Artist: Rance Allen Group
Title: Say My Friend
Label: Capitol
Year: 1977
Format: Vinyl LP (Original)
Review
Definitely one of my favorite Gospel albums of ALL TIME! Not your typical Gospel record though, a little more contemporary for the genre during that time period. Big man Rance brought that soul to the tracks with his amazing and unique voice, pushing out bass, baritone, and alto! The tracks on this record are very uplifting both lyrically and musically…the perfect combination. This record was produced by the Mizell Brothers for Sky High productions, and I must say, this was a challenge for them, because they had to produce and arrange a Gospel record, as well as play several instruments at the same time. Fonce, Larry and Rod Mizell were all involved as session musicians on this project. Moving on, the A side of the record is more upbeat and a lot more familiar to the ears of R&B, Soul, and Jazz Fusion fans, but the B side takes you to Church and tends to be a bit more traditional…they must have intentionally paced the album this way. RARE! But if you can manage to spot this joint, get it…it’s one of those records that you can pull out and honestly feel like nothing in your collection sounds like it, AND it’s Mizell, need I say more?…
Peace of Mind
Reason to Survive
Design
There are a couple things that I love about this cover. One being the color pencil illustration with the distorted figures, and two being the hand drawn type. What I don’t like, however, is the slapped-in photography on the back cover. I’m not sure why they thought that it would be a good idea. Anyway, the depth of field is pretty cool, but I am more drawn-in to the detail in the illustration, the highlights, the blending of colors…it’s great. Not often do you see a cover done in color pencil. Kudos to Abe Gurvin the illustrator…two thumbs down to Allen Bartsdale for the “basement” picture on the back cover LOL! Sorry I had to call it. Overall, the vibrant colors, the blatant distortion, lockup and balanced composition make this one of my favorite covers.
posted by: Darien of flwrpt
True Meaning Of GospOUL.
Artist: The Rance Allen Group
Title: A Soulful Experience
Year: 1975
Label: Truth (Stax)
Format: Vinyl LP (Original)
Flwrpt Rating of this Record: 3.5/5.0
Review
Another powerful delivery by the Rance Allen Group. There are certain tracks on this LP that I like more than others by far, but overall it’s a nice album. Kirk Franklin has absolutely NOTHING on the Rance Allen Group, these guys fused youthful, soul-inspired music with gospel back in the 70′s. They were trying to reach people by creating gospel music that sounded like typical secular music of the time…but their message was primarily spiritual-focused. A Soulful Experience is just that, it’s an experience.
The song that makes this album a winner is “Talk That Talk”, basically the message is about people who talk about what their gonna do, yap yap yap, but NEVER follow through on what they’re talking about (we all know a few people like this). Don’t talk about it, BE about it. Rance Allen, as well as the rest of us real people, can’t get with those types of folks. PERIOD! He’s just keeping it extra real on that one.
Anyway, this is a good listen, so if you catch this in the crates, pick it up.
Check out the sound!
Talk That Talk
The Painter
Design
I’m not necessarily diggin’ the threshold application to the photography. It creates a major contrast that, quite honestly, does nothing to help the cover at all. The nicest touch to the cover is the red heart over Rance Allen’s chest. Otherwise this cover is very boring.
—
Additional info on The Rance Allen Group