100% Purified Soul

Though James & Bobby were cousins, they didn't share a surname: 'Jim & Bobby Dickey' didn't have the same ring about it, however, and neither did 'Robert & James Purify', so 'James & Bobby Purify' it was. This is a 16-track compilation on the UK Charly R&B label from 1988 of some of the duo's most popular tunes.

I'd taken a chance on a '60s album of theirs (The Pure Sound Of The Purifys) six or seven years ago, and though the music was marvellous, the disc had been well-used and was in poor condition, so when this record came into my hands it took the place of the other one. It's a well put-together selection, with informative sleeve-notes by John Ridley, who makes a strong case for their being underappreciated talents too often overshadowed by their more successful contemporaries Sam & Dave.

James and Bobby benefitted from recording at the renowned FAME Studios in Alabama, with the expert backing of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Highlights on the album for me include their biggest hit 'I'm Your Puppet', along with 'You Left the Water Running' and the exuberant 'Shake a Tail Feather'.

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All Wrapped Up

Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to hear the hits repeatedly. The Undertones were unapologetically provincial and anti-fashionable, with their songs sharply-written slices of life that pointedly avoided any mention of politics, or of the then-continuing violence in their native Derry. My favourite tracks are the obvious choices: 'Teenage Kicks', 'Jimmy Jimmy', 'Here Comes the Summer', 'My Perfect Cousin' & 'Wednesday Week'. Their later singles showed increased sophistication but lack the some of the straightforward charm of their earlier work. The B-sides, not unexpectedly, are mo...

Complete String Quartets

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Onslow

George Onslow was an odd-man-out among 19th-century French composers. Born into wealth and privilege, the grandson of an English Earl, he had no need to follow the operatic gravy train, with string quartets (of which he wrote 36) and string quintets (there are another 32 of those) forming the bulk of his compositional output. The present disc contains his 28th, 29th and 30th quartets, in compelling performances by the Quatuor Diotima. These quartets were written toward the end of a prolifically-creative period for Onslow in the years 1829-35. Viviane Niaux, in her informative booklet notes, ascribes this to the composer's having heard performances of two of Beethoven's late quartets for the first time in 1828, at their Paris première. Like many of his contemporaries, Onslow was at once "fascinated and disconcerted", and, although he considered them "extravagant", they seem to have been powerfully inspirational. A further spur to creativity may have been his ...

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