Various Artists - Boddie Recording Company: Cleveland, Ohio [5LP Box Set]

From 1958 to 1993, Thomas and Louise Boddie's industrious Boddie Recording Company issued nearly 300 albums and 45s, recorded 10,000 hours of tape, and remained in operation longer than any other studio, pressing plant, or label group in the history of Cleveland. Long forgotten even by the standards of the chronically overlooked northeastern Ohio music scene, Boddie was a fusion of its owner's engineering genius and his limited economic means; its DIY recording studio housed in a humble barn, churned night and day to capture the sounds emanating from Cleveland's east side neighborhoods. The best of the Boddies' in-house Soul Kitchen, Luau, and Bounty labels, which released an unspoiled treasure trove of kitchen-sink eccentric soul, fuzzbox funk, shoestring doo-wop, and haunted, eerily hook-laden spirituals, are collected here. Enclosed inside is a mountain of office-styled ephemera: two massive booklets brimming with detail on the Boddies and their artists; extensive notes and scores of unpublished photos; a complete detailed discography folio; reproduced fliers; and a Boddie greeting card-all rendered with the handcrafted charm that was the Boddie hallmark. Call it a self-contained record industry crammed into one box. Close to five years was spent on the research and restoration of the Boddie archive, a feat matched only by last year's epic Syl Johnson set. If you thought there was nowhere for Numero to go but down, prepare to be bowled over. No expense has been spared, no detail ignored. Easily our most impressive package to date, Boddie Recording Co. is a super-hybrid of our Eccentric Soul, Good God!, and Local Customs concepts all wrapped in one string-and-button or cloth bound box.