Black Ivory – Surrender

Well that was another excellent weekend in old London Town! Friday night saw us travel to the legendary Ronnie Scott’s to see The James Taylor Quartet perform a rare gig which was most enjoyable before a trip to Madame Jojos for The Good Foot. Saturday night we ventured to Peckham for the hugely popular South London Soul Train at the Bussey Building for 3 rooms of all manner of soul & funk. Sunday morning was my guest appearance on Dr Krueger’s House Call radio show – you can listen again if you missed it here: http://www.mixcloud.com/NTSRadio/house-call-7th-september-2014/

So, on to today’s selection and this one is a little bit rare though when you hear the song it’ll sound like something that you think you might’ve heard before. I say that because in my opinion it is very reminiscent of the Jackson 5. Anyone out there who is a fan of Lil B (I’d be pretty surprised if any of my readers were a fan of his if I’m honest) will recognize the track from his 2012 release entitled “Surrender To Me”

I don’t know an awful lot about the group, save for the fact that they started out in Harlem in 1969 as a vocal group featuring Leroy Burgess who became a fairly prolific writer/producer on the 70s & 80s disco scene. This particular selection was released in 1972 and was the b-side of the record – something not uncommon to us here on Gazfunk. The group continued to record right through to the mid 80s before a comeback album was released in 2011 after the band got back together for an oldies tour.