It was as if Jim Spencer experienced a kind of musical whiplash. The Kentucky-born, Milwaukee-based singer-songwriter was on a creative tear throughout the mid-1970s, starting with two uncommonly accomplished indie solo albums incorporating the soft rock of their day with outlying experimentation and darker ruminations than wouldn’t befit the pop radio playlists he had an eye on cracking.
He followed up those collections with the psychedelic folkiness of his studio group Major Arcana and a children’s concept album as aesthetically rewarding as his songs for grown-ups. As the decade was closing, Spencer made a baldly commercial, but nonetheless engaging move into soul-based dance music. Released as the disco backlash raged in ‘79, “Wrap Myself Up In Your Love” lowered the tempo animating most of the era’s mirror balled dancer floors by several beats per minute for an early example of what record collectors would deem boogie.
Adapting a vocal style that previously sounded comfortably adjacent to Lobo or Harry Chapin, Spencer nails it here with a tremulous flow befitting his discreetly libidinous lyrics. Elastic bass and saucy saxophone complement Spencer’s simmerin devotion. Instead of the single’s original B-side or the extended version of “Wrap” released contemporaneously on a 12-inch single, Numero Group’s reissue of the original 7-inch iteration (incorporating the original’s layout and label name) includes on its vinyl flip side a remake by veteran background singer Angie Jaree.
Hearing the song from a female perspective, and embellished with lively scat singing, offers a pleasant enough take on the tune. Ditto for that of modern R&B singer Marshall Titus for a bonus track included in “Wrap’s” digital release. But Spencer’s original remains an impeccable excursion whose funkiness and scarcity has propelled its original pressing into serious collector’s item status. Before his 1983 death, Spencer embraced danceable sounds of African American origin on two more 45s, but the elusive hit never arrived. Would that Numero excavate the rest of his rest of his offerings in that vein.
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