Enterprise was a sub-label of Stax, and released the early solo work of Isaac Hayes. It is actually named after the Star Trek spaceship – Al Bell was a big fan. Black Nasty cut three singles and an album (this one) for Enterprise before being dropped by the label. Johnnie Mae Matthews, the “Godmother of Detroit Soul” arranged and produced the LP, along with Sir Mack Rice (a Stax producer).
My copy is the February 2023 Vinyl Me Please, Classics Reissue, with Listening Notes by Andrew Winistorfer, who writes:
. . . pressing play on Talking to the People really does feel like something revelatory, something transcendent. It’s like if the Bar-Kays of the early ’70s had a woman on the mic, or if Funkadelic leaned more into rock, or if Sly Stone had half the budget. It’s an album that feels contemporary — it almost predicts Black genre experimentalists like SAULT — but also fits so neatly in with everything happening in Detroit and Memphis funk in 1973. It failed to find an audience because the audience it predicts — the musical omnivore who could see the strands between everything — hardly existed in earnest by then.
But listening today, it’s almost too easy to find something to love.
Andrew Winistorfer, listening notes booklet
I love it when VMP pick a pressing that is lesser known but deserves more attention – this is a great reissue I’d have been unlikely to find in the wild.
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