Stairsteps – The Stairsteps (1971) (Buddha Records BDS 5079)

Stairsteps – The Stairsteps
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 196 khz | Art at 600 and 300 dpi
24-bit 192 khz 1.28 GB |24-bit 96 khz – 655 MB |16-bit 44.1 khz – 200 MB
1971 Buddha Reocrds BDS 5079 |  Soul / Funk / Psychedelic Soul

A1 My Sweet Lord 3:41
A2 Hush Child 3:45
A3 Everybody Is A Star 2:51
A4 Peace Is Gonna Come 2:51
A5 I Love You – Stop 2:38
B1 Snow 3:14
B2 Didn’t It Look So Easy 2:45
B3 Easy Way 2:35
B4 Look Out 2:36
B5 I Feel A Song (In My Heart Again) 3:31

The Stairsteps were:

Past members
Alohe Burke
Clarence Burke, Jr.
James Burke
Dennis Burke
Kenneth “Keni” Burke
Cubie Burke
Dean Gant
——————-

Pressed By – Monarch Record Mfg. Co. – 16639
Printed By – Ivy Hill Lithograph Corporation
Mastered At – Bell Sound Studios

Arranged By – Stan Vincent (tracks: A1, A3, A4, B1 to B3), Tony Davilio (tracks: B4)
Mastered By – Irv Diehl
Photography By – Maurer Productions
Producer – Stan Vincent (tracks: A1, A3, A4, B1 to B4)
Producer, Arranged By – Tony Camillo (tracks: A2, A5, B5)

Flip Cover version with song titles and info listed on the inside of the flap.
IVY DUO PAK ™

Singles released from this album:

Snow / Look Out
Didn’t It Look So Easy / Peace Is Gonna Come
Hush Child / Easy Way
I Love You – Stop / I Feel A Song (In My Heart Again)

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LINEAGE: ‘NOS’ Buddha BDS 5079 vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply; Creek Audio OBH-15; Audioquest King Cobra cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed with Click Repair on very light settings, manually auditioning the output; further clicks removed with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

Here’s a group that is poorly represented on CD, previously known as The Five Stairsteps, most famous for their hit “Ooh Child.”  Hitting the scene a few years before The Jacksons, they were known as “The First Family of Soul” for a while.  They were more psychedelic than those boys from Gary, Indiana,  but with a similar pop-soul sensibility, served up Chicago style in a funky deep dish.  I believe their covers of “Dear Prudence”(B-side to ‘Ooh Child’) and “My Sweet Lord” (from this LP) must have brought them to George Harrison’s attention as they had an album out on his Dark Horse label before disbanding, later to regroup as The Invisible Man Band.  Heck, you can hear the influence of the Fab Four in the way songs like “Didn’t It Look So Easy” and “Look Out” are put together and arranged.  One of my favorites here, “Snow,” has a Carole King sort of feeling to it.  But this isn’t to say there isn’t plenty of fresh, original sounds here.  The horns and strings complement the rest of the band, mixed in an integrated way rather than sitting on top or hovering above or the side of everything else.  The Stairsteps interject some Latin soul into the bridge of “My Sweet Lord”, as well as the main riff in “Easy Way.” Their version of “Everybody Is A Star” sounds so natural, you could almost forget it’s a Sly Stone song.  In another era, though, the producers probably could have been sued over “I Love You – Stop” as it has an uncanny similarity to a certain hit named “ABC.”  Overall this is a short and sweet LP without a bad track on it, and one of the best album covers I have in my collection.

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