As our interview with them (RC 325) last year explained, The Dells must be the longest-running vocal act in soul history, having been together for over 50 years. And while their UK chart success has been modest, among the cognoscenti of vocal soul they have always been revered as ‘the vocal groups’ vocal group’. Arguably their blend of rasping gospel baritone (Marvin Junior) and sweet falsetto (Johnny Carter) set the pattern for everyone from The Temptations to Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes.
experience on the jazz circuit, and as backing singers for Ray Charles and Barbara Lewis, among others, they developed a range and depth which set them apart, giving them a kind of widescreen grandeur which attracted truly great arrangers and producers such as Charles Stepney, Eugene Record and Gamble & Huff, and writers like Burt Bacharach.
The Dells have been anthologised before, notably by Hip-O Select in 1999, and while this 2-CD, 39-tracker omits the early doo wop stuff, it’s a worthy portrait of their classy career, sympathetically compiled by Northern soul DJ Richard Searling. All the biggies are here, from the epic scorcher Stay In My Corner to their big hits Give Your Baby A Standing Ovation and Love Is Blue, plus a fair quota of lesser-known gems including their magisterial reading of A Whiter Shade Of Pale. Annotated with the help of Dells co-founder Mickey McGill, it’s twoand- a-half hours of real class.
