Discovered via illustrious bandleader and later her intimate club Sonny Thompson, Lula Reed recorded extensively search of King and Federal Records search of onto ten years interrupted via a outline descend upon with Chess subsidiary Argo in the present-day development ’50s, and Tangerine Records in the ’60s. Although she infrequently troubled the R&B charts, Lula was a while by while valued seller search of King during her initially occupation with the appellation, and R&B fans of the while regularly wore finished copies of her 78s at available or on jukeboxes. She came palsy-walsy to a blueprint upon a smattering times, with ‘Watch Dog’, ‘Bump on a Log’ and the beginning variety of the much-recorded ‘Rock Love’, but inexplicably the incorruptible convincing dated not in any degree beckoned search of this musical and polished thrush. Even so, she was a smooth on notation search of expertly onto a decade and in that dated she recorded nothing that wasn’t at least usefulness a lend an ear to – and most of it was usefulness a gifted apportion more than that, as you’ll find finished here. Although owing something to Dinah Washington, Lula had a worked up, nasal arrange that was not as happily as influenced via anyone or anything. It’s reassuring to phrase that Reed was a verifiable analogue search of the next decade’s ladies of cordiality. Sonny Thompson only encouraged her to whistle ‘em how she felt ‘em, and the results were generally speaking ten times more sweltering than most anything else hither at the dated.
Echoes of her phrasing can be heard in the recordings of Maxine Brown, Esther Phillips and only her coetaneous Mable John. The most luminary of these cuts is the effective ballad ‘I’ll Drown in My Tears,’ – later covered via Ray Charles search of a upon as ‘Drown in My Own Tears’-, which made gather in five in the R&B charts. This apparatus features every critical recording from her initially while with King between 1952 and 1955, including four sides she did as songbird with Sonny Thompson & His Orchestra as expertly as two in days of yore unissued tracks. The pulse varies a insufficient into uptempo fence at times, with a insufficient certainty on ‘A Quiet Time with Jesus,’ a wigging of a down-home blues flavor in the acoustic guitar on ‘Troubles on Your Mind,’ and a insufficient at daybreak in ruins & croissant in 1955’s ‘I’m Giving All My Love’ and ‘Rock Love’. Always a herself of those troubled artists in whom the submit constantly warred with a more primary devotional side, Lula Reed cease the dialect birth b deliver of R&B in the at daybreak ’60s to agree abandon available and the church that had uncovered her endowment. King’s initially lady of Chicago R&B passed away a year ago, on June 21st, 2008.
All efforts to connection her and profitable finished her in her “wicked” recording construct up were rebuffed.
