Product Details
Audio CD (November 19, 1996)
Original Release Date: 1967
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Mca
ASIN: B000002OCQ
1. Amen
2. Rapid Transit
3. Turn Me On
4. Pink Noise
5. Lady Jane
6. Like A Rolling Stone
7. Soul Man
8. Sursum Mentes
9. Didn't Want To Have To Do It
10. Black Noise
11. Memory Band
12. Ruby Tuesday
13. Rotary Connection
Rotary Connection started as a local band in Chicago. I remember as a teenager standing in the crowd at the Kenetic Playground listening to the opening act for Iron Butterfly (who made In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida). I was marvaling the long sustained note the synthesizer player was cranking out when I realized the sound I was hearing was coming from the demunitive lead singer, Minnie Ripperton. Head thrown back, mouth wide open, her wail was drowning out the entire band and it just went on and on and on. --TheScribe56
The brainchild of Chess Records executive Marshall Chess, Rotary Connection represented the label's most successful attempt to expand into the rock/psychedelic market in the late '60s. Chess recruited three members of a White rock band, added a couple of female singers and Chess vocalist Sidney Barnes, and backed them up with star musicians from Chess' house band, including guitarist Pete Cosey and bassist Phil Upchurch. Arranger Charles Stepney co-wrote a lot of songs on their debut album, a desperately trendy effort that combined soul, folk-rock, psychedelic sitars, and quasi-classical themes and orchestration. Yet the band remains most noted for one of the female vocalists, Minnie Riperton, who graced many of the tracks with her impossibly high operatic sopranos. The self-titled debut album balanced original material with unlikely, even absurd, covers of contemporary rock hits by Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. "Amen" and "Lady Jane" were underground FM-radio favorites, and the record sold very well in Chicago and a few other Midwestern cities, though it didn't create much of a stir elsewhere. Rotary Connection hung on for five more albums, but it's the first record that listeners remember, if they recall the group at all. Riperton, her freaky five-octave range intact, went on to brief solo stardom in the 1970s.
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