Ann Peebles – The Complete Ann Peebles On Hi Records Volume 1: 1969 - 1973

I’d nearly forgotten about Ann Peebles until this compilation arrived at my door, and of course that sent me combing through two boxes of of 60’s soul and rhythm & blues albums searching out the vinyl pressings in order to remember the time line of this material, as it’s not laid down chronologically. And then I remembered …

HI Records was a brilliant small label dedicated to this sort of music, it was a label or pure solid soul, music laid down by artists who came of age during the 60’s and early 70’s, artists better known for their singles than their albums, songs played on inner city jukeboxes all night long, and while the music wasn’t interjected or infused with backing horns and arrangements up to the snuff of say the Memphis Horns, there was something splendid about the early material that put it on an equal footing with labels such as Fame, Philadelphia International, Cadet, Stax and Motown.

I know, I’m suggesting that the sound of Ann Peebles was the result of the label, though if you were not there during the 60’s and early 70’s, you’ve no idea how important a label was to an artist, with each showcasing something special, and all different than the others. HI Records was pulled together in 1957 by producers Joe Cuoghi, Quinton Claunch and Bill Cantrell, all former producers for Sun Records, along with singer and record shop owner Ray Harris, where for the next twenty years, until the company was solid in 1977, HI was one of the most innovative and successful of the southern labels … with Al Green being their biggest claim to fame.

Ann’s material falls into that middle ground when it came to soul and R&B music, she was upbeat, joyful, emotional, though never of the caliber of the first class women, as her sound appeared far too scripted, without the high flying freedom others brought to the table. This aspect was very much a part of HI's label production theory who capitalized on hit singles and not the creative fluid aspects necessary for the delivery and development of a full album; hence all of these songs hover around the same tracking time. Ann’s other issue was that, though done splendidly, much of her material consisted of covers that she couldn’t quite make her own, so she never had that blessing of innovative recognition bestowed on her.

Without a doubt, Ann’s earlier material is her best, and since it’s not delivered chronologically here, you’re going to miss that aspect, especially when HI’s sound changed in order to modernize in an failed attempt to regain those lost to disco in the late 70’s, completely dropping the Memphis Horns attributes, along with HI’s instantly recognizable HI Rhythm section, all in favor of a more punched backbeat, electric guitars, flying cymbals, and worst of all, for those of us who were musical purists, the dreaded and very unsatisfying train-wreck known as the ‘vocoders.’ [Vocoders: the idea being to code speech in order to reduce bandwidth (i.e. audio data compression) for multiplexing transmission. In the channel vocoder algorithm, among the two components of an analytic signal, considering only the amplitude component and simply ignoring the phase component tends to result in an unclear voice.] This is why Ann’s later material sounds muddied, more unclear, more unsure, and in the end resulted in fans, who now had brilliant stereo systems, not purchasing music that came off as distorted, with most attributing this lack of sound quality to bad record pressing … though in fact, this was all calculated, done on purpose.

All this was unreasonable and unnecessary for me, Ann was a talent that needed a guiding hand, a talent that deserved much more than she was receiving, a talent who should have developed and done what she did best, and not tried to become a disco diva. Of course, this means that right here, you’re getting the very best, the essential first three albums from HI Records.

That being said, most listeners are faced with a daunting task with this collection, 38 songs divided between to two compact discs … that’s 19 songs per disc, and as much as I love Ann Peebles, that’s a bit much per sitting, especially when you consider that these represent three full albums, meaning I much prefer the short vinyl pressings that encapsulate a defined period in time, where Ann’s soul and R&B is intermixed, and not arbitrary divided by the genres of soul and R&B, as they are here.

Review by Jenell Kesler