Various

When we launched Spring Revisited in March, an incredible collaboration between Acid Jazz, Ace Records and Cosmos Music, we could only dream of the reaction it would receive. We started off with Dmitri From Paris’ mix of Millie Jackson’s ‘We Got To Hit It Off’, gaining universal acclaim from DJs, a Number 1 in the UK 12” singles chart, and the ‘Record of 2025’ at ‘We Out There’ festival: a veritable summer anthem. It sold out on both 12” and 7” vinyl, so it is only right that it opens up the Spring Revisited album.

But the series is so much more than that. The mixes that followed from the likes of Kenny Dope, Dave Lee, Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, Joaquin ‘Joe’ Claussell, DJ Spinna, Opolopo, show how much the music of Spring means to such this dancefloor royalty. Claussell’s reworking of The Fatback Band’s ‘Snake’ gave us another 12” Number 1, and all in the week that the group played a triumphant show at London’s KOKO.

One of the major soul labels of the 1970s, Spring Records was formed in the late 1960s by Bill Spitalsky and Roy and Julie Rifkind. A hothouse for some of the most essential soul music of the era, the likes of Millie Jackson, Joe Simon and The Fatback Band made their best-known songs and greatest chart hits for Spring. Tracks include Fatback’s ‘(Are You Ready) Do The Bus Stop’, Joe Simon’s powerful, Gamble and Huff-penned ‘Drowning In The Sea Of Love’, and Millie Jackson’s scorchingly confessional ‘If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Wanna Be Right)’. Spring (with its subsidiaries Posse and Event) not only produced the big 1970s soul hits, they also gave us the minor hits and little gems that make soul music so interesting and rewarding.

The aim of the album is to gather together as many of the mixes as possible into a beautifully designed and presented collection. It is mastered impeccably to play at home, but also in a club as well – just in case you missed the twelve inch singles! With this in mind, the record is presented as a Double-LP package, housed in a beautiful all-green sleeve, echoing the ‘record pool’ stylings of the vinyl singles. It is pressed on colour vinyl (in the characteristic Spring theme of green and white), with sleeve-notes by Frank Tope.