Store Categories SYL JOHNSON Is It Because I'm Black / LP NEW COLORED VINYL / Numero 2022

50th Anniversary edition 2022 reissue on grey/black swirl vinyl - Syl Johnson's first album, Dresses Too Short, was fairly innocuous good-time soul, but he'd obviously been doing some thinking about the world around him in the interim between that and his second release. Is It Because I'm Black is characterized by socially conscious songwriting, especially in the seven-and-a-half-minute title track, an elongated, serious statement of black pride with a sad funk-blues groove. It wouldn't be fair to call Johnson a bandwagon jumper; this was before Sly Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On had made realistic ghetto songs chic, and it was a fairly gutsy move for a minor soul singer such as Syl to put such material at the forefront. While nothing else here matches that lost mini-classic, there are some good cuts along similar lines in which Johnson pleads for tolerance and justice, including covers of jazzman Oscar Brown's "Black Balloons,"Joe South's "Walk a Mile in My Shoes," and, less successfully, the Beatles' "Come Together."

A1 Is It Because I'm Black
A2 Come Together
A3 Together, Forever
B1 Concrete Reservation
B2 Black Balloons
B3 Walk A Mile In My Shoes
B4 I’m Talkin' 'Bout Freedom
B5 Right On

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