Grown N Sexy Friday Grooves: Latimore

Latimore: It Ain’t Where You Been and Somethin Bout Cha
From: It Ain’t Where You Been [Glades, 1977]

The title ain’t lying. Something smoothdacious and smoking for the weekend with the undoubted charms of seventies crooner Latimore. Starting his career in the blues field Latimore was a decent session pianist for many years before hitting the big time in the early seventies with a laid back sensual southern soul suitable for getting down on the dancefloor and in the bedroom.
Nowadays Latimore’s probably most famous for his 1974 track Let’s Straighten It Out but today I’ll be focusing on a personal favourite – his 1977 release It Ain’t Where You Been which has a great balance of the grown n sexy soul with lush production and a warm sound.

The title track showcases all the above perfectly as a great slice of midtempo dancefloor friendly soul. Funky bass, strings, trumpets, it’s a fantastic opener to the album and an extremely solid entry into the late seventies soul catalogue.

Something Bout Cha, the biggest hit of the album, is another classic dancefloor track but this time for the more sultry dances of the night. This is pretty near my definition of grown n sexy soul music, catching my ear as soon as the piano riff comes in at the beginning of the track.

Sadly it’s another case of the album being well out of print but you can pick up a best of Latimore pretty cheap which has most of his good stuff on it.

Latimore (now known as Lattimore) is still performing and releasing to this day as a session musicians and as an artist in his own right so more power to him.