In the history of American popular music, the name "Brunswick" has meant different things at different times, so it is worth pointing out that the music on this compilation is drawn from the R&B-oriented
Brunswick
(and its
Dakar
subsidiary) label run by
Carl Davis
in Chicago in the 1960s and '70s, not from the catalog of the
Brunswick Records
originally founded during World War I by the Brunswick-Balke-Collendar company, an Iowa piano manufacturer, and phased out at the end of the '30s, when it was owned by
Columbia Records
.
was revived as a subsidiary by
Decca
in the '40s, but by the time
Davis
was its A&R supervisor, it was in the process of being purchased by
Nat Tarnopol
. Throughout this latter period, its flagship artist was
Jackie Wilson
(whom
Tarnopol
managed), but, as this collection demonstrates, it also boasted such major artists as
Major Lance
and
Little Richard
. Mostly dating from the late '60s, these non-hit tracks show a group of artists closely shadowing the successful R&B styles of the period. For example,
Billy Butler
(brother of
Jerry Butler
) turns out a heavily
Motown
-influenced track on "Come Over to My Side," which sounds like it might have escaped from a
Four Tops
session.
Tommy Green
, lead singer of
the Artistics
, makes their song "You Left Me" sound a lot like
Marvin Gaye
. On the other hand,
Johnny Jones & the King Casuals
take a more gutbucket soul approach on "Chip Off the Old Block," sounding more
Stax
than
. Seemingly, it would have been easy for several of these records to have been R&B hits in place of similar ones that actually were, which, decades later, gives the album an oddly familiar sound; a listener keeps thinking the music has been heard before, only to realize it has not. ~ William Ruhlmann