Eccentric R&B: The Cuca Label
There may be unlikelier locations and eras for a soul music than small town Southwestern Wisconsin from the early 1960s to the early ‘70s. But that setting figures into a rich legacy, a sizable chunk of it captured in Chicago archival label Numero Group’s edition of its Eccentric R&B series dedicated to Sauk City’s Cuca Records.
Cuca must have held significant allure for Milwaukee artists to eschew studios and record companies closer by. But it worked out for all concerned, at least in the quality of production and artistry shared among the two dozen cuts compiled here.
Figuring prominently among them are Milwaukeeans who would later garner national attention. Years before The Esquires urged listeners to “Get On Up,” the male vocal group engaged in post-doo wop harmonizing with an occasional Caribbean flair. That ensemble’s former lead singer, Betty Moorer, also acquitted herself compellingly as a soloist with a bubbliness recalling Claudine Clark. Selections from Milwaukee mainstays Harvey Scales & The Seven Sounds point both to the singing bandleader’s dexterous vocal range and just how little brass is heard throughout the rest of the album.
Motown-styled orchestral string arrangements aren’t to be heard at all (due to space and/or budgetary considerations?), but just as Hitsville U.S.A. turned The Primes and The Primetttes into The Temptations and The Supremes, Cuca had gender-complementing vocal groups The Devils and The Devilettes working together and making their own memorable tracks.
Defining the range found in the Wisconsin and Northern Illinois soul are the Ink Spots/Mills Brothers throwback style of The Twiliters, genuinely funny novelty doo wop from The Supreme Four and moves toward Thom Bell/Gamble & Huff Philly slickness from Step By Step. The most relatively out of step outliers come from the otherwise party-bound Artie & The Pharaohs’ dip into lurching ominousness and Rockford’s closest thing to Ike & Tia Turner raucousness, Birdlegs & Pauline, ending the project with tender jazz of the type Wes Montgomery and Nancy Wilson could have made together.
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Cuca’s Eccentricity makes for an imminently well-sequenced collection chronicling an eclectic microcosm of regional black pop development.
