Carmen Taylor - Oh Please: The Complete Singles As & Bs 1951-1962 [CD]

She wrote hit songs for R&B giants the Clovers, Clyde McPhatter and the Cookies, she recorded with some of the best musicians and arrangers of her era, she recorded almost three dozen sides during the period covered by this Jasmine collection and she went on to enjoy a more successful second career in the Latin music market, as Elena Madera. Yet despite making records for a decade and a half, almost nothing definite is known about Carmen Taylor, whose early life is a succession of 'may have's. No photos of her from the 1950s are known to exist - our glamorous cover shot is from the early 60s - and sadly most people with whom she would have worked are no longer around to share their memories of her. Fortunately music lasts longer than memories and Jasmine's "Oh Please!" brings together all the surviving masters that Carmen is known to have cut between 1950 and 1962, for the first time in one collection. Carmen sadly never had a hit - and when you heard some of the recordings here you will have to wonder why that was so - but at her considerable best she could hold her own with any of her more successful contemporaries such as her former Atlantic label mates Ruth Brown and La Vern Baker. A quality collection from a quality artist who deserved a far greater level of success than she achieved, and a must for all fans of great female rhythm and blues.