RECORD STORE DAY 2022 RELEASE
LIMITED TO 2,500 COPIES WORLDWIDE
LIMITED TO 1,500 COPIES IN THE UNITED STATES
Soul Jazz Records’ fantastic collection Betty Harris’ ‘The Lost Queen of New Orleans Soul’ available in new one-off limited-edition heavyweight gatefold special edition green vinyl coloured pressing + download code exclusively for Record Store Day 2022!
Betty Harris’ The Lost Queen of New Orleans Soul collects together the steady stream of amazing soul and funk singles issued by Betty Harris from 1964 to 1969, under the musical guidance of legendary composer, musician, and producer extraordinaire Allen Toussaint, a collection that truly captures the heart and soul of the city of New Orleans during this era.
Betty Harris’s powerful, fiery soulful vocals found a perfect accompaniment with the New Orleans’ players that Toussaint put together to back her, which by the time of her funk classic ‘There’s A Break In The Road’ were the legendary super-tight, super-funk New Orleans group The Meters.
With the extraordinary song-writing skills of Allen Toussaint alongside the powerful, soaring, confident and emotive singer and the groove of The Meters, you have an unbeatable combination. That Harris never, in fact, lived in New Orleans (she flew in from Florida for all her sessions with Toussaint’s local in-house players) seems almost an irrelevance, a geographical aside to the defining New Orleans sound captured on the recordings featured here.
All of these singles featured here were released on Allen Toussaint and his business partner Marshal Sehorn’s local New Orleans label Sansu, widely distributed in the southern city but in only limited quantities elsewhere. As a consequence, Betty Harris’ music failed to achieve the commercial success of other New Orleans artists such as Lee Dorsey (whom she recorded with) and The Meters (who backed her).