Rome Jefferies - Good Love 45
Rome Jefferies 'Good Love' 45
A1 Vocal
B1 Instrumental
*Orders will be despatched from 30th May.
Reissued officially for the first time, another New York boogie sure shot exclusively on 45. Sung by Rome Jefferies and backed by vocal trio Lorali (led by Isabelle Coles of Kleeer), ‘Good Love’ was produced and arranged by maestro Greg Henderson and independently released on his Rain Records imprint in 1983.
"Another track which bypassed most people was 'Good Love'. As far as I am concerned, this was one of the classic all-time boogie tunes. It was equally popular in both the North and South of England which is a rarity in itself ... How an excellent dance tune like this could have evaded most people, can probably be explained by the limited number of copies that eventually reached the UK.” (Dez Parkes, 1993)
Whilst Henderson’s solo debut, ‘Dreamin’, was popular on the soul and dance scene, Rain’s follow-up single ‘Good Love’ didn’t gain the same traction or distribution on release and went under the radar. Original 12” copies of the single have always been scarce. Despite its initial obscurity, the soulful vocals and modern electronic groove were favoured amongst London boogie heads tuned into the latest black music. DJ Smokey Tee who was a regular on London stations, JBC and Radio Invicta remembers, “I got it when it was released. A few copies came through a distributor I used to work with and after that, you couldn’t get it”.
By the mid-80s, ‘Good Love’ had become a much-coveted import amongst DJs and collectors. A select few were playing the single on pirate radio and together with the record’s scarcity, the song’s exposure to keen listeners during the UK rare groove era fuelled demand.
Wind the clocks forward to the present, and the track is revered as an underground classic from Mr “H”, who'd spent the 70s performing with Soul, Funk, and R&B bands on the New York live circuit, and leading groups like Master Force. To paraphrase Greg Wilson that "Boogie was, in essence, the direct continuation of Disco in its purest form", Henderson’s handful of releases on Rain combined the old with the new in that same way, connecting the dots between the Disco Funk era with the undiluted and independent underground NY dance scene of the early 80s.
