Search - Millie Jackson :: Sex & Soul

Deep-soul singer Millie Jackson hit her stride when she broke away from the three-minute song format and started stretching out and telling it like it was. This set mostly concentrates on the sidelong suites from her 1978 and 1979 albums Get It Out'cha System, A Moment's Pleasure, and For Men Only, each of which includes an extended rap on Millie's central topic, Men vs. Women, and/or its corollary, Tomcatting Around. Sex and Soul actually reprises her biggest hit, 1974's "(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right," from its nominal companion disc Between the Sheets, though this time we get the full 11-minute version, including her classic spiel on being the Other Woman. Jackson--whose fan base was very heavily in the deep South--had a taste for material that was way more country than most of her R&B contemporaries, and she managed to claim songs (included here) by Exile, Kenny Loggins, and Kenny Rogers for her own. She also gravitated toward slick, cheesy production, which sometimes got in the way of her voice's raw achiness; when she went all-out disco with tracks like "Never Change Lovers in the Middle of the Night" and "A Moment's Pleasure," though, she latched on to the groove and asserted her mastery over it. --Douglas Wolk