Real Southern Soul: Tommie Young

Tommie Young: You Can Only Do Wrong So Long and Hit And Run Lover
From: Do You Still Feel the Same Way? [Soul Power, 1973]

I’ve been detouring all over the place on the Fuzz recently getting lost in the worlds of African gems and strange electronic soundscapes so, with the sun shining outside and all things seeming well in the world, it seemed the perfect time to travel back to one of my first loves, Southern Soul.

Tommie Young’s debut album, Do You Still Feel The Same Way is one of those great albums that lives up to it’s rare gem status, finally being reissued in 2003. The album showcases a strong confident soul singer with an earthy edge to her voice conveying passion and pain all over top notch production by the maestro Bobby Patterson. The songs were also almost entirely written by Patterson and Jerry Strickland and the quality of the compositions impresses over and over again.

You Can Only Do Wrong So Long is as sunny a slice of wronged woman soul that you’ll come across. Starting with the lightest of percussion melodies Tommie’s impassioned vocals float along over the instrumentation, the whole package controlled in its power but never even venturing towards smooth territory. Very southern soul, very great indeed.

Hit And Run Lover is also about a man fooling around (can you see a theme developing here?) and is probably the most upbeat song on the album percussion wise. Tommie acquits herself brilliantly again balancing her natural vocal power with a lightness of touch that doesn’t swamp the melody. Great production again from Patterson who blends the strings low down enough in the levels so that they enrich rather than bloat the track.

As mentioned, this album is now widely available as a reissue for purchase by those who don’t have a direct line to the southern soul bunkers which is good news all round. Killer front cover as well.