This album inaugurates a new series from the Numero Group label, one that celebrates "the lost sounds of mid-America from the '60s and '70s."
Downriver Revival focuses on recordings produced during that period by Felton Williams, whose several labels and basement studio in Ecorse, MI, acted as something of a clearinghouse for local talent between 1967 and 1981. The 24 tracks collected here run the gamut from gospel to instrumental funk to scrappy garage punk, with a particular focus on gospel material. As it turns out, it's the gospel material that is most compelling, especially the four contributions from Shirley Ann Lee -- her "How Can I Lose" and, especially, the quietly wonderful "Please Accept My Prayer" are absolutely brilliant. Other top-notch entries include the Gospel Supremes' "Sinner Man," which sounds like it was recorded in church, and the excellent "Round n' Round" by the Junior Mays Group, who sound like an old-school gospel quartet. The instrumental tracks mostly feel like filler, but some of the secular vocal numbers are quite good -- in particular,
the Combinations' "While You Were Gone," which sounds a bit like a rewrite of the
Peter Tosh/
Mick Jagger song "(You Gotta) Walk and Don't Look Back." But it's the gospel material that really elevates this remarkable album.