Mary Love - Then and Now (1994) ... plus

There were many soul singers like Mary Love in the ‘60s, very talented, competent performers who were nonetheless pushed to the back of the pack because they lacked exceptional material, or enough personality to truly distinguish them from a crowded field. Mary grew up singing in churches in Los Angeles and got her start recording demos for the producer Marc Gordon. This led to her getting signed by the Bihari brothers to the Modern label, whose select soul roster included Ike and Tina Turner, the Ikettes and Z Z Hill. It seems they saw Mary as their answer to Motown, who had a base in Los Angeles, and alumni whose work appeared on that label - such as Marc Gordon, Hal Davis and Frank Wilson - also wrote, produced and arranged for Mary to the same high standards. Oddly enough, the records for which she is now best remembered, such as ‘You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet’ and ‘Lay This Burden Down’, were not hits at the time, having earned their reputation on the dance floors far more recently, though ‘Move a Little Closer’ reached number 1 in the US R&B charts in 1966. Love revisited the lower reaches of the R&B Top 50 with ‘The Hurt Is Just Beginning’ for Roulette in 1968; mysteriously, she only issued one more 45 for the label, and that didn't come out until 1971. Over the next decade she barely recorded at all. When she re-emerged as Mary Love Comer in the mid-'80s, she sang updated soul with a Christian-centered message. This 21 track compilation includes 10 of the 12 solo recordings Mary made for Modern, plus some of the later material recorded in the '80s and '90s. Included are 5 previously unissued tracks: ‘Because of You’, ‘I Can't Wait’, ‘Grace’, ‘Mr Man’ and ‘B Baby’. Though the liner notes remark how well the ‘60s and ‘90s tracks sit well side by side, they have little in common apart from the consistently powerful vocals. There is no comparison between the programmed drums, synthesizers and computerized sound of the predominantly gospel material from 1987 onwards, and the fresh sounding live band playing the great arrangements of the Modern recordings between 1965 and 1967. I also included EIGHT extra tracks: two B-sides, 'Hey Stoney Face' and 'Think It Over Baby', from 1965 and 1966 respectively; her 1968 single for Josie 'The Hurt Is Just the Beginning'; the 1979 12’’ ‘Turn Me, Turn Me, Turn Me’; her funky 45 for Elco ‘Born to Live with a Heartache’; her two contributions to the Blaxploitation film 'Dolemite', from 1975: 'Power of Your Love' & 'When We Start Making Love'; and finally, ‘More Love’, a song performed by one Mary Love who is supposed to be her, according to Discogs. 29 cuts in all. http://acerecords.co.uk/, http://www.amazon.co.uk/, http://www.artistdirect.com/

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Mary Love performing a re-recording of her Northern Soul favourite 'You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet', circa 1999:

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The same for 'Lay This Burden Down', considered to be one of the greatest '60s pieces of storming Northern Soul to ever have existed: