Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Soul Supply from EMI

Soul and blues music record collectors of the 60s will have fond memories of Mike Raven, whose shows on the pirate station Radio 390, along with his catchphrase 'the oldest living teenager in captivity', were essential listening. With the demise of the pirates in 1966 Mike moved to Radio Luxembourg where he presented an EMI-sponsored programme called Soul Supply.
EMI launched this soul and blues show with an LP of the same name, with liner notes by Mike, which featured 16 tracks from the Kent/Modern catalogue by Bobby Bland, Lowell Fulsom, Vernon Garrett, King Solomon, Little Richard, Mary Love, Ike and Tina Turner and Jimmy Witherspoon. They followed this up by branding some of their soul releases as being in the 'Soul Supply' series and no doubt these were featured on Mike's shows. Over 50 singles were issued in this series, along with a couple of LPs, but it was hit and miss, as some excellent soul flavoured 45s of the time didn't get the badge. In any event the series was short lived as Mike joined Radio 1 on its launch in October, 1967.
All of these 'Soul Supply' records were excellent and I have it in mind to track them all down at some point.
But for the time being, and to whet the appetite, here are some of them, beginning with the Stateside LP which launched the series.
Many of the Soul Supply 45s were on Stateside and quite a few were on the Liberty label. Others were on HMV, Verve and Columbia, with one each on Capitol, MGM and United Artists.



























































Apart from the initial Soul Supply LP, only two other LPs bore the Soul Supply logo so far as I know. One was the first LP by James and Bobby Purify on Stateside and the second was this classic release by James Carr.
For a full list of all the known Soul Supply releases (excluding the LP that launched the series, for some reason) check out this link   http://martinsbox.tripod.com/id52.htm

3 Comments:

At 9:16 pm , Blogger john marriott said...

Got the albums and all the 45's except Larry Williams and Jonny Guitar Watson Quitter on Colum. Never got it at the time. Got an Okeh copy very early 70's and every UK issue I've seen since them and there are quite a few around here have been too expensive.

 
At 9:54 pm , Blogger Nick said...

I got some of them at the time (mostly review copies) but I'm playing catch up now, and they don't often appear at boot sales and charity shops! I may have to spend real money if I want to get the set...

 
At 11:18 am , Blogger Denbo said...

"For a full list of all the known Soul Supply releases (excluding the LP that launched the series, for some reason)"
I can't understand why I left that Lp out of the listing at the time, probably because the words SOUL SUPPLY didn't appear under the release number like on all the other LPs and 45s. I was wrong to do so.

 

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