Red, Black, and Green Productions grew out of the ashes of Washington, D.C.'s Shrine Records. The label - founded by Berry Gordy's ex-wife Raynoma and his ex-employee Eddie Singleton - along with D.C.'s soul music scene never fully recovered after being destroyed during the riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr's assassination. Raynoma and Eddie Singleton’s go-to outside engineer Robert Jose Williams may not have been the only one to keep the fire burning, but there was no one who was producing better soul music in the Beltway during the '70s. He engineered sessions for the likes of Gil Scott-Heron, Hugh Masekela and a host of major label artists at Edgewood Studios and worked in the off hours at his own studio the basement of his parents' suburban Silver Springs home. From that makeshift space came the underground soul sounds that are collected on Eccentric Soul: A RBG Production. With no proper label behind Red, Black, and Green much of what Williams produced went unreleased and the music's fate was left to other entities. This is the first time many of these tunes have seen the light of day and each artist has their own story. Skip Mahoaney & the Casuals were an RBG success story, springing from local release purgatory onto a major label. Dyson's Faces launched the career of small-time legend Clifton Dyson, whose recording and performing career took him through three decades. Father's Children scored a one-shot Mercury deal eight long years after their RBG recordings. And East Coast Connection, Promise, and the Summits all managed to eke out a single or two, none of them distributed beyond District limits. The Exceptions never saw release at all, though a few members formed the current incarnation of The Moments. With Red, Black, and Green Productions, Numero's flagship series delves into the deep well of soul music coming out of the nation's capital during the 1970s.

• Music Label: Numero Group 2012

reviewed by Michu Meszaros 08/2012