A final album by late soul legend Johnnie Taylor will be released on July 1st. There's No Good in Goodbye compiles fifteen previously unreleased tracks by the singer from his sixteen-year run recording for Malaco Records, including tracks cut from the last studio album be released during his lifetime, 1999's Gotta Get the Groove Back.

"The Philosopher of Soul," Taylor launched his solo career at the venerable Memphis soul label Stax in the Sixties after serving duty in the Soul Stirrers. Taylor's trademark became a line of songs scolding unfaithful lovers, best captured by his first Top Ten single, "Who's Making Love?" a million-seller in 1968. Taylor crossed over in the Seventies with the hit "Disco Lady," but he moved back to classic soul when he jumped from Columbia to Malaco in the early-Eighties.

Taylor released a dozen albums for Malaco, regularly recording more than an album's worth of material with the intention of assembling an odds and ends collection at some point. Only one song on the new set, "If You Take Your Love Away," was previously released, but the version on Goodbye strips the song of strings, horns and backing vocals.

Taylor possessed one of the finest voices in the Southern soul tradition. According to Deanie Parker, a former Stax publicist and now head of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, "Johnny was unique. I don't think he emulated anybody. He had a special mellow kind of voice and was certainly a very soulful performer."

Taylor died in May 2000 in Dallas of a massive heart attack. Later that year, Lifetime, a three-CD anthology of his Stax work, was released.

ANDREW DANSBY
(May 28, 2003)