Download or listen to The Village Choir – The Switch from the Paramount 45

Here we are at the beginning of the week. The weather sucked until yesterday. However, this weekend, football wise was fantastic. The Red Bulls won their final game ever played at the Swamp, and Liverpool crushed Man. U 2-nil at home. I couldn’t have asked for better football. We did it without Stevie G. and Sir Alex had to go home and drink lots of wine and whiskey to get over it. But I digress, we’re here for records, and here’s something I picked up a few years ago, have definitely played live, and included on a FMF mix. Here is The Village Choir with “The Switch” from 1973 on Paramount Records.

Not a tremendous amount of info around about this band. They were a New York City band I believe, and at least one member, guitar player Edward Arrington, Jr., ex-Motown backing player, recorded with the band Village Soul Choir on their “Talk To Me Sometime” 45 in 1972. I do not know how the Village Soul Choir morphed in Village Soul Choir, but Arrington was involved with that as well. This record was produced by Sir Charles Matthews and arranged by Clip Hightower. Matthews described the band as ” a choir that sang R & B and Pop. Village denoted the sound in it’s uniqueness, Soul denoted that it was church oriented, and Choir denoted it was heavy.” I was able to find out that it was recorded in George Klabin’s 46th Street studio called Sound Ideas, with Geoff Daking engineering the sessions. The Village Soul Choir also recorded one helluva children’s record in “Soul on Sesame Street”. The players also included arranger Clip Hightower, Don Otis Parker, Pat McQueen, Dolores Cooper, and Jimmy Marshall. The released a 45 that was included on that record of “The Cat Walk” (the bass line on this thing is KILLER).

“The Switch” starts out with a stanky little bass line, and a decent little beat. Honestly, before I did any research for this record, I just chalked it up to a funky, sexy lil’ number. I didn’t take into the consideration the Church influence the band members had, and as I’m listening it to it again, I hear the Gospel influence. It almost has a traditional/ folk quality to the lyrics, like some spirituals that would be sung at home on a Sunday. Then it switches (no pun intended). The string arrangement gets pretty tough, and the chorus of “rickity rack, sock boom bah”, while kind of corny, still fits in with this Funky Soul piece. I’m definitely feeling this on a late Sunday/ early Monday morning. Hopefully you will too. Keep Diggin’!