February 12, 2012
...Ken Shipley, who's nominated for two of those: Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes.
The album that got him into consideration, where he's up against the likes of Neil Diamond and Paul McCartney, is Syl Johnson: Complete Mythology. It's a compilation of the veteran Chicago soul singer's music. Shipley is one of the founders of the record label Numero Group, which finds and preserves obscure musical recordings.
"Syl Johnson is one of those guys who fell through the cracks of — not only the Chicago soul scene — but the national soul scene as well," Shipley says. "He lived his entire career in the shadows of two of soul music's largest names." He's talking about James Brown and Al Green<...>
Shipley calls the set a "five-year labor of love." Though he's been nominated for a Grammy before, he says it would be special to win one for this project — not least because Syl Johnson himself will be in the audience.
About Numero Group
About Numero
Founded in 2003 as an archival record label by Tom Lunt, Rob Sevier,
and Ken Shipley, Numero has evolved into a multi-format media company,
devoted to dragging brilliant recordings, films, and photography out of
unwarranted obscurity.We re on a dirty, labor-intensive mission... and
it's urgent as all hell. Time kills off precious bits of passed-over
sound, story, and ephemera every day, just as fast as we can haul this
sprawling archive of under-heard recordings along with the musicians,
writers, and entrepreneurs who created them out of exile.Every Numero production more than 60 titles in our diverse catalog of LPs, CDs, cassettes, 45s, 12"s, and DVDs is a modest miracle of localized sound creation, shedding fresh light on the efforts of men and women who sang, played, recorded, and peddled to shallow rewards, if any. Each track lives and breathes at the nexus of story and song, preserving human work and hope gone lost into freshly etched grooves. Every recording we unearth is painstakingly re-mastered and carefully researched, with obsessive attention to narrative and factual detail unmatched in the so-called reissue field. By self-imposed law, everything numbered by Numero is a stunning new artifact of image and word, tailored to the sounds it safeguards.
Eccentric Soul, our flagship series, has documented lovingly mishandled soul labels from Columbus, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Miami. Our Wayfaring Strangers compilations collect the privately issued song-fruits of wandering folkies. Each Cult Cargo release visits the sonic shores of some tiny, isolated nation, while Good God! titles seek the spiritual, as enshrined on reels of audio tape neglected until now. And with Local Customs we investigate isolated, mom-and-pop recording outfits, each operated by a homespun Alan Lomax who gave neighbors and friends studio time, a microphone, and a shot at being heard a generation later. We've even crossed the street from time to time to deliver hidden worlds of unsung power pop, kitchen-sink New York disco and rap, kid-group soul, fiery rockabilly gospel, Franco-Belgian electro-samba, phantom blaxploitation funk, psychedelic heartland pop, orchestral UK chanteuse folk, decaying art-soul and Southside funk-blues club life captured in glorious black & white.
This Grammy award winner box set was painstakingly re-mastered by Peerless Mastering / Jeff Lipton.
No mention in the article, no mention on Numero Group website...
Happy Valentine's Day, Jeff!
P.S. Lost to Sir Paul McCartney in best Historical album nomination which was a noble competition, to say the least.
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