No excuses for not leaping aboard the Night Train now as the Original Gravity label repeats the recipe of its Peter Gunn and 30-60-90 vinyl 7″s and gets four different artists to deliver four radically different versions of the same classic standard. In this case, said standard is Jimmy Forrest’s Night Train (famously ‘done’ by Mr James Brown and his Famous Flames in typical blistering fashion on the TAMI Show in 1963) and the four artists are SoCal Soul Stars, The Regulators, Junior Dell & The D-Lites and Nestor Alvarez. Which, if you’ve been awake, actually means label boss Neil Anderson playing most (if not all) instruments on all versions. Yes, all versions. Want funky soul heat? It’s the SoCal version. Uptown top skanking? Junior Dell. Rocksteady? The Regulators. Latin your thing? It’s all about Nestor Alvarez’ salsa-fied version. Any one of these would have made it worth buying the wax, four on the same 45 is just ridiculous.
(Out now (digital)/ Pre-order vinyl on Original Gravity Records)