These three albums are ample testimony that Atlantic's new Miami-based studios will more than replace their highly praised Muscle Shoals location. The house band, which is known as the Dixie Flyers, includes several musicians who migrated from Tony Joe White's band and they brought that funky, driving verve along with them. The Flyers are the rhythm backup on all three albums and in each case they enhance the artists' performance perfectly.

Lulu began her career with the film single "To Sir With Love." That song was a far cry from this down home album that comes on only a few notches beneath Aretha's latest record. Lulu wails through "Good Day Sunshine" and Lavern Baker's "Saved," and stretches out on "Move To My Rhythm." Not to be overlooked are two Jerry Williams songs: "I Don't Care Anymore" and the confessional "To the Other Woman."

Throughout the album, Lulu's relaxed vocal work inspires comparison with Aretha Franklin. And she has listened to her Ray Charles records more closely than Joe Cocker has.

This is Dee Wee Warwick's first Atlantic album after a variety of over-produced, New York based efforts for Mercury. On it she proves that she should have been in Miami, with the Dixie Flyers, all along. From her Nina Simone flavored "More Today Than Yesterday," to an effective rendition of Tracy Nelson's "Down So Low." Miss Warwick more than convinces. Again, the string arrangements are well-handled and the Flyers really cook.

Carmen McRae has been around a long while primarily as a jazz singer, and this is her first experiment with soul music. Although some of the tunes appear to be a taste over-arranged (for example, the title song and "What'cha Gonna Do"), on the whole the album contains restrained, and yet spicily taut, versions of tunes on the order of Tony Joe White's "I Thought I Knew You Well" and "I Want You." The highlight is her oh-so soulful reading of Jim Webb's "Didn't We," that features only scintillating electric guitar accompaniment. It is refreshing to hear Carmen finally working with soul material.

Atlantic always seemed to have a monopoly on female rhythm 'n' blues vocalists in the Fifties with the likes of Ruth Brown and Lavern Baker consistently topping the charts. Now, into the Seventies, with Aretha, Esther Phillips, Lulu, Dee Dee and Carmen, Atlantic is again fleshing out that too long abandoned idiom. And much of that all-important milieu is due to the backbone funkiness of the Dixie Flyers. (RS 73)

GARY VON TERSCH