For me, this is one of the most awesome one-two punches in soul music.
     I think you have to give Lloyd Charmers points for bravery.
     How does Charmers handle Mayfield's showstopper of a tune? To begin with, Charmers' abbreviation of the title is symptomatic of how he abbreviates Mayfield's soul suite. And so it is with a number of the cover versions on Darker than Blue. Charmer's bravery surely was rooted in his beautiful, smoky falsetto. Mayfield's moiré of strings morphs into a single-note melodica melody, and the carefully scored discontinuities of his arrangement yield to rhythm section Third World's delicate but straight-down-the-line pulse. The lyrics don't seem an inch out of place: "Pardon me brother, as you stand there in your glory / I know you won't mind if I tell the whole story."
     This rightness of fit in the covers selected for Darker than Blue is more noteworthy, more revelatory in the case of its political songs. The love songs -- rock steady pioneer Alton Ellis doing Stevie Wonder's "It's a Shame," John Holt covering The Isley Brothers' "For the Love of You" -- are unsurprisingly solid. (Special mention goes to Delroy Wilson's wonderfully funky, pack-the-dancefloor version of The Temptations "Get Ready.") More exciting is Memphis soul singer George "Soule" Jackson's call for voter registration "Get Involved" -- transplanted to Kingston. The same is true of Ken Boothe's searing performance of Chicago soul singer Syl Johnson's 1968 "Is It Because I'm Black?" The power of Ken Boothe's version rests not only with his set of pipes; it's also in the pang of recognition that the song could again be versioned, a propos and movingly -- in how many cities, in how many idioms, and in what indefinite timespan?