phew!


Debbie Taylor seems to have become a singer in the same way as many great black American singers, via the church. When young she sang gospel in her fathers church and toured nationally as a gospel singer in her teens. Through this route she came to the attention of Decca records who released her first two singles during 1968. After parting company with Decca she moved to the New York label GWP.

I first came across "Don't Nobody Mess With My Baby" when it was released on a CD complitaion of GWP's output by Kent Records, "GWP: NYC TCB", and was struck by it's power from the very first listen.

Debbie released 3 singles for GWP through 1969. Then, in 1970, she released "Don't Nobody Mess With My Baby" on the GWP subsidiary Grapevine. It's a pounding piece of big city soul, custom built for the dancefloor and Debbie's vocal performance is nothing short of astonishing.

Unfortunately my copy arrived too late for me to spin it at our soul night last Sunday, but watch out on November 12th when Debbie will be ripping up the dancefloor at Telford Soul Club.

Good people, I give you Debbie Taylor and "Don't Nobody Mess With My Baby"...hell yeah !

1 comment:

Mr Angry said...

She's a great artist Russ and a lovely lady to deal with. Much neglected / overlooked for many, many years but now getting some long overdue recognition.Check out "Don't let it end" for a great uptempo number or any of the slower later day tracks "I have learned to do without you" or the subliminal "I don't wanna leave you". Masterpieces!