Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics 

Release date: March 12, 2013

Wax Poetics Records 021

Purchase it on LP and CD as well as on iTunes.

The Delfonics is the quintessential sweet-soul group. Hailing from Philadelphia, the crew formed in the mid-’60s, with the definitive original lineup as lead vocalist and songwriter William Hart, his brother Wilbert Hart, and mutual high-school friend Randy Cain (later replaced by Major Harris). With the help of producer/arranger Thom Bell—and with William’s signature falsetto—the Delfonics set the tone for all other sweet-soul groups that would follow.

Between 1968 and 1974, the Delfonics had twenty charting singles and won a Grammy for their massive hit “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time).” Out of their twenty hits, William Hart wrote or cowrote eighteen of them, thirteen with collaborator Thom Bell, like “La-La Means I Love You,” “He Don’t Really Love You,” and “Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide From Love).”

After five albums, the Delfonics would break up for good in 1975. Brothers William and Wilbert parted ways and over the years often toured separately with different forms of the group. But over forty years after writing his first hit, lead singer and songwriter William Hart has put his unmistakable falsetto back on analog tape and reinvented the Delfonics brand for a new generation.

Los Angeles producer/composer Adrian Younge envisioned a modern-day Delfonics album and pitched the idea to William Hart, who hopped a plane from Philly to L.A. and began work on a new album for Wax Poetics Records. Younge helped to reshape the Delfonics by bringing on board two excellent young vocalists, Loren Oden and Saudia Mills—as well as Om’Mas Keith on the single “Stop and Look (And You Have Found Love)”—to work alongside William.

Adrian Younge is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist who traded in his MPC sampler for a carefully curated studio of authentic gear, rocketing to international recognition after composing the original score for the 2009 cult comedy Black Dynamite. The release of his 2011 psychedelic-soul concept album, Something About April, generated a large following in the hip-hop community, leading him to produce the upcoming Ghostface Killah concept album, Twelve Reasons to Die.

Continue reading…