Roy Hamilton Warm Soul CD

I was pleased to see a CD of Roy hamilton's MGM material from a new label called Poker. Here's the review of the CD taken from Amazon:

Born in Leesburg, Georgia, USA in 1929, and having developed his singing technique in a church choir, Roy is generally well-known for the many pop/ gospel/R&B hits that he recorded for Epic in the 50s/60s. Most notably his version of `You'll Never Walk Alone', which, along with other famous songs such as `If I Loved You', `Ebb Tide', `Hurt' and `Unchained Melody', all helped to catapult Roy into the spotlight and huge fame. This period has been extensively documented and there are a plethora of fine CDs of this repertoire currently available.

The era we are concerned with here is his first album for MGM in 1963 "Warm Soul" and also the seven MGM singles that were originally released from 1963 > 1964. "Warm Soul" is re-issued here for the first time and is in part, a showcase of many fine MOR ballads, which are complemented in turn by some gorgeous gospel and soul recordings. Roy by now had honed his style perfectly to suit the recently emerging Soul sound and many consider his MGM 45 repertoire to be some of finest he ever committed to vinyl.
As a super bonus, we are proud to finally issue the previously unreleased After He Breaks Your Heart, recorded in 1964 during the legendary The Panic Is On / There She Is session, conducted by the renowned Bert Keyes.

The legendary producer Bert Berns was even at the helm of production duties on certain sessions and yet many of these recordings failed to make a big impression at the time. However, they do say that "truth will out" so it was no surprise when the Northern Soul cognoscente became hip to some of this esteemed repertoire and turned several of the MGM 45s into club and dance-floor classics; especially `The Panic Is On', `She Make Me Wanna Dance' and `You Can Count On Me'. As with the album, many of these MGM 45 sides are making their CD debut.

Roy would of course later go on to record some more classic and legendary soul sides for RCA... but that's another story! It's a sad one too, as Roy would die of a stroke not that long afterwards in 1969. But thankfully, he left a fabulous portfolio of recorded work behind; not least these outstanding MGM sides...

An essential buy especially to hear the unissued track!