More Sweet Soul

The songs and performances on Arthur Conley’s 1968 Atco/Atlantic masterpiece Soul Directions were so great that the album was nearly impossible to follow up. Hence, the following year’s aptly titled More Sweet Soul—a pastiche of Memphis and Muscle Shoals sessions produced by legend Tom Dowd—was unfairly regarded as a Conley “B” effort. Some of that had to do with context; this was 1969, and soul and R&B were quickly evolving. But the slender-hipped, Euro-famous American soul shouter—who blossomed under mentor Otis Redding and was responsible for the genre-defining hit “Sweet Soul Music”—really did rise to the times here. The reggae-sweetened rave-up of The Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” (with Duane Allman on guitar), the psych-funky “Stuff You Gotta Watch,” the spare, horn-ripened “Run On,” and the wicked hip-grinder “Aunt Dora’s Love Soul Shack” all show that even a minor Conley effort still betters 95 percent of the era’s soul records. (Detroit producer Norman Whitfield once said that "Aunt Dora's Love Soul Shack," a Conley cowrite, was a huge influence on The Temptations' own psych-soul masterpiece Psychedelic Shack.)