Margie

Mississippi vocalist Margie Joseph released her gloriously sophisticated, orchestrated disco-soul album Margie in 1975 on Atlantic Records to little success. Perhaps it was timing, lack of promotion or bad luck, but for whatever reason, an extremely good album languished largely unheard for years. Margie is a mix of velvet-smooth disco, soul, mid-tempo R’n’B and ballads, that comes with a slick, opulent production, graced by her Joseph’s church-born vocals. For years the album fetched high prizes on the soul collectors market, mainly for the soaring final track “I Can’t Move No Mountains,” a show-stopping underground disco-soul anthem with an exquisite melodic shift from the dark stalking minor key verse to the soaring light of the chorus, a fitting end to another great lost-then-found soul album.