VA - Country Got Soul Volume One (2003)

The idea behind Casual's 2003 compilation Country Got Soul is a good one: Shine a spotlight on the white southern singers of the late '60s and '70s who blended soul, country, blues, and rock into a lazy, hazy, laid-back, mellow groove. Contrary to what's implied by the title, it is not a collection of country-soul, either in the sense of country singers singing soul songs or soul vocalists interpreting country songs. It focuses on a hybrid, best-illustrated by the incomparable Charlie Rich, that blended all strands of contemporary southern music in the late '60s and '70s, with an emphasis on a funky groove -- usually one that was smooth, not gritty. Splitting hairs about whether this is country-soul or not may seem like a minor matter of semantics, but understanding that there's very little country on Country Got Soul and a whole lotta roots music is essential to whether you enjoy this record or not. The other thing necessary for understanding this record is that this is not a collection of easily available or well-known music; even such names as Charlie Rich, Delaney & Bonnie, Dan Penn, and Tony Joe White -- four artists who essentially laid the foundation for this southern hybrid -- are represented by out-of-print album tracks or forgotten singles. All this means is that Casual follows the Soul Jazz blueprint, which prizes obscurity over familiarity, sometimes offering a skewed slant on musical history in the guise of a forgotten treasure trove. This is a collection made for music junkies, the obsessive collectors always on the hunt for new records, preferably forgotten classics nobody else knows. So, among those circles there's a tendency to overrate this stuff -- or the regional soul unearthed on Soul Jazz collections -- to play it up as better than the established artists or known hits, simply because it's a new discovery, when that's often just not the case. Make no mistake, there is some great music here and it deserves to have a showcase, but apart from already-acknowledged cult favorites like Larry Jon Wilson, Eddie Hinton, Travis Wammack, and Jim Ford, nobody here is as good as Charlie Rich, Delaney & Bonnie, Dan Penn, and Tony Joe White (nor are they as good as the similar Bobby Charles, who is referenced in the liner notes but not on the compilation). They're good and enjoyable -- there's really not a bad cut here -- but they're not lost treasures, they're fun artifacts that will appeal to roots-music and groove-funk fans alike. And since very little of this kind of music has found its way to CD, it is valuable, particularly to the fanatical record collectors it's aimed at. And nearly any die-hard record collector will find much of this enjoyable -- but just resist the urge to overrate this merely good collection.