Various Artists - Eccentric Soul: Consolidated Productions Vol.1 (2024) Numero 092 Digital - Rare Soul (FLAC 501MB)

Another great release from the Chicago USA Diggers....During his 40 years spent operating in the farthest margins of L.A.’s cut throat music business, Consolidated Productions founder Mel Alexander penned a total of 73 original songs while running one of the longest running Black owned independent record conglomerates of the 20th century. Across those same decades, he’d track hundreds of tunes for his Ajax, Angel Town, Car-A-Mel, City Lights, Emanuel, JGEMS, Kris, Libra III, New Breed, Simco, Space, Tyshawn, Us, and Velvet labels. All well known to Northern & deep soul collectors. Between stints spent naming this flurry of newly formed record companies, he’d also try his hand at distribution, setting up the S&M, Soul Record, and BAB outfits at addresses dotting Pico Boulevard, along Los Angeles’s Record Row. He’d log hours as an on air personality for KORG radio, and establish a host of promotional firms with names like Retail Record Network, World Wide Enterprises, Macro Media Incorporated, Melohank and Roice Promotions, and Associated Talent Development Company. Until well into his seventies, he’d still be busy tinkering with a never realized public works project: his Watts Blues Walk of Fame. “The blues is about living, it’s about people, it’s about things,” Mel Alexander told the People’s Tribune in 1991. “If you’ve never lived, you’ve never had the blues.” And Mel still had quite a bit of living to do. “For a long time we have been pondering over our economic dilemma,” Alexander wrote in a letter to his many associates in 1968. “I feel togetherness is our only way out of this pitfall.” And it would be the only way, after a fashion. Across the next decade, Mel Alexander brought on an untold number of ambitious new partners, co-founding his next label or enterprise year after year, and changing his business address just as frequently. The next big hit seemed forever just around the corner,if only he and his Consolidated Productions cohort could turn up the right slogan, the perfect logo, the correct postal code, or that committed new colleague. All Mel asked was that you believe. Well sadly it never happened for him but the diggers at Mumero did and here is a fantastic collection once again proving that Kent (UK0 & Numero (USA) are THE labels for the soul loving public. Most of these tracks are from his Kris label i noticed.This is full of rare/obscure tracks and loads of Northern included..I know AMM has most of these on 45 and i have a few but what a fantastic collection lads!..so grab it!

Moxysoulandjazz

                                                                                              Courtesy Of Yours Truly (Me)                                                                             

                                                                                                 Moxy,s Magic Tasters!