James Carr - You Got My Mind Messed Up [Bonus Tracks] (CD)

All Music Guide

This CD reissue of Carr's first album, 1967's You Got My Mind Messed Up, doubles the length of that LP with no less than 12 bonus tracks, all of them rare and unreleased. You Got My Mind Messed Up is a fine '60s Memphis soul album, even if, in the manner of many LPs of the time, it's largely built around previously released singles. Indeed, ten of the 12 songs drawn from the original You Got My Mind Messed Up LP also show up on Carr's Ace compilation The Complete Goldwax Singles, though there is a difference in that eight of those ten songs are presented on this CD in new stereo mixes, where The Complete Goldwax Singles used the original mono masters. (If you're keeping a scorecard on such matters, the only songs on the You Got My Mind Messed Up reissue not to benefit from new stereo mixes are "Coming Back to Me Baby," "She's Better Than You," and the LP-only cut "I Don't Want to Be Hurt Anymore.") "Pouring Water on a Drowning Man," "Coming Back to Me Baby," "You Got My Mind Messed Up,..." and naturally "The Dark End of the Street" are the hits that will be the most familiar items on the disc, though the other songs taken from the original LP are pretty sturdy Southern deep soul as well and varied to include other kinds of material than the tortured ballads for which Carr's most known. Hardcore fans will be most interested, naturally, in the dozen bonus cuts, four of them previously unreleased, the others drawn from obscure reissue LPs and CDs. In the absence of firm dates, the compilers opted to try to guess which of these rarities date from the earlier part of Carr's Goldwax career and split off the earlier half for this compilation, saving the rest for a subsequent CD reissue of Carr's lone other Goldwax LP, A Man Needs a Woman. These additional tracks, unsurprisingly, aren't up to the level of the cuts from the original You Got My Mind Messed Up LP. But they're still respectable outings worth a listen, sometimes a little more explicitly influenced by (or at least similar to) Otis Redding, as on the cover of "These Arms of Mine" and the up-tempo "There Goes My Used to Be," though the incomplete version of "Sock It to Me -- Baby" is atypical and not suited to Carr's chief strengths. The four previously unreleased cuts include a cover of the Rascals' "Love Is a Beautiful Thing," as well as alternate vocal versions of "Life Turned Her That Way" and "A Losing Game." - Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide Read more Less