Shirley Brown: Woman To Woman - 1974
Ann Peebles, Millie Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Betty Wright, Tommie Young, Laura Lee, Candi Staton and Shirley Brown. What did they have in common? They probably honed their superb voices in church. That's one thing for sure. The other is that men have done them wrong, real wrong - I'm telling you. Shirley Brown sings mainly from that same romantically downtrodden yet strong as a redwood tree perspective.
The wonderful It Ain't No Fun is just such a great example of the genre. It is superb, horn-driven, funky Stax soul of the highest quality, and in true "Shirley style" it has one of those trademark spoken parts. She likes to confront her man and/or her love rival. This is played up to the max on the iconic Woman To Woman - "Hello may I speak to Barbara, this is Shirley....", you know the rest. Such a great concept for a soul song. She really had one of the great "lost" soul voices of the mid-seventies.
All the songs have been excellently remastered and the sound is top notch. Absolutely superb in fact - warm, full and bassy. There were so many great soul voices in the seventies who never really got the credit they deserved. Shirley Brown was one of those.
