Donnie Burks - The Swingin' Sound Of Soul FLAC

The sleeve note says: All of a sudden, there was SOUL. A style of music had broken through which existed for a long time already side by side with the blues, restricted, however, only to a little circle of fans, mostly in the United States. Over night, artists unknown hitherto, appeared in the footlights of the show centers of the world.

SOUL cannot be seperated from its colored interpreters, SOUL is negro music, SOUL is the eruption of a volcano, SOUL brings forth what had been simmering and seething in the black people for more than a century. SOUL means freedom, everlasting liberation, if only in song, in music. With an entire devotion, spending themselves physically and psychically they burst out their good and bad luck, their sorrows and pleas. Intensity is the secret of SOUL impression on the listener, intensity of the word, music and interpretation.

Donald (Donnie) Burks was born in Long Island, New York, in 1942. All through his life, he struggeled for training his outstanding musical talents. At last he met success on Braodway, in TV and radio performances. On this EUROPA LP, he offers authentic SOUL, 'sweet soul' as we call it nowadays. When singing Donnie Burks never forgets discipline, an essential obligation for every artist. His songs have a religious character, but they are not church songs; they contain the original religiosity of the colored people in America, their deep, primitive creed, expressing itself in all realms of their lives, particulary in their music. Actually, colored Jazz singers, Ray Charles for example, sang SOUL, but this element did not amalgamate with jazz. Only, beat music brought forth real SOUL!

SOUL must be sensed. It is difficult to explain this phenomenon, which has many faces. They have in common the dramatic and convincing power of presentation, the revelation of the human element, the explosion of passion. That's Donnie Burks, That's SOUL!