Album of the Day 8/14/10

Every day, we count down the 1000 best albums of all time all the way to #1. Saturday’s album is #899:

Bettye Swann – self-titled anthology

Bettye Swann is one of the great voices in soul music, blending the upbeat warmth of a mature Diana Ross with a raw, wounded undercurrent. This 2004 anthology released in the UK by EMI doesn’t have her signature song, the 1967 #1 R&B hit Make Me Yours, but it does have her best one, the understatedly wrenching My Heart Is Closed for the Season. Her first producer, Arthur Wright, who recorded her for California indie label Money Records had a terrific ear for detail: the arrangements on her early songs are among the era’s most sophisticated and startlingly beautiful, with Memphis-style horn charts and strings that punch in counterintiuitively. Several of the tracks here were originally released on her 1968 Capitol album The Soul View Now, including a sparse, tender version of Little Things Mean a Lot, and the orchestrated, gospel-tinged Don’t Touch Me. There are plenty of other gems among the 22 tracks here, including the telling Don’t You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me, the ridiculously catchy No Faith No Love, an absolutely brilliant reworking of the standard Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye, the gorgeously apprehensive Don’t Let It Happen to Us and the intense, crescendoing These Arms Are Mine. It fades toward the end, with a trio of ridiculously ill-advised rock covers, but the rest is some of the most fetchingly captivating music ever recorded. If you see her 1967 debut Make Me Yours on vinyl for cheap, grab it – it’s worth a fortune. There are lots of torrents for this stuff out there including this random one.

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