As Long As There's Leroy Around Posted by Junior

Leroy Hutson: Time Brings On A Change and As Long As There's Love Around From: Love Oh Love (Curtom, 1973) Time to give props to a guy whose albums have been on constant rotation on my mp3 player the last month: the underrated soul master Leroy Hutson. Starting at the top of the game, Leroy came to fame as the new lead singer of The Impressions after Curtis Mayfield left in 1971. However, a couple of years of that were enough for Leroy as he set out on his own with his first debut release Love Oh Love in 1973. As the decade wore on, Leroy's songs became more and more disco and his album covers became more and more outrageous, to the point that I, like many people, first came to know him for his modern soul artwork rather than his masterful songwriting and production abilities - after all he co-wrote Donny Hathaway's The Ghetto for christ sakes. So let's take it back to the beginning and Leroy's first solo album when the music was strictly soulful and the album artwork didn't feature any lounge kung-fu outfits. I've read quite a few reviewers comparing early Hutson to the work of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye in the same period and when you hear tracks like this you can see why. Time Brings On A Change combines a political message with the orchestral soul that Mayfield and Gaye were also producing at the time, with soaring strings blended into the groove. What always gets me on tracks of this caliber are the extra touches brought to the production, here we have an organ hammering along in the background layering the track with added texture. The only way I can describe As Long As There's Love Around is as a murderous funk cut, full of trumpets, strings, and a cold as ice breakdown two thirds of the way through. It sounds like Leroy threw everything he had in this track and it works to perfection. Hand on my heart I'll claim that this track deserves to stand up there with the great soul tracks of the seventies. Stone. Cold. Killer. Show love for Leroy!