Tag: The Sugarman 3

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Parlor Greens Share a Mournful Ode to Dear, Departed Loved Ones

Organ trio Parlor Greens features a collection of grizzled veterans and incredibly accomplished musicians: 

The trio’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Emeralds is slated for a Friday release through Colemine Records. Emeralds reportedly sees the acclaimed trip upping the ante, while capturing the band in top form: tour tight and more confident than ever in who they are and where they’re going.  Though the results are stronger than ever, the overall mood of the recording sessions was much different. 

The first time the trio met in Colemine’s Loveland, OH-based Portage Lounge Studio, the meeting was marked by a certain sense of freshness: It was the first time they had all played together. Understandably, it was exciting and unknown territory. But the sessions were underlined by the heaviness each of the individual members were going through at the time. With each individual member dealing with personal tragedies in their own lives, the sessions serves as a genuine moment of joy. Just three talented musicians, writing and playing music, now as friends, in a familiar environment. 

Emeralds will feature the previously released, album opening “Eat Your Greens,” “Drop Top” and the final single, the Jimmy James written “Queen of My Heart.” “Queen of My Heart” may arguably be the most somber tune on the entire album, blending church funeral observance music and Booker T. organ-driven soul in a seamless, fashion. The most heartbreaking part of the entire song is towards the song’s coda: A man named Jabril and his mother Marie, express their love for one another. It’s a touching, very sweet moment seemingly punctuated by a sense of loss — and of memorializing someone who’s profoundly important to you.

“My mom is and always will be my Rock of Gibraltar, I came from her. She taught me many lessons in life, as well as character and integrity, and she didn’t only just mother me, but anyone she came across,” Parlor Greens’ Jimmy James explains. “I miss her with every fiber of my being, and she will always be the queen of my heart.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Parlor Greens Return with Slow-Burning “Drop Top”

Organ trio Parlor Greens features a collection of grizzled veterans and incredibly accomplished musicians: 

The trio’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Emeralds is slated a March 27, 2026 release through Colemine Records. Their sophomore album reportedly sees the acclaimed trio upping the ante while capturing the band in top form: tour tight and more confident than ever in who they are and where they’re going. Though the results are stronger than ever, the overall mood of the recording sessions was much different. 

The first time the trio met in Colemine’s Loveland, OH-based Portage Lounge Studio, the meeting was marked by a certain sense of freshness: It was the first time they had all played together. Understandably, it was exciting and unknown territory. But the sessions were underlined by the heaviness each of the individual members were going through at the time. With each member dealing with personal tragedies in their individual lives, the sessions serves as a genuine moment of joy. Just three talented musicians, writing and playing music, now as friends, in a familiar environment. 

Emeralds will feature the previously released, album opening “Eat Your Greens,” a strutting and rollicking groover of a tune, and the album’s latest single “Drop Top.” “Drop Top” is anchored around a slow-burning, sultry Quiet Storm-like strut of a tune completed by Scone’s shimmering bass organ and James’ bluesy guitar melody. While arguably being one of the more mellow soul jazz compositions of their growing catalog together, “Drop Top” continues to showcase both their seemingly effortless simpatico and their unerring knack for pairing tight groove with improvisation and old-fashioned songcraft.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Parlor Greens Share Strutting “Eat Your Greens”

Organ trio Parlor Greens features a collection of grizzled veterans and incredibly accomplished musicians: 

The trio’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Emeralds is slated a March 27, 2026 release through Colemine Records. Emeralds reportedly sees the acclaimed trio upping the ante while capturing the band in top form: tour tight and more confident than ever in who they are and where they’re going. And while the results are stronger than ever, the overall mood of the recording sessions was much different.

The first time the trio met in Colemine’s Loveland, OH-based Portage Lounge Studio, the meeting was marked by a certain sense of freshness: It was the first time they had all played together. Understandably, it was exciting and unknown territory. But the sessions were underlined by the heaviness each of the individual members were going through at the time. With each member dealing with personal tragedies in their individual lives, the sessions serves as a genuine moment of joy. Just three talented musicians, writing and playing music, now as friends, in a familiar environment.

Emeralds‘ second and latest single, album opener “Eat Your Greens” is a a strutting and rollicking tune, that showcases the trio’s unerring knack for tight, crafted, old-school-inspired hooks and grooves, all while being roomy enough for some impressively dexterous solos from James and Scone. Fittingly, the track captures the talent and simpatico of three old pros, who can effortlessly balance songcraft with road-tested improvisation.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Parlor Greens Share Two Covers of Christmas Soul Classics

Organ trio Parlor Greens features a collection of grizzled veterans and incredibly accomplished musicians: The trio close out 2025 and celebrate the holiday season with the recently released “Auld Lang Syne”/”Every Day Will Be Like […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Daptone Records Release an All-Star Collaboration to Celebrate Their 100th 45RPM Single

The renowned indie soul label Daptone Records was founded back in 2001 when its founders, Gabriel Roth and Neal Sugarman wanted to build a new home for their bands’ respective releases after Desco Records folded. Shortly, after label’s founding, Roth, Sugarman, Charles Bradley and Sharon Jones and a collection of artists found an unassuming, beaten up, two family 19th Century brownstone in Bushwick, Brooklyn that would eventually become the home to their new label and their famed House of Soul Studios. And through the release of 50 full-length albums and about 100 singles on 45RPM, the Brooklyn-based soul label built a globally recognized reputation for its discerning tastes and uncompromising standards of quality, realizing exceptionally well-crafted and thoughtful soul records, made by a close family of musicians, who share a common musical philosophy, vocabulary and integrity. 

Since their formation, the label has sold over a million records from their roster of artists including JOVM mainstays Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, The Budos Band, Antibalas, Menahan Street Band, The Sugarman 3 and Naomi Shelton. Although many of the label’s artists have never quite achieved mainstream pop status, the label’s roster have managed to influence artists and labels around the world, including the likes of Amy Winehouse, who worked with The Dap Kings on her seminal album Back to Black, as well as Mark Ronson and Jay-Z, who have tapped the label’s sound for some of their biggest hits. 

Daptone’s 100th 45RPM release is slated for a June 28, 2019 release. And interestingly, the  A-side single “Hey Brother,” which is credited to the Daptone Family features a a historic and unprecedented collaboration of the label’s roster of incredible talent, including the late and beloved monarchs of the soul, Charles Bradley and Sharon Jones, as well as Saun & Starr, The Frightnrs, James Hunter, Naomi Shelton, Amayo and Lee Fields performing together for the first and only time on record. The single finds each of those artists singing a powerful and much-needed message of righteousness and brotherhood over a What’s Going On Marvin Gaye-era like groove played by members of The Dap Kings and Menahan Street Band. 

Written and recorded by The Frightnrs, “Hey Brother (Do Unto Others)” initially appeared on their acclaimed full-length debut, Nothing More to Say. With the band’s Dan Klein tragic death from ALS just before the album’s release, the label and its artists felt it would be both a thank you to the label’s deeply devoted fans and a fitting tribute to Klein to re-imagine the track as a soulful, All-Star team-like collaboration. Sadly, in the aftermath of the deaths of Charles Bradley, Dan Klein, Cliff Driver and Sharon Jones, the single has become a meditative and loving tribute to all of the artists they’ve lost in a tremendously short period of time. 

“Everybody seemed to really love the idea of being together on a record like that,” Gabriel Roth recently told Billboard. “Every one of those singers that I asked, after I explained what we were trying to do. they really jumped through hoops to try to make it happen.” 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Led by its founding member Toby Pazner, a member of Lee Fields and The Expressions and El Michels Affair; and featuring Dave Guy, a member of the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Band and The Dap-Kings; Leon Michels, a member of The Arcs, Lee Fields and The Expressions and El Michels Affair; Nicholas Movshon, a member of The Arcs, Lee Fields and The Expressions and El Michels Affair; Homer Steinweiss, a member of The Dap-Kings and The Arcs; Michael Leonheart, Steely Dan‘s musical director and a member of David Byrne‘s backing band; Neal Sugarman, a member of The Dap-Kings and The Sugarman 3; Aaron Johnson, a member of Antibalas and El Michels Affair; Evan Pazner, a member of Lee Fields and The Expressions, The Olympians are a Daptone Records All-Star band who can trace their origins to when founding member Toby Pazner recruited a bunch of New York’s finest soul musicians during the 2008 Summer Olympics to record material that would comprise the collective’s first 45, which was released through Truth and Soul Records.

However, as the story goes, it wasn’t until a few years later, when Pazner was touring Greece and the Greek Islands when his true vision for the project materialized. After playing the Acropolis and swimming in the Aegean Sea, Pazner had a series of recurring dreams in which he was visited by an ancient, toga-clad, curly-haired Greek man, who told him to return home and build a “Temple of Sound.” And in that temple, Pazner was to retell the tales of Ancient Greece through music. Of course, considering the strangeness of those dreams, Pazner initially ignored them but since they were recurring and so vividly forceful, Pazner began to feel a decided urgency. When Pazner finished the tour, he returned to New York with a singular focus on completing The Olympians’ full-length debut and he immediately went to work acquiring the best studio equipment he could get his hands on. He then promptly followed that up by recruiting his Daptone Records friends  to help him flesh out the material that would comprise the collective’s self-titled album, slated for an October 28, 2016 release.

The self-titled album’s latest single “Apollo’s Mood” is a smooth, old-school soul inspired composition featuring the Daptone horn players, some of the best, contemporary horn players in the entire world paired with a twinkling, twisting and turning organ chords, a slow-burning and sinuous bass line, and a steady back beat. And although contemporary — in the sense that the musicians who composed and recorded the song are contemporary — the song sounds and feels as though it could have been recorded in 1963.