VARIOUS ARTISTS

Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label

(Numero)

For every Motown or Stax, there were hundreds of little labels around the country that attempted to emulate their success during the 1960s. Budgets, both for production and promotion, were usually limited, and only a handful of tiny labels, such as one-derful in Chicago, Double Shot in Los Angeles, and Boola-Boola in Oakland, had any national impact. Miami's Deep City and related Lloyd and Reid labels made some noise regionally but had only one national hit — Helene Smith's haunting "A Woman Will Do Wrong," in 1967 — which unfortunately is not included on this 17-song retrospective, volume three in the Chicago-based Numero Group's series of obscure '60s soul compilations.

Smith, a high school senior who managed the company's retail store, is featured instead on five other tracks, of which her cover of Otis Redding's "Pain in My Heart" is a superb slice of Southern soul. Much of the other material was penned by Clarence Reid (a.k.a., Blowfly) and/or Willie Clarke, who try to copy the Supremes, Impressions, Temptations, and other prominent artists in their work with Smith, the Movers, and Paul Kelly. Reid and Clarke would eventually develop their own sound with another teenager, Betty Wright (whose two earliest sides are included), cutting "Clean up Woman" for the better-financed local Alston label in 1971. Because this music was transferred from rare 45s rather than from master tapes, the fidelity is a bit fuzzy, but the musicianship is solid throughout, and the beats are quite danceable. (Lee Hildebrand)

ION PETRE STOICAN

Sounds from a Bygone Age, Vol. 1

(Asphalt Tango)

Less melancholy than Nino Rota and more manic than Django Reinhardt's Hot Club quintet, this beautifully recorded Ceausescu-era disc of mouth-droppingly virtuosic, boozily limber traditional Romanian numbers sounds like the madcap soundtrack to a lost European slapstick comedy. Gypsy violinist Ion Petre Stoican really cuts up on "Hora de la Oltenita" and sends chills on the dizzying tango "Mosule, te-as Intreba," pitted against Bucharest aces like stone-cold cimbalom killer Toni Iordache. (Kimberly Chun)