Another very, very good record from Pravda, the Chicago record label that issued Glenn Mercer’s solo album last year. The Diplomats of Solid Sound have been around for a while, in a very underground, garage-rock ghetto kind of way…but this time, they’ve added some female singers, which, if anybody heard the record, would probably kick them up into the lower reaches of the mainstream.
Here’s my review from Blurt…the only place a write for willing to take a chance on this…
The Diplomats of Solid Sound
Featuring the Diplomettes
Pravda
Classic instrumental soul will only take you so far. Booker T and the MGs had a big solo hit in "Green Onions," but they probably made their biggest splash as the Stax house band, backing artists like Otis Redding ("Sitting on the Dock of the Bay"), Sam & Dave ("Soul Man") and Rufus Thomas ("Walking the Dog"). The Diplomats of Solid Sound, out of Iowa City, haven't found another Otis - who the hell could these days? - but they have figured out what they need to break through after ten years of laboring in garage funk obscurity: singers, girl singers, the prettier the better.
For their fourth album the Diplomats have recruited three Midwestern girls to coo and growl and strut atop their fiery Stax-ish grooves. Never mind for the moment that they're white girls or that they have no discernable track record at this sort of thing. (Sarah Cram has a self-released country album called Darlin' under her belt; the other two don't seem to have recorded previously at all.) They are, in fact, exactly what the Diplomats needed to push their sound over the top.
More
Can’t find any mp3s, but here are some streams from various WFMU shows
“Come In My Kitchen”
“Budget Fro”
“B-A-B-Y”
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