The Atco Sessions 1969-1972 | Lulu

After Miss Springfield’s soon-to-be-classic Dusty In Memphis, Lulu was the second mainstream British songbird to try her luck with a deep soul reinvention. If she never quite scaled the same dizzy heights as her longtime 60s rival, she nonetheless proved that there was more in her locker than the frankly annoying chart biggies Shout and Boom Bang-A-Bang.
Lulu had already hinted at what she might be capable of on 1967’s To Sir With Love, but by relocating to Muscle Shoals with producers Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd (who also worked with Dusty), she came even closer to discovering her inner Aretha on the albums New Routes and Melody Fair, both included here in their entirety, along with numerous unreleased mixes and demos.
She’s on blistering form with Sweep Around Your Own Back Door and Burt Bacharach’s Please Stay, while her passionate reworking of the standard Mr Bojangles is genuinely goosebump-inducing. There’s the odd stumble towards the characterless MOR that swamped her later TV series (a so-so cover of The Beatles’ Good Day Sunshine, for instance), but that’s quickly forgotten and forgiven when this all-too-often underrated chanteuse gets bolder and truly lets rip.