Original copies of Bettye Swann's 1967 Shreveport soul classic "Make Me Yours" fetch about $150. Reissues sell for about $35-40. I've had a beautiful, near mint copy for sale for over a month at the ridiculous price of $19.99 with no takers. This is the not so cushy reality of trying to sell records for a living.
"VINYL IS BACK!"
Yeah, if you've got 1000 color variants of a Taylor Swift record for sale. But a solid, southern soul classic without a single bad track? Try giving it away. If I was playing this in the shop, four copies would have sold by Track Three. Now, records just sit, and so out of sheer frustration, I did give it away. I sent it to a regular customer of mine as a gift, with the attached note, "No one wants this, so I'm giving it to you."
He loved it.
And I love it.
"Make Me Yours" was a top 20 hit for Swann, actually reaching the #1 spot on the R&B charts. But there is so much more to the album, a not so frequent occurrence for records of this period. Swann's covers of Smokey Robinson's "Don't Look Back" and Don Gibson's "I Can't Stop Loving You" are stunning. She can pick things up to great delight on a track like "Don't Take My Mind" and can also get down and dirty, like she does on the very Barbara Lynn-like "What Is My Life Coming To."
"Make Me Yours" is as good as any Otis record (except maybe "Otis Blue") and better than most soul and R&B records of the time, because it's consistent. It isn't three singles and filler. It's all killer and no filler, as they say.
Don't sleep on it the next time you see one for sale for a relative pittance.
5 comments:
Wow ! have I been missing out, what fantastic record , thank you so much for pointing me in this direction ,would never have found it otherwise,
Sal, you are sooo right about this record. Knew the single only but loving the album like crazy. This is excellent…
Thank you!
I will be purchasing this immediately. That buyer must bless the day he bought from you.
Man, I miss record stores. (I mean good ones.) I could easily have been one of those people who heard Bettye Swann in a store and bought the album/CD on the spot. Make Me Yours is a great song, and even gets played once in a while on SiriusXM Soul Town.
Marc
Listened to this today. What a great album and I regret the missed opportunity,
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