Dusty Groove is a Chicago-based online record store specializing in new and vintage jazz, funk, soul, hip-hop, world, rare, collectible, and obscure vinyl records and CDs. (More from Wikipedia)
In 1966, Andrew “Mike” Terry arranged both sides of a single on Karate Records, “Could it Be” b/w “Set My Heart at Ease” for Mikki Farrow; he also co-write “Could it Be” with Jack Ashford.
Both songs are now recognized as classic “Northern Soul”. Northern Soul is a term for music and dance styles that actually grew out of the Mod movement in England, so the reference in this case is more to the recordings that originally led to this movement: obscure American soul music having the Motown influence that were typically not hit songs. On dustygroove.com is this comment about the Mikki Farrow song: “‘Set My Heart at Ease’ is an upbeat groove from Mikki Farrow – produced perfectly by the Pied Piper team, who build things wonderfully in a very short space – and really out-Motown Motown with the groove!”
* * *
The blog dustygroove.com has a rave review of Mikki: “Late Philly soul – a batch of smooth modern numbers sung by Mikki and featuring production and arrangements by Norman Harris! The centerpiece of the album is the club track ‘Itching for Love’, which is presented here in both a long vocal and dub version – but there’s actually some great mellow tracks on the record that we like even more – nice tunes that hit a midtempo or slower groove, done with a confident female vocal style that sounds a bit like later Jean Carn. Titles include ‘Itching for Love’, ‘He Is’, ‘Never Enough Time’, ‘Look Before You Leap’, and ‘Right In The Middle’.”
“My Lord, Sweet Lord” is a lovely gospel number that starts Side 2; Mikki ended her music career in gospel music. The full name of the most ambitious song on the album (and one of my favorites) is “He Is (What Every Woman Should Know About Her Man)”.
(July 2014)
