Rambling Rhoads: 2020-02-23

As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Thursday, February 27, 2020

LP #28 The Dells – There Is (1968)

Although Chicago R&B group the Dells had a million-seller in 1956 with “Oh What A Nite”, additional chart appearances proved elusive until this album came out 12 years later, kick-starting a run of commercial success that would last into the mid-1970s. In his liner notes for the CD version of There Is, Robert Pruter of Goldmine Magazine suggests that “had Chess Records been prescient enough they could have put out a single hit on every one of the 12 cuts”; that may have been a slight exaggeration, but each of the album’s four singles did reach the top 30 on Billboard’s R&B chart. More importantly, there’s really not a weak song in the bunch, with a fine mix of ballads (one of which ranks as my all-time favorite) and more up-tempo tracks.

Favorite Tracks:

Stay In My Corner

There Is

Please Don’t Change Me Now

Wear It On Our Face

Run For Cover

The Change You Go Thru (For Love)