The Summits were a quartet from Washington D.C. formed
while students at high school. They acquired their name from a bus they
travelled on frequently which displayed Summit Hill as the last stop.
They used to hone their singing around school corridors which got them
noticed and were soon taken under the wing of Joe Tate who worked with
D.C. groups The Blendels, Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers as well
as The Fuzz, and Choice Four.
Tate wrote and produced the group's first single, "I Can't Get Over Losing You", as The Summitts, released on his Dontee label in 1970 which was
flipped with the instrumental of it credited to Dontee Studio Band. It
didn't sell well but is now an in-demander which commands high prices.
There is a current seller on Discogs (who may be 'chancing it') with an asking price
of $1,000, but they they do seem to sell for around
half that.
Owing to Tate's other commitments, their next single didn't materialise
until 1973 when he teamed them up with writer/producer Joe Phillips.
Phillips wrote six songs for them with four gaining release on D.C.
International in 1973-74.
Having already previously released one of the previously unreleased
songs, "P's And Q's" in 2021, Soul Direction now releases the other, "Window Shopping" Both were previously only available digitally on a seven track album "It Takes Two" released by Numero Group in 2020.
The flip side to the release, "People Clap Your Hands" is a track by Phillips taken from a Numero Group six track EP "Just Another Day" from 2020.
Nothing is know of the group but there's speculation that Joe Phillips
was behind them owing to their name. Numero Group found the tape on a
shelf attributed to producer Robert Hosea Williams (R. Hosea Williams,
Father's Children) with hundreds of other tapes that had been
languishing in the annals of time.
Released today and available from Soul Direction website.
Click on image below for link to where you can buy from.
| Rating: | 8.3 |
| Explicit: | N |
| Genre/Style: | Rare Soul |
| Format: | Single |
| Media: | Digital |
| Label: | Soul Direction Origins |
| Cat No: | SDO1010 |
| Date: | 29/03/2024 |
| Key/BPM: | N/A |
| Price: | £15 |
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1 comment:
Good group but not very prolific. Apart from Dontee Records, it seems that the essentials released on DC International Records are found on the compilation "It Takes Two" (Numero Group) except the magnificent sweet soul "Let Me Love You Again". Why? Mystery...
Yves
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