Love Unlimited - From a Girl's Point of View We Give to You... (1972)

From a Girl's Point of View We Give You... is a cohesive album-length meditation on the highs and lows of love, delivered by a satiny girl group trio pillowed in one of the warmest production surroundings yet heard on a pop album, courtesy of one Barry White. The reason that Love Unlimited was founded long before mastermind Barry White's career took off was that by the end of the ‘60s Barry considered himself solely a composer. Initially he had little intention to step into the limelight himself and thus recruited the three females as a means of publishing his songs: Glodean and her sister Linda, plus Diane Taylor. Ironically, both Barry White and Love Unlimited were signed to 20th Century Fox at the same time in 1971. They had spent a year working up their material, and it shows: the nine songs hang together like few soul albums of the time. Opening with a subdued monologue by Glodean James, the album does take awhile to get to the best track and biggest hit; the last one here, ‘Walkin' in the Rain with the One I Love,’ became White's first massive hit, complete with ambient rain noise and a tender telephone call between White and James. ‘I'll Be Yours Forever More’ and ‘If This World Were Mine’ (the latter a beautiful Marvin Gaye cover) are what the Supremes would have sounded like if they'd had the material, the producers, the freedom, and the ambition to record a concept album in the late '60s. Barry White's arrangements are reminiscent of the mid-'60s Holland-Dozier-Holland sound, but with all the icy edges melted off and the driving drumwork coaxed into a mid-tempo crawl. Subsequent to enjoying this first success, White created the idea to put the huge Love Unlimited Orchestra together (1972), which was supposed to back Barry's “three angels”. Soon thereafter White was a constant measure in the soul charts himself, and Love Unlimited usually opened the shows for his concerts. The girl group had no more chart busters by the end of the ‘70s and finally broke apart. Glodean and Barry had married by that time, and later released the duet album Barry & Glodean together (1981). http://www.allmusic.com/, http://rateyourmusic.com/

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The girls performing their big hit 'Walkin' in the Rain with the One I Love' on Soul Train, 1972: