Album of the week: The Dells - There Is

I have a deep love for Chicago soul, and The Dells are among the greatest of all Chicago harmony groups. They also have the incredible distinction of having the same lineup from 1960 until 2009! While a whole lot of 60s soul is best heard on 45’s or comps, There Is is an album that stands tall on its own, as one of the most outstanding soul LPs of all time. There isn’t a moment of filler here; every track is excellent.

I first heard the Dells in the early 90s. I started working at a record store in 1991 when I was 16. The store was in NW Indiana, near Gary. The store had many POC as customers, and my music education was fed daily by talking to and seeing the enthusiasm for what folks were purchasing. I had already been collecting Motown singles for a few years, but my education went deep thanks to the kindness and love for the music that was shared for me, daily. If there was any suspicion about this scrawny white kid with bleached blonde hair taking such an interest in obscure old soul music, I never noticed it. The Dells released a new album in 1991, and there was Dells mania around that disc, equivalent to the other massive releases of that era (Nirvana, Naughy By Nature, Prince, Metallica, Guns N Roses, etc). It was the type of phenomenon that was partially regional, but also completely under the radar of anything I was aware of in the music press. I’d certainly never heard the Dells on oldies radio, nor read about them. But the massive outpouring of love for this group was something that I was determined to experience. To be fair, there was also some renewed interest in soul harmony groups thanks to the film The Five Heartbeats.

I listened to that disc and liked it, but it didn’t blow me away. What did blow me away was the following year when a CD compilation of the Dells Chess recordings, and Dells mania hit again. We couldn’t keep that disc in stock! I couldn’t believe how great this disc was, and felt cheated that these songs had been ignored by oldies radio and anything I’d come across in my voracious reading of music press and books.

There Is is balanced between dreamy, gorgeous ballads and uptempo stompers, with an elegance that is one of the hallmarks of Chicago soul. This is music that has the catchiness of the Motown sound, but also doused with an earthy sense of pride that makes no concessions to cross over. ‘Run For Cover’, ‘There Is’, and ‘Wear It On Our Face’ are some of the most incredible songs I’ve ever heard, regardless of genre. As a kid who was also fully smitten by hip hop, samples were a mystery in those pre-internet days, and when I’d come across an OG record that was a sample source, it was incredibly exciting to put together more pieces in the history (and future) of music. The title track here has an intro that’s benchmark sample material - hooky, compelling, and so distinctive.