Soulful Collections Recall Beatles Songs, Vietnam

Just when you thought record companies had pretty much run out of ideas for CD retrospectives, Sony’s Risky Business Records steps forward with a bright array of imaginative themes.

Among the series highlights: “Rubber Souled,” which is versions of 13 Beatles songs by soul artists, and “Soul of Vietnam,” which collects 12 songs that were released during the Vietnam War era.

Rather than go for the biggest possible hits on each package, the production team at Risky Business often opts for those recordings that best fit the various concepts.

“Yeah, we got the feeling, now,” Al Green declares playfully at the start of what apparently was the final take of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the 1972 recording that opens the “Rubber Souled” collection.

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The simplicity of the teen-oriented hit makes it seem like an odd choice for Green, whose sensual and sophisticated singing style would seemingly be far more suited to more adult Lennon-McCartney numbers such as “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude.” Yet Green brings such intensity to the tune that everything works out fine.

As you listen to other tracks, including Arthur Conley’s version of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” you realize that the reason so many soul artists recorded Beatles songs in the ‘60s and early ‘70s was more a matter of good economics than simple affection for the material.

“The English had taken the meat off our bones,” Memphis trumpet player Wayne Jackson says of the English rock invasion of the ‘60s in the album’s liner notes. “We had to catch on to their coattails before it was too late. It was like, ‘We’ve got to get a title on the new record that everybody knows.’ ”

Most of the music on “Soul of Vietnam” will be new even to people who grew up in the era because they were neither pop nor major R&B; hits at the time.

Joe Tex’s “I Believe I’m Gonna Make It” is a tale of a soldier’s hope that echoes the patriotic fervor of most World War II hits--expressed in the form of a letter to a loved one. He tells how much strength he got from the last letter from home by saying, “I raised up (in his foxhole) and got me two more enemies.”

But Roy C’s “Open Letter to the President,” a plea to stop the fighting, and the Mighty Hannibal’s “Hymn 5,” the tale of a soldier’s anxiety, are darker expressions that are more typical of the pop mood associated with the times.

The album selections frequently reflect a wry sensibility that mirrors an obsessive pop collector’s passions. Each package also comes with original artwork and liner notes.

Among other albums in the series: “Dangerous Women,” a salute to female rockers that includes Babes in Toyland’s “Catatonic” and Joan Jett’s rendition of AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds”; “Songs of Peacemakers, Protesters and Potheads,” whose odd mixture ranges from the Byrds’ “He Was a Friend of Mine” to Country Joe and the Fish’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” and “Oh, Split!,” which is subtitled “Great Break-Up Songs of the ‘60s” and includes Lou Christie’s “Shake Hands and Walk Away Cryin’ ” and the Grass Roots’ “Things I Should Have Said.”