Soul Enemy No. 1

Will someone stop Jon Tiven before he produces another soul album? His Betty Harris album Intuition lacked warmth, made her voice smaller than it is, and subjected her to sub-par material written by Tiven and his wife, Sally. Howard Tate's Blue Day just arrived, also produced by Tiven and sharing all the weakness of Harris' album. The material's slightly better - perhaps a result of collaborations with Dan Penn, Mike Farris, Ellis Hooks, Sir Mack Rice and others - but the trade-off is that Tiven plays most of the instruments, so there's not much groove.

Garnet Mimms' Is Anybody Out There? came in the same package, also produced by Tiven - evidently Evidence Records' house soul producer - and I don't have the heart to listen to it to hear another soul singer made average.