Laura Lee: The Chess Collection (2006)

A massive collection of rare work by Laura Lee, a singer who is best known for her 70s hits on the Hot Wax label, but who sounds equally great here on her earlier sides for Chess. Lee's deep soul approach was a perfect match for Chess at the end of the 60s and the work here often has her coming across with a hard and heavy approach that rivaled the best female soul coming out of Stax or Atlantic during the same era; no surprise, considering that most of the material here was recorded down in Muscle Shoals, far from the Chicago studios and sweeter production styles of most other artists on Chess. The package is a great discovery of southern soul from the end of the 60s and brings together 20 singles and album tracks that Lee recorded for Chess, all material that's been sadly ignored over the years, thanks to her bigger fame on Hot Wax. Titles include ‘Mama's Got A Good Thing’, ‘Need To Belong’, ‘Dirty Man’, ‘It's How You Make It Good’, ‘A Man With Some Backbone’, ‘Wanted Lover, No Experience Necessary’, ‘You Need Me’, ‘Uptight Good Man’, ‘Stop Giving Your Man Away’, ‘It's All Wrong But It's All Right’, ‘But You Know I Love You’, ‘Another Man's Woman’, and ‘Are You Doing Me Wrong’. ~ http://www.dustygroove.com/