Thursday 20 January 2011

“You Might As Well Run On Because Baby You’ve Been Gone Too Long”

Attention fellow Soul-diers!

Its unfortunately been a while, due to real life issues getting in the way of all things 'Blog', but we’re back with another helping of the good stuff for you!

‘You’ve Been Gone Too Long’ by the highly underated Ann Sexton is a track I think a lot of you are going to like and it’s certainly worthy of its place here. I was holding this one back for my next long over due mix which should be hopefully hitting these pages shortly. But after careful consideration and deliberation I’ve decided to post it on its own so as to do full justice to its greatness!


Ann Sexton is one of my favourite female artists, ‘You’re Losing Me’ (check out the video later in this post!!) was one of the very first sister funk 45’s that I picked up and is probably semi responsible for setting me down that expensive and time consuming road of record collecting! After acquiring that first 45 by her many years back, I’ve always been on the look out for more singles with her name on. The majority of stuff I’ve found so far has always been on the soulful side of things but are always topped with those amazing vocals that caught my ear in the very first place.
‘You’ve Been Gone Too Long’ falls nicely into this category and is deemed by some as a Northern Soul classic.

Ann Sexton was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1950 and was only 21 when she was’ discovered’ by David Lee. He recorded ‘ You’ve Been Gone Too Long’ and released it on his own Impel Label. Eventually David Lee went on to collaborate with John Richbourg or ‘John R’ as he was known on the Radio DJ circuit and they released the single on Richbourg’s 77 Records Nashville based label. There was two releases of this single on 77 records, the one pictured here is the second pressing, the first pressing is yellow and seems to fetch the sort of price that makes non record collectors gasp!
The single tanked as did the two albums and the multitude of 45s for 77 Records and later Sound Stage Records. It wasn’t until the Northern Scene started to take off that Ann Sexton finally got the props that she deserved. Her Southern Soul sounding singles (Now there’s a tongue twister for you!) fitted the movement nicely and saw her causing a storm on the collecting scene.


Recently her career has seen a revival with promoters organizing live appearances including The Baltic Soul Weekender, as well as the reissue of her album’s. I’m pretty sure you’ll agree after watching the video that even in her 50’s she hasn’t lost any of the presence and vocal power she originally had.
Enjoy today’s 45 and we’ll be back shortly with more of the good stuff!




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