Create a free account. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Lou Ragland. Only 1 left in stock. One For The Road. Customer reviews. How are ratings calculated? Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon.

It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness. Top reviews Most recent Top reviews. Top reviews from United Kingdom. Gospel, group soul, garage-punk, northern, jazz and funk, recorded by Felton Williams between and in Ecorse, just downriver from Detroit. Amazingly the DVD contains more recordings, and a film. Rugged early-seventies funk — greasy, fatback and home-cooked — championed hard back in the day by DJ Shadow, now with full Numero trimmings and service.

Deep, and deeply soulful, the album falters only once, on an instrumental reprise that is actually not all that bad. What Should I Do? You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.

You are commenting using your Twitter account. One of Ragland's songs, "I Travel Alone" became a pretty big hit on the Northern Soul dance circuit in the UK a few years back, but the majority of this material is being released for the very first time.

Vocally, Ragland reminds me a bit of Al Wilson, the soul singer who scored a bit 70s hit with "Show and Tell" but who also recorded some great material on the Soul City label in the late 60s and early 70s.

Ragland also has a trace of early Marvin Gaye in his vocal delivery. But with some of this material, especially the tunes he did with Hot Chocolate, the music takes on a much funkier veneer, reminding me a bit of Charles Wright and his Watts rd Street Rhythm Band Disc 1 is all Lou Ragland solo recordings, plus one track listed as by Wildfire.

Disc 2 has a few more "solo" tracks, his songs with Hot Chocolate, plus two cuts from Volcanic Eruption. The third disc that's included in this package is Ragland and Hot Chocolate's "Live from the Agency," recorded in The band really stretches out on these live studio recordings, particularly on the minute version of "Good for the Gander," of which there is another shorter version on this set's Hot Chocolate disc.

But one word of warning: the sound is VERY muddy and distorted in parts of this live disc. As the sleeve notes, the acetate from this recording, already in poor shape, was transferred to digital audio tape DAT and then Thus, the sound is a bit wobbly in parts, but at other points it sounds pretty good, all things considered.

The loss of fidelity is acknowledged by the compilers, but in the liner notes they say: "We felt the perspective afforded by these energetic takes was too valuable not so share. These versions really DO give you more appreciation for the talents of Ragland and his band. So, despite the relatively high price for this package, I think it's a most worthwhile purchase. I almost gave it 5 stars, but held back. But it's a 4. The sound quality of this final disc is rough. Apparently the analog tapes were knocked over to DAT in the early '90s and the masters were tossed.

You can hear everything, but one can only imagine what was lost in the process. Musically, however, it's all top shelf with an exhaustive, excellent, historical liner essay by Jon Kirby and Ken Shipley.