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Artist: The Chi-Lites
Label: Brunswick Records Category: Music Average customer rating: Format: Original recording remastered Media: Audio CD Number Of Discs: 1 UPC: 646953500428 EAN: 0646953500428 ASIN: B00004SZCA Release Date: 2000-04-25 |
A Lonely Man
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Other male soul groups could step off the macho tip, but even the Temptations had to pray for rain before letting their feelings flow. Eugene Record's Chi-Lites, on the other hand, didn't even allow themselves the face-saver of a loudly pained lead vocal. When Record wandered through the city looking for the most basic succor of a glimpse of his lost lover's face on "Have You Seen Her," his bewilderment and fear were fully on display. And rather than offer a full-throated paean to her replacement on "Oh Girl," issued a few months later in the summer of '72, the group instead focused on how wrecked the guy would be were <I>she</I> to leave, too. The Chi-Lites' records were so perfectly conceived and performed, however, that even their occasional brazen leap into the tough-guy ("Are You My Woman") or social-comment slot ("Give More Power to the People") remained credible in light of the devastation that marked most of their work. <I>--Rickey Wright</I>Customer Reviews:
A Lonely Man..........2006-12-21
At the top of their game.......2004-03-07
The "Lonely Man" album happened upon me at a time when I could not have better identified with it's theme - I was unhappily broken up, broke, and at very loose ends - the perfect audience for this LP's, "The Coldest Days of My Life." Life got better, but for the moment, Mr. Eugene Record's lyrics gave voice to my very soul. He's frighteningly realistic in his tale of despair, and one worried that, after he did this lead vocal, he might have looked for a bridge to leap from. It's That Sad. But as soul music, it's unbeatable. As one issue of Rolling Stone Album Guide observed, no black group ever more daringly or more successfully spoke to the idea of masculine vulnerability like the Chi-Lites. Special effects like a forlorn harmonica and wind machines were never in better hands, either. Perhaps hesitant to release "Days" entire 8:30 length as a single side, Brunswick put it out as a 'Part1/Part 2,' which probably wasn't a good idea - this song shouldn't be interrupted. But even in that formulation, it did well.
Speaking of singles, "Oh Girl" of course, was the biggest success here, and certainly drove this album's sales nicely, but the title song (whose entire 6:23 length went on one side) and "Living In The Footsteps of Another Man" all made it out as 45s, and those three plus both parts of "Days" made it into the group's first "Greatest Hits" set later the same year.
While you really can't go wrong with any of the Chi-Lites material from their Brunswick days, this album appeared when they were at their very zenith of success, and it's a gem. It was originally Brunswick LP No. 754179, and released in April 1972.
Brings back many great memories.......2003-02-09
Not only is this disc pure soul, it is one that surely befits the label as one of "soundtracks of a generation".
AN "OLD SCHOOL" MUST HAVE.......2000-09-22
Music:
Music CD
Cumbia de a Pelos ~ Bronco Y Sus Amigos
Aroma De Mujer ~ Grupo Tentacion
My Romance: Sadao Plays Ballads ~ Sadao Watanabe
In the Beginning ~ Mark Meadows
Con Alma Nortena ~ Artemio Pena y el Trailer