***Ann Peebles’ first album, and the second pressing since its original 1969 release. Limited edition of 500 copies.
LP $26.95
05/27/2022
***BACK IN STOCK!!! If Al Green is heads on the Hi Records coin, ANN PEEBLES is tails. The signature female artist on the legendary Memphis soul and R&B label, Ann Peebles rocked the pre-disco '70s with songs of love, lost love, and love straight up taken. Released in 1972, Straight From The Heart preceded by just two years Peebles' über-classic, I Can't Stand The Rain, proving the young, soon to be American R&B icon didn't need worldwide fame and record sales for a license to be fierce and provocative (see the album track "I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home Tonight").
LP $26.95
06/04/2021
CD $14.25
09/22/2015
***BACK IN STOCK!!! A delicate, slinky figure with a powerhouse voice, ANN PEEBLES occupied a special place among the many great talents that roamed the halls of Memphis' iconic Hi Records in the 1960s and 1970s. While producer Willie Mitchell was the company's heart, musicians the Hodges Brothers its soul, and Al Green its top star, it was Peebles who gave the label its first national success, and a lasting female identity. Over the course of seven albums and dozens of singles for Hi, Peebles expressed a complex range of moods and emotions in her music. Her songs were alternately pleading and defiant and destructive, but always, utterly soulful.
LP $26.95
10/02/2015
CD $14.25
10/02/2015
***BACK IN STOCK!!! There were so many competent records coming out of Memphis that any burgeoning greatness can only be detected by a careful listening. ANN PEEBLES deserves that kind of extra care. Her style is so subtle and economical that the finer qualities of her talents might be passed over as being merely competent. This would be a crime because little Ann has so very much to offer. Ann stresses the melody (rather than rhythm for its own sake). This is not to say she can’t sing funky; she can and does very effectively. It just means Ann shines extra brightly on the slower bluesy numbers. For example “Give Me Some Credit” is such a moving lament, filtering faint traces of early Smokey Robinson and the album’s two most tender cuts, “I Still Love You” and “Steal Away” are the places where Ann Peebles makes such a great impression. These are the kinds of song that become “personal” classics. Ann sings seven up-tempo numbers on which she illustrates her tight, full-bodied voice and shows why she’s presently way up on R&B charts all over the country. Her renditions of “It’s Your Thing,” “Part Time Love,” and “Make Me Yours” are unfettered delights. Ann Peebles goes past the apparent and into the sublime. She stands beyond the predictably competent. And you know that’s where it’s at.
LP $26.95
04/28/2015
CD $14.25
08/03/2009
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Released in 1979, The Handwriting Is On The Wall boasted some high-powered funk backdrops, but for the most part the album finds ANN PEEBLES taking on a set of straight-ahead soul numbers in which she was usually either taking a man away from some woman who didn’t know how to hold on to him, or was warning the ladies why they should stay away from her signifi ant other. Peebles is a tower of defiant sass on “I Didn’t Take Your Man” and “You’ve Got the Papers (I’ve Got the Man),” she leaves no doubt about why she’s dating outside her age group on “Old Man with Young Ideas,” and “Bip Bam Thank You Mam” alerts listeners to the consequences of not pleasing Ms. Peebles. WILLIE MITCHELL pairs Peebles up with some full-bodied soul and funk arrangements for these songs, and while unfortunately most of the great Hi Rhythm Section were unavailable for this record, the players on board do fine work, even if the groove lacks the ineffable touch of Peebles’ finest work. The Handwriting Is on the Wall was Ann Peebles’ last album for Hi, and the last new set she would release until 1988, but it captures one of the great R&B singers of the 1970s doing what she does best, and here she bows out on a high point.
LP $26.95
03/03/2015
CD $14.25
08/03/2009
***BACK IN STOCK!!! This wonderful album, originally released in 1974 on the Memphis-based Hi Records label, deserved a wider audience than it ended up getting at the time. It played to ANN PEEBLES’ great strength, her poised and sultry voice, and surrounded by the sparse, easy funkiness of the trademark Hi rhythm section and producer WILLIE MITCHELL’s perfect use of horns and strings, she sings like a resilient but disappointed angel on this impressive set of songs about the darker side of love. Her best song is here, the eccentric but brilliant “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” along with a marvelous version of Joe Simon’s “(You Keep Me) Hangin’ On,” and perfect readings of a pair of Earl Randle songs, “If We Can’t Trust Each Other” and “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down.” Peebles sings her heart out, and with those somehow bright-sounding Hi grooves behind her, it all comes together to make a classic album of dark, bouncy, and beautiful Southern soul.
LP $28.85
07/31/2012
CD $14.25
05/12/2009