LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Help Yourself After All Is Said And Done Doin' Things Together With You It's Up To You For Your Pleasure To Sir With Love Hold It Step Inside Love Gotta Get Away From Here No Sun Today Ain't Gonna Cry Anymore Finding You Loving You Go Ahead On Thinking Don't Give Your Love Away What Am I Supposed To Do We're So Much In Love How Much Do I Love You As perhaps the pre-eminent session singer of the past forty years, her instantly recognizable, warm and soulful tones have been floating across radio, television, film soundtracks, the internet and beyond for as long as anyone can remember. Today, with a second career as an internationally respected jazz vocalist, she is worthy of diva status. That’s a fact. Though she is by birth an American, Madeline Bell is truly a national treasure. Coupling tremendous material with sympathetic production, her body of work in the 1960’s has been criminally overlooked. These superlative recordings reveal a singer with enviable control, confidence and power; not to mention a range that runs the gamut from a seductive velvety purr to a full-throated gospel vibrato, from the sophisticated sob of a Dionne to the raw emotion of an Aretha. Based on the evidence presented here, if you had to use one word to describe Madeline Bell, it can only be authentic. Madeline’s second Phillips LP “Doin Things” is reissued here for the first time and represents one of the strongest long-players to emerge from any British (or British-based) female vocalist in the late 1960s. In addition to the original LP we’ve added bonus tracks, two non-album singles from the same period plus a b-side to a single that prefaced this LP, Go Ahead On a co-write with Dusty Springfield, who also recorded her own version.