LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Release Me You Made A New Man Out Of Me Reconsider Me If I Could See You One More Time I Won’t Cry I Want To Walk Through This Life With You South Side Of Soul Street Something Worth Leaving For Georgie Morning Dew In A Moment Of Weakness Real Live Livin’ Hurtin’ Man Lonely Man Proud Woman I Ain’t Be All Bad Losing Battle Living On Your Own How Can I Prove I Love You You Can Depend On Me I Have No One Love Me Now Let Me Be Myself It’s Got To Be Something Hell Yes I Cheated Spanish Harlem After All The Good Is Gone Chasing Rainbows Stairway To Heaven I Only Wanna Be With You Share Your Love With Me Your Love Is All I Need "Noted Singer Johnny Adams Passes Away" was the headline of a press release from the Louisiana Music Archive which told us that Johnny had died on the morning of Monday September 14th, 1998. in Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, having fought a "losing battle" with cancer. He was 66 years old, and his death deprived the world of arguably one of the best musical voices of our time, sadly under-recognised until the eclectic might of Scott Billington"s productions for Rounder Records took his talents to a wider market during the last decade of his life. Johnny is survived by his wife, Judy. In the overall scheme of things soulful, the quality and versatility of Johnny"s voice should have pitched him right in there with Sam Cooke, Ben E King, Jerry Butler and Jackie Wilson in the top rank of best-selling R&B singers who went on to achieve major pop success, but the musical enigma that is New Orleans, while blessed with great depths of aesthetic and metaphysical assets, perhaps proved to be the factor which restrained such a breakthrough; for all the abundance of talent and recording activity in the Crescent City since the 1950s, it is surely ironic that only Fats Domino, Irma Thomas and Lee Dorsey managed to achieve significant lasting success, with the added irony that this came from links which took their recording career base away from New Orleans (Fats and Irma with Imperial in Hollywood, Lee with Bell in New York). Johnny did join Atlantic, as you will read later, but their "golden soul" bubble was deflating at the time and the union was not fruitful, and thus the dependence of the hometown boy on local resources was to prove a hindrance to his progress.