Deep Album Cuts Vol. 390: The S.O.S. Band
The S.O.S. Band's catalog returned to streaming services in April to celebrate the 45th anniversary of their debut single "Take Your Time (Do It Right)," so I wanted to jump in and explore their music beyond that run of classic singles.
2. Can't Get Enough
3. I Wanna Be The One
4. Nothing But The Best
5. I'm In Love
6. Feeling
7. If You Want My Love
8. Sands Of Time
9. Goldmine
10. Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
11. Open Letter
12. Looking For You
13. Who's Making Love
14. Body Break
15. Are You Ready (featuring Kurupt)
16. It's A Long Way To The Top
17. Love Won't Wait For Love
Tracks 5, 11, and 17 from S.O.S. (1980)
Tracks 10 and 16 from Too (1981)
Tracks 2 and 12 from III (1982)
Tracks 1, 7, and 13 from On The Rise (1983)
Tracks 6 and 14 from Just The Way You Like It (1984)
Tracks 4 and 8 from Sands Of Time (1986)
Track 9 from Diamonds In The Raw (1989)
Track 3 and 15 from One Of Many Nights (1991)
The S.O.S. Band (the name stood for "sounds of success") were from Atlanta, and were one of the biggest acts on Clarence Avant's label Tabu Records. The members of the S.O.S. Band wrote and produced a lot of their own material, but they were also the first act that Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis wrote and produced for outside of The Time, beginning on III. In fact, the famous story is that Prince fired Jimmy and Terry from The Time when they missed a gig, because of a freak snow storm in Atlanta while they were in the studio with the S.O.S. Band.
Jam & Lewis made 14 songs with S.O.S. Band and 12 of them were singles, they were on some proto-Neptunes shit where they'd do the singles and then let other people do the rest of the album. So "Sands of Time" and "Nothing But The Best" are the only deep cuts by the band produced by Jam & Lewis. Those songs were also both sampled on songs by Ed O.G. and the Bulldogs.
"I Wanna Be The One" was sampled on The Weeknd's current hit "Cry For Me," and "Do You Know Where Your Children Are?" was sampled on Max B's "I Ain't Tryna." Kurupt from the Dogg Pound made his on-record debut on three songs on 1991's One Of Many Nights before he linked up with Death Row and appeared on The Chronic, and I included one of those songs, "Are You Ready." Legendary James Brown/P-Funk sidemen Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker played horns on "I'm In Love," "Open Letter," and some other songs on their first couple albums. Lead singer Mary Davis left for a solo career and didn't play on their last two albums, but these days it appears that when the S.O.S. Band tours, Davis is the only member of their classic '80s lineup that's still in the group (and she took a break from the band after suffering a stroke in 2021). It's not really clear who among the band's founding members is still alive and musically active, but saxophonist Willie "Sonny" Killebrew passed away last year.