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Soul

Portland Parish to London, 1970

Nicky Thomas

Nicky Thomas was born Cecil Thomas on 30 May 1944 in Portland Parish, Jamaica. He was a labourer in Kingston when producer Derrick Harriott gave him his first hits and the nickname Mr Nigel. From 1969 he recorded for Joe Gibbs, often bringing American R&B into reggae. In 1970 a Gibbs production reached number nine on the UK Singles Chart, sold around 175,000 copies and brought him to live in Britain. He made a self-produced album in London in 1971 and Images of You with Dandy Livingstone in 1973, then turned to roots reggae in the early 1980s. He died in London around 1990, aged 45 or 46, in circumstances his record company calls confused.

Detroit, a Hammond organ, 1978

Otis G. Johnson

Otis G. Johnson was a Detroit native whom the Numero Group calls an outsider gospel visionary. In 1978 he composed, arranged and produced Everything – God Is Love 78 himself, with Danny Dallas engineering the mix, and put it out on the Holy Spirit label. The whole record sits on a Hammond organ with a built-in rhythm unit: machine percussion runs under minor-key chords of Johnson's own invention, with frequent wrong notes, while he improvises spoken homilies on the rapture, on love and on everything. The eight-track private pressing stayed obscure until May 2013, when Numero reissued it on its JR line (later renamed the 1200 Line) alongside two other gospel titles.

Forrest City, Arkansas, to Memphis

Al Green

Al Green was born Albert Leornes Greene on 13 April 1946 in Forrest City, Arkansas. A sharecropper's son, he sang in a family group, the Greene Brothers, before the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the late 1950s. In 1969 producer Willie Mitchell signed him to Hi Records, and Green dropped the final e from his name. Their albums together ran from Green Is Blues in 1969 to The Belle Album in 1977. He founded the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis in 1976, and after a fall on stage in 1979 he turned to ministry and gospel records. He went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Lay It Down, in 2008, was his first top-ten album since the early 1970s.

Cabrini–Green, Chicago, 1945

Terry Callier

Terry Callier was born on 24 May 1945 in Chicago and grew up in Cabrini–Green, a childhood friend of Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler. He recorded The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier in 1965, though it sat on the shelf until 1968. Then came three albums for Cadet with Charles Stepney, starting with Occasional Rain in 1972, and two for Elektra. All were praised and few sold. In 1983 he won custody of his daughter, left music and became a computer programmer at the University of Chicago. Then British DJs revived his records and, from 1991, brought him back to UK stages. Timepeace won a United Nations award in 1998, and the university, when it found out, dismissed him. He died of throat cancer in Chicago on 27 October 2012.

Holly Springs to Chicago

Syl Johnson

Syl Johnson was born Sylvester Thompson on 1 July 1936 near Holly Springs, Mississippi, and moved to Chicago around 1950. In the 1950s he played with his neighbour Magic Sam, with Junior Wells and with Howlin' Wolf. In 1959 he recorded with Jimmy Reed for Vee-Jay and made his solo debut on Federal, whose owner suggested the name Johnson. After hits on Twinight, Willie Mitchell brought him to Hi Records in 1971 for Back for a Taste of Your Love and Total Explosion. By the mid-1980s he was mostly running seafood restaurants, and later he sued artists who sampled him. Numero's 2010 box set Complete Mythology brought his name back. He died in Mableton, Georgia, on 6 February 2022, aged 85, six days after his brother Jimmy.

A double LP that unfolds into a cross

Isaac Hayes — Black Moses

Black Moses was Isaac Hayes's second double album of 1971, recorded between March and October and released in November on Stax's Enterprise label. The title was a nickname from a Stax executive, and Jet helped spread it. Hayes thought it sacrilegious at first, and later came to see it as a symbol of Black pride. Stax's Larry Shaw designed the package with former Bar-Kay Ron Gordon. The sleeve unfolds into a cross four feet high and three feet wide around Hayes in robes. The album reached number 10 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on the jazz chart, and on 15 January 1972 it hit number one on the R&B albums chart. It won Hayes a Grammy in 1973.

The Collection