Among the last black artists you’d imagine appearing on these pages would be Barry White – but here he is and via the excellent Man Ain’t Nothin’ I think he makes it on merit. Of course before he became a worldwide star Barry spent a good few years scuffling a living on the West Coast music scene, writing, singing, producing and so on. This Downey 45 was his first release as a solo artist and although I Don’t Need It has a good rep on the Northern scene the flip is far far superior. It is a fine deep ballad and White sings up a treat, totally convincing, working really hard at the lyric. Of course even if the writer credit didn’t give the game away it’s obviously BW right from the first syllables, but if you forget his later slush (if you can) you can hear what a strong voice he had, a lovely deep tone and considerable grit when he set his mind to it. To me he never sounded better than on this track.