Straight outta Finland: Little Ann, Willie West and Elder William Smith

Talk to any of Ann Bridgeforth's fellow workers at the Marysville Parts and Distribution Center in the gigantic industrial park that is Marysville, Michigan and they'll recall she was a pleasant and reliable packer/checker but that's about it.
Few of them had any idea that the woman working next to them every day on the line for more than 20 years was once a hugely promising soul singer in Detroit who could've been the next Diana Ross or Mary Wells had she been given a shot with Motown.
Unfortunately, Chicago-born "Little Ann" Bridgeforth (she was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters), who began her singing career as a teenager doing Sunday matinees at Michelle's Playroom, only got as far as TCB Studios on Highland Avenue. It was there that Bridgeforth recorded her initial sessions under the direction of session guitarist and freelance producer Dave Hamilton resulting in a single for Ed Wingate's Ric-Tic label, Going Down A One-Way Street. Like many artist's first releases, it went nowhere and Bridgeforth wasn't given a second chance. Before leaving Detroit in 1969 to join her homeboys George Clinton and Funkadelic in the more happening (and less fiery) city of Toronto, Little Ann recorded at least eight more songs with Hamilton who safely packed the tapes into boxes and left them to gather dust.
Soon after settling into her new Toronto home, Bridgeforth hooked up with the members of the jazz trio Fat Chance but after a few years of shuttling back and forth between Toronto and Montreal lounges without advancing her music career, she'd had enough. Bridgeforth returned to Michigan where she found gainful employment with Chrysler packing auto parts and her singing was confined to church services and weddings.
That would've been the last anyone ever heard of Little Ann, only, sometime in the early 80s so the story goes, UK Northern Soul dealer John Anderson acquired a mysterious acetate of an unreleased Little Ann track What Should I Do? and offered the then completely unknown seven-inch to  influential Wigan Casino selector Richard Searling who new a smash hit when he heard it and promptly turned the song into a Northern anthem as a cover-up. Dubbed "When He's Not Around" and credited to Rose Valentine and the Sisters 3, the tune would continue to fill floors for the next 15 years without anyone ever knowing the true identity of the artist responsible. It stands as one of the longest running cover-up mysteries and may have remained unsolved to this day if Northern punters Gilly and Tats hadn't saved up their money for a trip to Detroit in 1990 to meet their heroes Melvin Davis and Dave Hamilton. When Gilly and Tats played their cassette recording of "When He's Not Around," Hamilton immediately recognized his own recording of Little Ann singing "What Should I Do?" Case closed. It wasn't long before Ace/Kent reissue producer Ady Croasdell was trawling through Hamilton's tape archives for more amazing unknown artifacts and Bridgeforth was summoned from her 9-to-5 job to perform in England before adoring crowds of tear-eyed Northern Soul fanatics. Some 35 years after her ill-fated career began, Little Ann was finally getting her due.
Sadly, Bridgeforth's unlikely return to the stage wasn't to last. Suffering from kidney disease, she would spend the final two years of her life on dialysis, finally succumbing in January 2003 at the age of 57.
A few of Little Ann's "lost" recordings have appeared on various volumes of Ace/Kent's Dave Hamilton's Detroit Dancers series although the Helsinki-based Timmion label's new 9-track Deep Shadows LP is the first complete collection of the sweetly swinging and engagingly atmospheric songs she cut at TCB Studios back in the day. Better late than never.

Also from Timmion comes the unexpected return of New Orleans soul survivor Willie West. Perhaps best known to Big Easy R&B lovers for his Allen Toussaint produced numbers on Deesu, West's one-off Warner single B-side Said To Myself backed by the Meters (with Herman Ernest subbing on drums for Ziggy Modeliste) is a favourite amongst the funk elite. Although, instead of simply reissuing one of West's classic burners or perhaps some unreleased jam from the Black Sampson soundtrack sessions, Timmion has released a magnificently moody new tune The Devil Gives Me Everything Except What I Need backed with understated elegance by the High Society Brothers grooving in a low-key El Michels Affair mode. You can listen to the track here.

And while the just-issued Elder William Smith gospel funk single His Voice b/w He Spoke by the All Nations Quartet is on the Psalms label, the insanely limited seven actually has a not-so-obvious Finnish connection. This clever studio concoction neatly pieced together by DJ/collector Kris Holmes with sampled sermonizing dropped over head-nodding beats and organ fills was mastered at Timmion in Helsinki by Jukka Sarapaa of Soul Investigators infamy. Since I got one off Kris, there's only 199 hand-numbered copies left so stop reading this and grab one quick. Check it out here.