Last Soul Company [Box] [Box]

Performer: Various Artists
Distributor: Distribution N. America

Notes: THE LAST SOUL COMPANY is a 6-CD box set commemorating Malaco Records' 30th Anniversary, including booklet and a 45,000-word essay by Rob Bowman. THE LAST SOUL COMPANY was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes. Compilation producers: Tommy Couch, Wolf Stephenson, Rob Bowman. Digitally remastered by Jerry Masters and Kent Bruce. When Malaco Records started out in the late 1960s, the label that small Southern R&B companies looked up to was Stax. The Jackson, MS-based Malaco, like the Memphis-based Stax, focused mainly on deep-fried Southern soul in the beginning -- only in 1968 and 1969, Malaco was a struggling young operation that was fighting to stay afloat. But ironically, Malaco would still be in business long after Stax's 1975 demise, and it would continue to favor classic soul long after most labels had moved away from it. When other black-oriented independents were putting out urban contemporary, rap and house music in the 1980s and 1990s, Malaco was the place you went to hear soulsters like Johnnie Taylor, Denise LaSalle and Latimore and soul-minded bluesmen like Little Milton and Bobby "Blue" Bland. In 1999, Malaco celebrated its 30 years in business with The Last Soul Company, a six-CD box set that spans 1968-1998 and ranges from the decent to the superb. It's miraculous that the company survived long enough to have a 30th anniversary -- small R&B labels have come and gone over the years, and Malaco itself almost went under at various times. This collection contains all of the hits that defined Malaco, including King Floyd's "Groove Me" in 1970, Jean Knight's "Mr. Big Stuff" in 1971, Dorothy Moore's "Misty Blue" in 1976 and Z.Z. Hill's "Down Home Blues" in 1982. Over the years, Malaco Records and the Malaco studio dabbled in disco (one of this collection's most famous tunes is Anita Ward's 1979 disco smash "Ring My Bell"), funk and urban contemporary, but essentially, Malaco has remained a soul label with an interest in blues and gospel. Half the fun of hearing a collection like this one is discovering some obscure gems -- on The Last Soul Company, such gems include Jewell Bass' seductive "Let Your Love Rain Down on Me," Power's remake of the Rascals' "Groovin'," and male singer Ona Watson's soul makeover of Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It." Obviously, a six-CD set is too much for the casual listener, but for the seasoned R&B fanatic, The Last Soul Company is a fascinating listen. ~ Alex Henderson Young Mississippi entrepreneurs Tommy Couch and Wolf Stephenson started the Malaco label in the late '60s, and over the decades they amassed an impressive catalog of soul, blues, and gospel, including stellar recordings by unknowns as well as by highly respected artists. THE LAST SOUL COMPANY is an attempt to sum up what Couch and Stephenson have done for the roots music of America's southern region. The breadth of material included on this label retrospective, spanning three decades of music, is nearly as impressive for its diversity as for its high quality. The collection moves from the stark, uncompromising blues of Mississippi Fred McDowell to the salacious, funky R&B of King Floyd to the string-laden soul balladry of G.C. Cameron. Malaco never got stuck in the past, so we also get the synth-driven R&B of Formula V and a Z.Z. Hill cut with a drum track that sounds suspiciously electronic, but it's all part of the soulful, idiosyncratic mise-en-scene that is Malaco Records.

Vibe (4/99, p.186) - "...the last real source for home-style blues and soul....Malaco's influence echoes through the gold-and-platinum-gilded hallways of southern hip hop..."

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