Song of the Day: Alice Clark, “I Keep It Hid”

The interweb has mutated into many strange forms, some good, most not so good, and fragmented into various regions. On the good side, one of the tastier regions is a subset of the larger region of musical blogs – blogs that devote themselves to posting information on older records, along with rips (digital versions) of albums that are out of print and unavailable, as well as ones that have been (re)released on CD.

Within that subset, there are further divisions, active groupings organized around various genres, like garage, folk, punk – and funk, soul and R&B, which has a particularly active community of bloggers based all around the world, sharing and posting an amazing collection of records that would otherwise in some cases be almost unobtainable. Here’s an obscure album I ran across last year on one of the soul blogs I follow:

Alice Clark, “I Keep It Hid” – from her self-titled 1972 album

This is not an entirely lost album, as the information below will show, but it doesn’t have anything like the following I think it deserves, even though nothing else on the album quite lives up to “I Keep It Hid.”

Alice Clark – Alice Clark: “The self-titled 1972 disc from Alice Clark has more than stood the test of time, it is a sublime masterpiece of R&B/pop…” (read the rest at AllMusic.)

Alice Clark – Alice Clark (1972): There weren’t many vocal albums on the Mainstream label during the early 70s, and this rare soul side is a real overlooked gem! Alice Clark has a rich soulful voice, with a style that sounds a bit like Esther Marrow, mixed with some of the lead vocalists in Voices Of East Harlem — a really right-on sort of sound that’s totally great, and way hipper than most 70s chart soul! Arrangements are by Ernie Wilkins, who brings in a touch of jazz — but again, with a much hipper feel than most of his other backings — and most of the tracks are quite obscure, well-written tunes — of the sort of material you might expect to hear sung by Gil Scott-Heron or Donny Hathaway… (via A small selection of whatever fills my head!.)

For more…

• Alice Clark – Amazon
• ALICE CLARK ‘s discography – GrooveCollector
• Don’t keep it hid, Alice | Ask MetaFilter
• Alice Clark | AllMusic

And here are some of the blogs on which this album has appeared/been discussed…

• My Blog TOO 2: Alice Clark – Alice Clark (1972)
• A small selection of whatever fills my head!: Alice Clark – Alice Clark (1972)
• Classic and Rare Soul Sisters 50s – 70s: Alice Clark: Alice Clark … plus (1966-1972)
• Soul Shower (v2.0): She started this mess
• Deep Cut « Doom Spirals

Filed under: Song of the Day, 1970s, music, soul