In the summer season of 1973, Stax recording star Johnnie Taylor was making a few of the sweetest soul music, and his followers had been lapping it up. He was already climbing the R&B and pop charts along with his newest hit single “I Believe In You (You Believe In Me),” which was on its option to gold certification and the highest of the soul bestsellers. Now got here the brand new album, Taylored In Silk, that may proceed Taylor’s sizzling streak.
On July 14, 1973, Johnnie entered the pop LP chart with the report, which might keep on the countdown till late November. Widely considered one among, if not the very best album of his Stax years, it contained not solely “I Believe” however two extra future hits that may maintain him on R&B radio for months to return.
They had been the cool, finger-snapping “Cheaper To Keep Her” and the dishonest ballad “We’re Getting Careless With Our Love.” The later, remastered model of the album turned it right into a veritable hits bundle, because it added Johnnie’s 1972 hits “Standing In For Jody” and “Doing My Own Thing,” and even one from 1971, “Hijackin’ Love.”
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With manufacturing by Don Davis, string preparations by Wade Marcus and the gruffly soulful Taylor in nice kind, the album was an actual winner. Listen particularly for his model of the Clyde Otis tune most carefully related to Dinah Washington, “This Bitter Earth.”
‘Pleasing to the senses’
“Beautifully controlled and pleasing to the senses,” raved Billboard of Taylor’s LP. “A magnetic vibrancy characterizes his singing on what are largely love-oriented ballads. The prevailing atmosphere is warm and glowing. His virile vocalizations find suitable augmentation through the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.” It’s an album that reveals Johnnie Taylor to be one of many best, and lately maybe one of the crucial underrated, soul males of his time.
Buy or stream Taylored In Silk.