The Estate of James Carr inks a deal with Superb Songs JV with Phuture Trax!
Soul Music fans notoriously reserve a special affection for the fugitive and the obscure, and, in recent years anyone who wants to know how good a singer the late James Carr was needs only listen closely to his vocals. James was widely championed as a better man than the far more widely known Otis Redding, whose origins and style were comparable, and there are plenty of eminent observers who consider Carr to have been among the most remarkable of Soul singers.
Born in Coahoma, Mississippi, in Delta Blues territory, the family migrated north to the relative prosperity of Memphis. At six, James was singing solos in church. At nine, a member of a gospel quartet, the Harmony Echoes. In his teens, he began to take engagements as a solo artist in the distinctly secular clubs clustered around Beale Street.
In 1965, he signed to a new record label, Goldwax, which planned to challenge the local hegemony of Stax Records, whose stars included Redding.
Carr's initial releases made little impact but, as releases mounted up, it was evident that he had found his voice. After Goldwax, he recorded unsuccessfully for Atlantic in 1971, but then lapsed into a silence briefly broken by tours of Japan and Italy.
In his absence, the legend grew. He released two new albums, Take Me To The Limit (1991) and Soul Survivor (1993) but was never fit to launch a serious comeback. Treatment for cancer preceded his death in 2001.
Now in 2018 Superb Songs in a JV with Phuture Trax are fortunate to be representing The Estate of James Carr via his family.
