Various Artists - Eccentric R&B - The Cuca Label (2020) Numero 098 Digital - Rare Soul (FLAC 442MB)

There may be unlikelier locations and eras for a soul music than small town Sauk City’s Cuca Records in Southwestern Wisconsin from 1959 to the early 1970s. But that setting figures into a rich legacy, a sizable chunk of it captured in Chicago label Numero Group’s edition of its Eccentric R&B series. Cuca must have held significant allure for Milwaukee artists to ignore studios and record companies closer by. But it worked out for all concerned, at least in the quality of production and artistry shared among the two dozen tracks compiled here. Figuring prominently among them are Milwaukeeans who would later get national attention. Years before The Esquires urged listeners to “Get On Up,” the male vocal group engaged in post-doo wop harmonizing with an occasional Caribbean flair. That ensemble’s former lead singer, Betty Moorer, also acquitted herself compellingly as a soloist with a bubbliness recalling Claudine Clarks style. Selections from Milwaukee mainstays Harvey Scales & The Seven Sounds point both to the singing bandleader’s dexterous vocal range and just how little brass is heard throughout the rest of the album. Motown styled orchestral string arrangements aren’t to be heard at all (due to space and/or budgetary considerations?), but just as Hitsville U.S.A. turned The Primes and The Primetttes into The Temptations and The Supremes, Cuca had gender complementing vocal groups The Devils and The Devilettes working together and making their own memorable tracks. Defining the range found in the Wisconsin and Northern Illinois soul are the Ink Spots/Mills Brothers throwback style of The Twiliters, genuinely funny novelty doo wop from The Supreme Four and moves toward Thom Bell/Gamble & Huff Philly slickness from Step By Step. The most relatively out of step outliers come from the otherwise party-bound Artie & The Pharaohs’ dip into lurching ominousness and Rockford Illinois’s closest thing to Ike & Tia Turner raucousness, Birdlegs & Pauline, ending the project with tender jazz of the type Wes Montgomery and Nancy Wilson could have made together. It,s Late night '60s R&B caught on tape at Jim Kirchstein's jack-of-all genres Cuca studio. Released on minuscule pressings into the local ether, these 26 dog rare tracks uncover the soulful paths between the Chicago, Milwaukee and Rockford scenes. Featuring Harvey Scales, Step By Step, Betty Moorer, Seven Sounds, Twilighters, Birdlegs & Pauline, Esquires, Artie & The Pharaohs, and Fantastic Six, this album tells an alternate history of soul music that could only happen in the Hinterlands on Highway 12 of that area. Quite a few of these dancers i am familiar with (on tasters) only available via the acetates and few 45,s. 

AMM 

                                                                                                          The Tasters!