McFadden & Whitehead – Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now (12″ extended mix) b/w I Got The Love (1979)

McFadden & Whitehead – Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now b/w I Got The Love
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/192 kHz | FLAC  & mp3 |  300 dpi scans | Disco funk
515 MB  (24/192) + 280 MB (24/96) + 87 MB (16/44.1)  34 MB (320 kbs)
1979 Philadelphia International Records  – 2Z8 3675

It’s a Wednesday and everyone can use a little help to power through the rest of the week, so I thought I’d make a very short post here.  Featured here is a solid slab of funk-driven disco, a dance floor anthem, and a smash hit for McFadden & Whitehead.  It overflows with positivity and joy.  This extended mix brings an additional 3 minutes to its already prodigious length. The B side, “I Got The Love”, seems to be the same mix as the album version. This tune owes a lot to Otis Redding, in particular the chord changes of ‘Hard To Handle’ in the chorus.  It’s also a great tune, but “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” is what you came for.  A good friend of mine called it a perfect song the other day, and I’m inclined to agree.

Label/Cat#: Philadelphia International Records – 2Z8 3675
Country: US
Year: 1979
Genre: Funk, Soul
Style: Soul, Disco
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 33 ⅓ RPM, Single

Tracklist
A – Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now (10:45)
B – I Got The Love (03:32)

Total length: 14:17

More information: https://www.discogs.com/release/363828-McFadden-Whitehead-Aint-No-Stoppin-Us-Now

Transfer lineage:  Record cleaned on Music Hall WCS-3 machine with custom fluid; vinyl 1979 Philadelphia International 2ZB 3675; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica Signet TK7E cartridge; Pro-Ject Tube Box S2 preamp with Philips NOS ECC83 tubes powered by Accu-box battery PSU; Audioquest Black Mamba and Pangea Premier interconnect cables; RME Babyface Pro interface ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; Click Repair with output monitored in real time; further clicks and pops removed manually with Adobe Audition 3.0; resampled, dithered, converted to FLAC using iZotope RX Advanced. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename.

 

 

James Gilstrap – Love Talk (1976) (Roxbury Records RLX 105)

James Gilstrap – Love Talk
1976 Roxbury Records RLX 105

Jim Gilstrap is better known as a backup singer, but Stevie Wonder fans might know him for singing the first verse of “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life”, which also makes him the first voice you hear on the epic Talking Book.  His name appears on tons of albums. You can see a partial list of his session credits here , where you can see that he was very busy in the 1970s, working in the worlds of rock, soul, jazz, and funk.  The fact that Gene Page did the arranging on this record is also worth noting. This album, which has never appeared on CD, is a nice, short set of soulful disco-funk, and the mellow version of Todd Rundgren’s “Hello, It’s Me” has me wondering if Prince ever covered the song on solo piano. Continue reading

Marvin Gaye – Midnight Love (1982)

Marvin Gaye – Midnight Love
1982 Columbia FC 38197
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
24-bit 192 khz – 1.68 GB | 24 bit 96 khz – 830 MB | 290 MB 16-bit 44.1 khz
Soul – Funk – Disco – Electro

Dr. Vibes’ 12 Days of Christmas – Day 6 – Marvin’s first record for Columbia after getting out of his Motown contract. Sadly it was his last completed work although Harvey Fuqua and Gordon Banks would go on to fulfill his contract by ‘cooking’ some unissued recordings for the ‘Dream of a Lifetime’ album. My vinyl copy is mint, so all stray clicks or pops were removed by hand. It’s so clean you can clearly make out the “It’s not good to masturbate..” in the fade-out of “Sexual Healing.” Modern medicine has proven him wrong about that, by the way..

Continue reading

Universal Togetherness Band – Universal Togetherness Band (2015)


Universal Togetherness Band – Universal Togetherness Band
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
24-bit 192 khz – 1.57 GB | 24 bit 96 khz – 838 MB | 281 MB 16-bit 44.1 khz
Numero Groupo NUM57 | Released 2015 | Funk – Soul – Jazz-Funk

Dr. Vibes’ Twelve Days of Christmas – Day 4:  Numero Group are the reigning kings of releasing “lost” music. I have joked in the past, among select company of course, that on occasion some of that music probably could have remained lost. But it is clearly a labor of love for them, and the fine attention to detail in the research, liner notes, rare photos, and decent audio restoration and mastering more than compensates for the occasional lackluster release (and, of course, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure etc.) But whereas a great deal of Numero’s lost music is usually comprised  7″ singles by singers or groups who may have had a local or regional fan base, released by indie labels in numbers small enough to be destined for 21st-century audio archeologists, The Universal Togetherness Band is another story – an entire album of material, recorded in pristine quality as a student project through the audio engineering program at Columbia College in Chicago (a small arts college with a strong practical, ‘hands-on’ component, for kids who can’t afford the elite Art Institute down the street..).  The end result was top-notch jazz-funk-disco-soul that would have fit nicely with any of the groups on the De-Lite Records roster or a similar outfit.  Continue reading

One Way featuring Al Hudson – Music / Now That I’ve Found You (1979) (12″ extended single)

One Way featuring Al Hudson – Music / Now That I Found You (12″ extended single)
Vinyl rip in 24 bit 192 khz | Art at  300 dpi
24 bit 96 khz – 312 MB | 108 MB 16-bit 44.1 khz
MCA Records L33-1853 White Label Promo | Released 1979  | Disco / Soul / Funk

I’ve been too busy to blog but not to boogie.  Here is a quick snack, an extended mix of the jam “MUSIC” from One Way (featuring Al Hudson), featured on their first LP.  The B Side, “Now That I Found You” is a pop-crossover number and kind of a throw-away IMHO.  The A-side is what you want here.  Great track!

A Music 8:00
B Now That I Found You 7:55 Continue reading