Up the Yellow Brick Road [Expanded Edition]

Having already reached the apex of orchestral soul on their marvelous self-titled 1975 debut, the Salsoul Orchestra found themselves cookie cutter-ing themselves to death across subsequent releases. Keeping their hooky blend of Latin soul, disco beats, and big instrumental arrangements, the band soared, then foundered, as the decade progressed. A pairing with Charo on the lackluster Cuchi-Cuchi didn't put the Salsoul Orchestra in the best space to regale a tired audience. That said, the band dusted off their boots, pulled them up, and tackled Broadway across 1978's Up the Yellow Brick Road -- a collection of movie and musical hits titled to tie in with that year's Broadway smash The Wiz, whose "Ease On Down the Road," Salsoul style, serves as the LP opener. The instrumentation is tight and punchy and textually interesting, creating a perfect foil for the vocal hijinks of the Sweethearts of Sigma -- Barbara Ingram, Evette Benton, and Carla Benson. Their vocals, though, are best heard on the chunky "West Side Story (Medley)," which pretty much packed it all in across snips of "Fanfare," "America," "Maria," "Somewhere," and more. Elsewhere, the band repeats the feat to cringing effect with their salsa-fied "Fiddler on the Roof." The antics continue with a take on the title track from the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which keeps the boogie-woogie piano and brass, but just doesn't measure up as a disco song. Overall, Up the Yellow Brick Road is sweet in hindsight. Unfortunately, by 1978, fans had already heard it all before, and Broadway moms and dads wouldn't really have given this any more than a passing glance. And even now, the Salsoul Orchestra's own early output is a far better bet. ~ Amy Hanson