The Queen Alone

Carla Thomas’s second album on Stax was a slightly tidied-up take on Southern soul, with a clean sound and sweetening strings creating a nice blend of slick Detroit production values and down-home Southern realness. Tracks like ‘I Want To Be Your Baby’ are sultry, urbane and extremely pretty, with more in common with artists like Dionne Warwick, but there’s still some country grit here too in tracks like ‘Lie To Keep Me From Crying’ or ‘Stop Thief.’ Strong material, played superbly, sung wonderfully.