Bundle featuring the compilations from The Tammy Labels, The Consolidated Productions, and Minibus On March 1, 2004, Numero issued the first volume of our long-running Eccentric Soul series. The Capsoul Label was our first foray into the world of regional soul music, and over the next twenty years we issued nearly two dozen volumes, documenting such far ranging locales as Wichita, Kansas, San Antonia, Texas, and Norfolk, Virginia, and labels named Deep City, Twinight, and Way Out. These parallel soul universes were filled with endless replication: the Berry Gordy phenotype, the James Brown archetype, the Temptations chromosome, copied and mimicked and mutated into a thousand forms. When a true hit made its big splash, Eccentric Soul was that very last ripple. Operating in the farthest margins of L.A.’s cutthroat music business from 1961-1991, Mel Alexander’s Consolidated Productions was among the longest running Black-owned independent record conglomerates of the 20th century. Caught up in a confusing web of imprints—including Ajax, Angel Town, Car-A-Mel, Emanuel, and Kris—this first volume gathers 28 smoldering R&B cuts by the likes of Lee Harvey, B.B. Carter, Marilyn Calloway, Del Reys, Deb Tones, De Velles, Gene Russell’s Trio, Jimmy “Preacher” Ellis, and Ty Karim. Remastered from the original 1/4” tapes, Consolidated Productions Vol. I includes carefully researched annotation, discography, and photographs from a vital producer. Lost in the soot and fallout from Youngstown, Ohio’s infamous Black Monday steel industry collapse was Tony March’s cross-generational Tammy label. From its early days as a doo wop powerhouse to their last gasps chasing disco hits, Tammy unintentionally documented Youngstown’s small but prolific Black music scene. This single LP surveys the label’s best R&B, soul, funk, and disco, with 13 tracks from Ice Cold Love, Lynn Minor, J.C. & the Soul Angels, The Snapshots, Iron Knowledge, Roy Jefferson, and Steel City Band. Housed in a deluxe tip-on jacket, with a booklet crammed full of notes and ephemera, The Tammy Label continues Numero’s 20 year tradition of preserving regional Ohio music. A double album boil down of Numero's 2012 45 x 45RPM art object Eccentric Soul: Omnibus. Gathering 25 loose remnants from across the American soul diaspora, Minibus connects the dots between group harmony, funk, disco, and modern soul, 1966-1980. Housed in a deluxe gatefold, tip-on jacket and illustrated with copious notes and photographs, the first ever LP pressing fills in a crucial hole on your Numero shelf.
