VARIOUS ARTISTS "SOULSATISFACTION 02
- the motown connection - (MOTOWN/UNIVERSAL)

A new Motown Cd? Yes Please, if you consider Jo Wallace's taste in selecting 24 solid tracks of the Tamla, Motown, Gordy and Soul labels. The mood of the compilation moves from sixties to seventies rare tunes, album tracks and B sides, but there's no need to wonder... the Detroit Empire is like a goldmine full of treasures!...Thanks to the internet, I was trying to take a dive in it, but then this Cd comes out, and I'm back at the starting point again! Telling you which track I prefer is real hard business! You'll find difficult take the disc off the cd player...anyway I think, Jimmy Ruffin's Everybody Needs Love, sounds great and far superior than The Tempations' version, while I simply fell in love with Carolyn Crawford and her Forget About Me. Tammy Terrel - I Can't Believe You Love Me is another monster track, but really, I feel embarassed forgetting people like the Four Tops, the Fantastic Four - the two sides Just The Lonely/Can't Stop Looking For My Baby do not need any comment! - Edwin Starr, Eddie Kendricks, Gladys Knight or Martha Reeves...Let's end this review on the quality and rarity of the songs... most of them are simply forgotten soul anthems, and it's amazing how easily could be published a volume 3, 4, etc...without falling on the path of the greatest hits! Well done Jo! You get a 10 out of 10!

A word on selection criteria from Jo Wallace:

"I selected the tracks using two guidelines:

I'm very lazy so I wanted to have a CD with all the tracks on that I had on vinyl so I didn't have to keep getting up to change the records on the records decks.

The tracks are chosen chronologically from 1963-1973 which were Motown's best years and it made the selection process easier as I didn't have to follow a "theme". Unreleased material wasn't included on the CD as Richard Searling was working on his "Connoisseurs" CD at the same time and his choice was almost exclusively unreleased tracks. I tried to choose LP tracks that people may have overlooked, B sides that were easily available and cheap records that were still fantastically soulful. Although a few of the tracks appear on other compilations, I still wanted them as they were essential to the continuity of the CD."