1977 E.L. James “The Face Of Love” on Captown

Sometimes there’s a record that’s just beyond description, a delivery vehicle of soul so pure it’s more like a Quaalude prescription than musical notation. It lies in the realm of Cymande and MJ Kirkland, Lee Moses, and even Nick Drake in its humble, honest, grooving sincerity, where you sense the musician is a little fragile due to emotional or personal difficulties, but has found a way to channel trials into raw expression. So our man E.L. , also apparently a poet, has a whole lot of funky-gospel Donny Hathaway to him, and also some Broadway (Not George Benson) since I guess “The Face Of Love” is a long-forgotten musical/one man show by Vantile Whitfield that James starred in, and most of these cuts come from the show to be repurposed into velvet soul. The motor driving the boat is definitely the playing and arrangements of the MIGHTY Hilton Felton (arp, synths) plus his pops Reverend Leonard Ray Felton on trumpet! Not to mention Oneness Of JuJu’s Melvin Glover on drums! To me this is one of those mythical slabs of vinyl I almost wouldn’t believe existed if I didn’t have it filed, for which I am temporally grateful. TOP ACTION. Oh yeh. 

(btw, I know i don’t need to mention this, but my man is NOT the same unfathomably rich and atomically untalented writer E.L. James, who birthed those “Fifty Shades” joints, from which world culture is still recovering.)