Edwin Starr - Twenty-Five Miles / Love Is My Destination album flac

iI have TMG 672 it is miss labelled showing 25 miles on both sides

With a glorious voice bestowing and suggesting deep southern roots, Edwin Starr’s vocals were unmistakable, a strong baritone who sang from somewhere deep in his throat, much like that of Levi Stubbs who sang with the Four Tops.While Starr’s vocals are wonderful and the song infectious, a song every soldier around me knew in Viet Nam, as everyday in the “green” was simply another 25 miles. But there was so much more to the number that wrapped itself around my soul … the opening drumming of Benny Benjamin relentlessly opens the track and stays front and center for the entire song, like some never wavering Master Sergeant keeping everyone’s feet moving. Then in drops that bass line, the likes of which the world had never heard before, one that systematically echos the lines of the horns, coming off as some sort of marching or pre-game pep band. And then in comes Edwin Star, bigger than life, moving on and taking me with him, as if I’ve no say in the matter at all, and it felt good being out there walking along the baked red clay dirt roads with him, singing to the top of my lungs doing fancy footwork along jungle trails, fancy foot-work that would eventually be copied in moves, but we did it first, smiling Americans with a face full of bright white teeth along those dangerous paths, where the music was all we had to release the tension.I felt a deep and abiding respect for the soldiers around me, they were keeping this nurse safe during those ragged times as they moved me from one firebase to another, and in turn I kept the pace, added a higher vocal range to their lustrous deep singing, smiling and laughing all the way with them and with Edwin Starr … and the real kicker here, Edwin never lets you know what was gonna happen when he reaches the end of those 25 miles, he doesn’t even hint a clue, and you know (?), that was just fine, we had know idea what was going to be around the next bend in the road, yet alone at the end of our 25 miles, where like Starr, our feet kept on walking to the beat of his “Twenty-five Miles.”*** The Fun Facts: The song was inspired, or should I say lifted from the track “32 Miles Out Of Waycross” recorded by soul singer Hoagy Lands, and was also record by Wilson Pickett as “Mojo Mama,” written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berms, who were eventually given co-writing credits for the number.Of course Starr would go onto record the blistering track “War” … and while sensationally good, was far too obvious for my liking, lacking the subtle open-endedness of “Twenty-five Miles.”Review by Jenell Kesler