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There are a couple of Sam Dees songs too… ‘Mother Of Shame’ (which owes a lot to ‘Love Child’) and the tortured ballad ‘So Can I’. The eponymous Aware debut was produced by Floyd Smith and arranged by Detroit stalwart Mike Terry and it’s a solid 70s soul set, mixing new tunes with well-chosen covers like the Motown chestnut ‘Love Woke Me Up This Morning’ and Tyrone Davis’ ‘Can I Change My Mind’. At Aware/GRC Loleatta enjoyed a couple of moderate local hits, on the back of which she cut two long players and both those albums have now been brought together on one CD by Ace’s Kent imprint and 1973’s ‘Loleatta’ and ‘75’s ‘Cry To Me’ indeed prove that there was a whole lot more to Ms H than disco dalliances. Then in ’72, Smith (by now married to Loleatta) scored her a deal with Atlanta’s Aware/GRC label run by a shadowy music entrepreneur, Michael Thevis. An encounter with Chicago record producer, Floyd Smith led to a short-lived deal with Apache Records. They’ll tell you that she began singing in the gospel churches of her native Chicago before moving into musical theatre. Proper soul collectors will tell you that there was much more to Loleatta Holloway than the zipping disco workouts would suggest. Oddly, maybe, Holloway’s biggest hits were somewhat anonymous – in as much as on ‘Good Vibrations’ her sampled vocal was credited as part of Marky Mark’s Funky Bunch while on the first incarnation of Black Box’s ‘Ride On Time’ once again it was another matter of sampling – this time, without her and her label’s permission, leading to litigation and a re-recording of the song. Chicago’s Loleatta Holloway is best known as a disco diva, fronting glitter ball faves like ‘Love Sensation’, ‘Hit And Run’ and ‘Dreamin’’ – most recorded with the Salsoul Orchestra.