The Sugarman 3 - What The World Needs Now
(CD/LP/Digital) Daptone Records, 2012-05-15

Daptone Records celebrates its tenth anniversary: Neal Sugarman, label co-founder with Gabe Roth, does it his way. We actually left Sugarman 3 ten years ago with Pure Cane Sugar. The album featured the vocals of underdogs (at the time) Lee Fields and Charles Bradley, who became soul heavyweight champions and brought their important contribution to Daptone's development. Neal being very busy playing with the Dap-Kings and building the label's dazzling success, no one was really expecting anything new from Sugarman 3 - the band simply seemed on the back burner. So it's almost by suprise that Sugarman 3 comes back with a superb and greasy all-instrumental soul album called What The World Needs Now (named from the eponymous Burt Bacharach cover track). In a recent video interview we did, Neal confessed that he went in the studio with no precise plan or intention of doing a record. The guys enjoyed themselves so much that Gabe Roth finally recorded 11 catchy tunes. 36 minutes-long only, the album hook you from the start and never let you go. Just listen to their rendition of the Bacharach hit, the arrangements are simply gorgeous. They have turned the song into a fantastic, sensual and heavy gospel tune. Other album favorites are Got to Go Back To my Baby (originally written for The Budos Band), a kind of quintessential Daptone song, and the superfunky B3 anthem Mellow Meeting. Adam Scone has never sounded so heavy and has never communicated so well with Sugarman's sax. It was worth waiting for a decade. The question is: how long do we have to wait for you (next time)?